Borrow my Brain Online

Question: I have a course that I’ve been running face-to-face for years. I want to host it online. What do I need to do?

If you have been successfully running an in person training, then you know that there is likely to be a good appetite for your content. Online courses tend to work best for information led content. If you have a practical element to learn a skill, you can include demonstrations but you may also want to consider bringing your students together for an experiential session. Your training can be a blended approach.?

When you are ready to take your training online, I’d recommend the following steps:

1.Create an overview: Review your existing session plans. First, list out each topic that your training covers. Within each topic, note the key points. Once you have your overview, check that you have covered everything that will make up your online training.

2. Structure your content: What works in face-to-face training doesn’t always translate well to online learning. People consume information best online in bite-sized chunks. Taking your overview, map out a logical and meaningful process that will take the learner from where they are now to where they want/need to be in a series of steps. When you have your map, ask a collegue or trusted friend to review your process. Does it make sense to them? Have you missed out any steps? Review and refine until you are sure that you have the right content in the right sequence.

3. Choose the best medium: How will you deliver your content? Think video, audio, online coaching, handouts etc. There are three things to consider when choosing the medium for your course - the content, your audience and your own preferences. You can’t ask busy people to carve out hours at a time to watch video but they could listen to audios while travelling to work or working out. But some training needs to be visual, for example, learning technical skills.?

But don’t avoid video just because you think you can’t do it. Appearing natural and confident on video is a learned skill. Practicing will help you to improve. If you are struggling, you can always do a brief introduction to camera and then use slides with a voiceover to present the content itself.?

One of the biggest differences to training online is that you have to generate more engagement and interactivity. In a room, people can ask questions and discuss their ideas. As you are choosing the medium, think about how you can include activities that recreate this engagement. You may use handouts or include a comments section for people to share their thoughts.?

4. Select your platform: Once you know the medium(s) you are going to be using, it is time to select your platform. There are really two approaches - hosted or self hosted. A hosted platform is offered by an external provider - thinkific, membervault, kajabi, podia, 10xpro and so on. There are multiple options and all have different pros and cons. The design functionality on 10xpro is amazing, but you’ll have to host your media files in a storage system like vimeo or Amazon S3. When you self-host, you use your own website to deliver your course. It can seem like a simpler option but you do need to factor in how you will manage and maintain your site. Your existing hosting may need to be upgraded. In fact, I always recommend hosting your online courses on a sub domain or a different domain. That way, a problem with your online course?(more?likely if you have multiple users) doesn’t affect your main website.?

5. Record your content: Prepare the content that you mapped out in step 2. If you are creating video or audio, you’ll need software to help you to record, edit and share your files. One of the biggest complaints I hear about audio/video is around quality. It is worth investing in some entry level equipment to ensure that you have professional media. Be aware of background noise as it is very difficult to remove post recording and maintain quality. I have been known to record under a blanket to get the best sounding audios!

If you have handouts, how will you design these? Will you create something yourself or ask a professional designer? You can use software like canva to create your own handouts or find cost-effective designers on fiverr or upwork. Try to make your designs as professional looking as possible, without blowing the budget!

6. Prepare for launch: Once you have your content created, it is time to launch your platform. I’d actually recommend that you build responsiveness to your online course by talking about it and sharing previews before you get to the point of launch. But when you are ready to go live, you’ll need a sales/landing page, a way to manage payments, a login screen and your course access page. Most of the hosted platforms will cover this on your behalf. Be aware of additional charges you’ll incur for processing payments and ensure you include these in your prices.?

These are the core steps to taking a training online. There’s much more I could include in each step but hopefully there’s sufficient here to get you started with your planning process.

Feel free to ask any additional questions and I can include those in the next round of Borrow my Brain!

Or if you’d like additional support to plan out your online course, take advantage of the current offer on Spotlight Sessions. Just ￡145 if you book before the end of December?(to?take in January/February 2022). Message me on [email protected]