What it took for me to author a course on Raspberry Pi GPIO

For the past few days, I've been recording Raspberry Pi GPIO In Depth in the lynda.com studios here in Carpinteria, California. I traveled 953 miles from my home in Portland, Oregon, but getting here took more than just moving from place to place - it also involved prepping for the course. Every lynda.com author goes through this series of steps, and every first-timer worries about how much work it's going to be. It does require a fair amount of time and attention - but it's worth doing.

My first step to authoring this course happened when I decided to buff up my knowledge of the Raspberry Pi GPIO. I already know quite a bit about how it works, but knew I needed to gain some hands-on experience. I usually don't need motivation, but I also knew I had a lot of distractions and would need a deadline to help me focus. Committing to teaching a course through lynda.com involves deadlines to produce several necessary parts, and I was apprehensive that I might not get them done. But the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and the creation of a lynda.com course begins with a table of contents.

Build A Table Of Contents

This is the first step to creating a course, and the easiest. Look at the left side of every lynda.com course and you'll see a list of videos, broken into chapters. That's the table of contents, exactly the way it was created when the course was first conceived. Chapters are in bold, with each video in the chapter listed below. Run times of each video are added later, after the course is recorded.

Creating a table of contents for this course took me about one hour. I knew what I wanted to cover and the bulk of the work was easy. The most difficult part was researching the more obscure topics, some of the things I knew I wanted to cover, but wasn't sure about terminology or nuances.

I plan for videos to be somewhere around five minutes in length, so I break concepts down into easily-referenced chunks of knowledge. If a member needs to review a concept, they don't have to search through thirty minutes of video packed with multiple topics - they can quickly index to a particular concept. A course is usually about three hours long - which means there are about thirty-six videos in total.

I completed this without any concerns. It's just writing down what I already know in a structured form. It was obvious - you must learn about before you learn that, after which you can learn the other thing. No sweat!

I made a few changes to the table of contents during later stages, particularly writing the script. I realized that the order wasn't really what I wanted, and that some of the topics weren't necessary. But in general, this "TOC" was accurate and remained consistent throughout the course preparation. 

Research The Content

Raspberry Pi GPIO involves programming in both python and scratch, as well as constructing some electronic circuits. This second part of prep took a lot of time - possibly ten hours - because of the large amount of research and experimentation. I knew the basics, but I wanted to make sure I was representing the best solution possible. Members will look to me to present them with accurate and complete information, and I owe them the courtesy of making sure I'm well-informed.

This was the first time I felt a bit of panic. Connecting an MCP3008 to the GPIO using SPI was new territory for me, and it involved a lot of wires and a lot of double-checking. I asked myself if I had perhaps overstepped my experience and knowledge, and should I abandon this course in favor of a bonafied electrical engineer. 

I didn't have that option, so I muscled through it and on to the next step.

Create A Script

I'm describing this as a separate step, but in reality, I did this at the same time I did research. I think of it as similar to commenting code, providing me with detailed notes on how I'll present this information when I'm in the studio.

I built a two column table, with the columns labeled "Say This" and "Show This." Each video gets it's own table, labeled for clear reference.

The column for Say This tells me what to say. The first cell in this column in the table contains a word-for-word opening statement so I am making sure I introduce the intent of the video. The last cell also contains a word-for-word closing statement, summarizing what I've just discussed. In between, I make notes and outlines on how I'll explain this concept.

The column for Show This contains notes on the visuals for each step in the concept. Each cell contains a description of what will be on screen while I'm talking, and I try to make sure the visual switches every thirty-seconds or so. I make written notes or grab reference images from the internet. I may take pictures of the project, pointing out what I'll expect to see. I may be showing a slide. I may simply note this will be represented by live action. This column of images and descriptions doesn't have to be perfect - it only has to serve as a reminder to what I'll be showing on screen as I'm talking. 

Like creating the TOC, this was easy. I built it up over time, and it was just describing what I had already done. It was a bit tedious, and I had to remind myself that attention to detail would pay off later. Especially when it came to creating slides.

Create Slides

I was finally ready to create slides. I grabbed the approved template and created a slide for each spot in the script where I needed a slide. Some of the visuals involve builds or animations - these took a bit longer to create. Some are simply bulleted text, although I try to keep wordy slides to a minimum. It's better to Show, than Tell.

Building slides may have taken twenty hours. Some courses will require more slides, some require none at all. This amount of time varies with your experience and sense of design.

For me, I know that my design skills are weak, so I warned my producer (Rae). That's the great thing about doing a lynda course - it's not just me against the world, it's me and a team, and I can ask for help.

And...A Manicure

Yep. I was told to get a manicure since my hands will be in close-up shots. Nobody wants to see dirty fingernails.

All Told...

It took me about a month of prep time, which was spread out into chunks of time here and there. Much of it was done in-between other projects when I had a flash of brilliance. Some of it was a concerted effort. All of it was a learning experience.

How about you - if you've authored a course at lynda, how much time did it take to prep for your course? Which parts were easy, and which left you in a state of panic? Share your horror stories with us in the comments below...

(Read More: Day Zero ? Day One ? Day Two ? How I Got Here ? Live Action ? Excellence ? Done/Not Done)