How to Create Course Outlines for Online Courses

Ladies & gents, my name is?Brandon Stover, and I’m the founder of?Plato University. Welcome to Theory into Action.

Theory into Action is designed to help you turn your wisdom into actionable education. Learn how to create online courses, design learning experiences, and build educational programs so your knowledge can impact thousands of people.

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If you've seen my video on how to create a course in five easy steps, one of the steps in there was creating a course outline. Today we're going to dive a little further into how you can go about doing that.

Step 1: Write Learning Outcomes

A course outline is more than just a document of what your students are going to learn. It's a road map of where they are now to where they want to be, from their current state of having a problem, to their desired state of finding a solution. Your course is the vehicle for that transformation.

So by this definition, learning outcomes are not just what your student's going to know at the end of the course. Rather, learning outcomes are what your student will be able to do at the end of the course.

For example, if your student is learning a language, the learning outcome is not that they're going to know 500 vocabulary words by the end of the course. The real learning outcome is that they're going to be able to use those 500 vocabulary words to have a little bit of small talk with a stranger in that language.

Do you see the difference?

Most education falls short of explaining how knowledge will be used in the real world. As a result, many courses have missing information that allow the student to actually have the transformation that they want, which is accomplishing something that they want to do in the real world. They have some sort of goal or problem they want to solve. Your course and the information is allowing them to do that.

Why Write Learning Outcomes?

When you are making a course, you're making a promise to that student that if they spend the time and energy learning the material in this course and applying themselves, that they'll be able to use this information to solve a problem or accomplish a goal that they have set.

So by creating learning outcomes, you're being very clear about what your promise is to that student. These learning outcomes create a North Star for you as you create your outline and ultimately as you create your course for exactly where your students are going to end up.

How to Write Learning Outcomes

To begin writing learning outcomes:

Start by reviewing the needs that you uncovered in the discovery process when you talked with your students. I covered how to discover learner's needs in my last video. But ultimately, you're asking them:

• What is it that you want to know?
• What is it that you want to learn?
• And most importantly, what is it that you want to do with this knowledge?

You can now write three to five learning outcomes that are associated with those needs. Remember, we care about how students are going to use this information, implying that they're going to take some sort of action with it. So when you're writing your learning outcomes, write them starting with a verb.

Step 2: Brain Dumping Information

Now that you have your learning outcomes it's time to brain dump of all the information that you can that you think will help students to be able to reach those learning outcomes.

Why a Brain Dump?

The reason that we're just going to kind of vomit everything out onto a page is because it's easier to organize information when you get it out of your head and can visually see it, manipulate it, and move it around.

Additionally, just like if you were undergoing the writing process, it's easier to just get all your ideas out on a page in one step and then think about organizing it in the second step.

How to Brain Dump (Systematically)

To do a brain dump in an efficient manner I recommend using a visual tool to start writing out your ideas about the units of knowledge your students are going to need to know in order to achieve the learning outcomes.

Two tools that work really well for this are:

• Google Docs: You can just write everything out, write down bullet points, whatever way that's going to help you to get that information out.
• Airtable: sort of like an Excel doc, except it has more robust features and allows you to link a bunch of information that you're associating with that unit of knowledge or that idea that you're writing out.

As you go through this process, you're probably going to start retrieving other information associated with your idea like resources or talking points that you're going to use when you start recording your lessons.

• If you're doing it in a Google Doc, you can just write out bullet points attaching those resources or talking points to that.
• In Airtable, you can create new columns and write out those resources in one column and write out those talking points in another column.

At this point, you don't have to worry about being super complete or thoughts being well thought out. You're just trying to get the information out of your head.

If you're struggling to figure out everything that your student needs, a few things you can do:

• Return to the learning outcomes. Ask yourself, what would my students need to know in order to accomplish this learning outcome?
• Return to your students motivations that you uncovered during those learning surveys and one on one interviews. What were your students motivated to learn? What gets them excited?
• Look at other courses that have been created on the subject that you're creating a course for. We don't want to copy their course, but they probably have some steps in there that maybe you've forgotten, and you want to make sure that you include these in your course.

Step 3: Organize into a Logical Sequence

Recall that a course outline is a roadmap from where your students are right now with the problems that they have to where they want to be, to having solutions or reaching their goals. Your course is the vehicle for that transformation. We're moving them from point A to point B.

So in this step, when creating your course outline, you're thinking about the most logical sequence of steps that'll take them from point A over to point B.

Why Organize into a Logical Sequence?

Remember, we're trying to help our students actually apply this information. If you just dump out all this information in front of them in no logical sequence, it's going to be very overwhelming.

They're going to be asking themselves, “what do I need to know first? What do I need to know next? How do I actually apply this stuff?”

Just like when you were learning to ride a bike, you have to hold their hand along the way as they get started. And over time, they'll start to build the competence around this information to know which piece of information they need to know next.

But when they're just first starting out, they have no idea what's most important. What needs to come first? What are the foundational concepts?

This becomes extremely important if you're using a mastery based learning system, where they need to show mastery of Step 1 before they move on to Step 2.

How to Organize into a Logical Sequence

There's two ways to organize your content into a logical sequence:

• Forward engineering: You start at point A, where they are now, and continually asking yourself, “what does my student need to know next?” If they're here at point A, how do I get them to step 1? How do I get them to step 2? Which pieces of information are going to move them along those steps?
• Reverse engineering: You start at point B, at the end, their learning outcome, where they're able to apply the information and reach a solution or achieve their goal. You continually ask yourself, “what does my student need to know in order to achieve this?" So at the end of the course, they have the learning outcome. What does your student need to know to step right before this in order to achieve that? And you keep going backwards down the line until you're to point A, where they are right now.

Practically, this looks copying, pasting and moving information around as you're answering those questions for yourself in your Google Doc

If you're using Airtable, you can make a new column and just number system it and use the sorting tool to basically move information around that way. It's what makes Airtable a really great tool to use during this process.

Step 4: Create Activities

Activities are actions students should be able to take after having learned the material in a specific step or in a unit of knowledge.

These activities are small actions that add up to the larger action, or learning outcome, that students should be able to take at the end of the course.

For example, in our how to start a podcast course:

• Learning outcome = launching a podcast.
• A step necessary in order to launch a podcast is learning how to record audio.
• An activity that would be associated with that step is downloading some recording software and doing a test recording to familiarize yourself with the audio software.

Do you see how this is different than the way other courses are made?

Some courses may just present the audio software to you or say, here's all the different types.

And as a student, you would be asking, “okay, that's great, but which ones do I use and how do I use it? Which one's best for me? Which one's going to help me solve my problem, to achieve my goal?”

Why Create Activities?

Activities are a demonstration that students actually know the information that they're learning.

Activities also help them use that information. By doing so, they get early wins that start to compound on themselves. These early wins help them to have continued internal motivation as they go through the course and want to actually complete it.

Most importantly, the reason we're doing activities is because these activities are going to illuminate gaps where you're missing information to help students move from point A to point B.

How to Create Activities

When deciding what activities to create, ask yourself:

• How can my student demonstrate mastery?
• What would help them practice this skill?
• What would help them make progress towards the learning outcomes?
• What would be fun for them to do?

Note: When I create lessons, I try to keep information to 10-20 minutes and activities that can be completed in less than an hour.

Step 5: Fill in the Gaps

As you create activities, you are going to notice missing steps in your students journey from point A to point B. Often times this signals their is some units of knowledge you forgot to include.

Why Fill in the Gaps?

Its impossible to include EVERYTHING a student may need to know. However the complete you can be, the more likely your student will achieve the learning outcomes.

How to Fill in the Gaps

To fill in these gaps, it's pretty easy:

• Ask yourself, "What steps am I missing?"
• It may help for you to actually go through the process yourself, taking notes along the way.
• When you start delivering the course, you will get areas where students are repeatedly getting stuck or asking questions. This is a signal that you are missing a step or units of knowledge at this point.

Struggling to Create a Course?

Being an expert, you're sometimes blind to what students need to know.

You have the curse of knowledge.

By working with someone who is not an expert, you gain the outside perspective who can be a voice for the novices. I would love to be that person for you.

So let's schedule a free strategy call together to see if I help you to turn your wisdom into actionable education.

Let's build something great together.

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