In this video, we introduce the topics that we’ll be covering within this course.

In these lessons we take a major step in the course creation process…we’re going to create the first draft of our course outline! This is an exciting step as, when we’re finished, we’ll be able to “see” our course for the first time. A solid course outline leads to effective learning outcomes for your students and it serves as your "roadmap" throughout the course creation process, ensuring that you build your course efficiently.

Before we dive into creating our course content, we’re going to spend the next few lessons covering the most common forms of online course content, how they can be used to enhance the learning experience, and when you should use them.

Now that we know the types of content we have available to us to most effectively deliver our individual course lessons, we’re going to go through the process of outlining the content we’ll need to create for each lesson to help our students reach their learning goals. We’ll be using a process we call “wireframing” our lessons and it will help you create your course as quickly as possible.

In these lessons, we begin covering a series of helpful content creation tips which we have found lead to more satisfied students and better learning outcomes for online courses. These tips won’t require any action steps on your part, but they’re critical concepts for us to share with you before you begin creating your course content.

In this lesson’s video, we briefly discuss what we’ll be covering for the remainder of the content creation module.

If we want to create effective and entertaining course content that keeps our students motivated and engaged, we can't just recite everything we know while sharing boring presentation slides. We need to spice up our learning experience with background details, facts, figures, stories, and real-world scenarios! In these lessons, we discuss effective strategies for conducting and cataloging your research and where to carry it out.

In this lesson, we begin working on some really fun stuff…we begin creating branded visual assets for our course! This includes digging into the fine details of things like creating a logo, how to select a proper font family for your course, why color selection matters throughout your course materials, and much more.

We begin taking a look at how to create the presentation slide templates which we’ll use to produce content for our course. We’ll want to have these prepared when we begin production, so we cover the functionality and strategies which will help us produce effective slide templates for creating our presentations. The types of slide templates you should create will depend on your unique teaching style and the content of your course, so in this lesson we also discuss our recommended slide templates you should begin with.

In this lesson, we cover several ways to easily create downloadable supplemental resources which can add value to your course and help your students retain key learning concepts.

Intro and outro videos are simple videos of a few seconds which can be used to soften the beginning and end of your instructional videos. They bring added professionalism and consistency to your course lessons and give your viewers a few moments of transition instead of abruptly starting and stopping lessons.

Let's face it...sometimes you simply have to use presentation slides within course lessons to cover learning concepts effectively. But that doesn't mean they can't be interesting and fun! In these videos, we cover several sources for finding stock photos and illustrations and how to use them to breathe some life into your course. We'll also show you how to brand your supplemental resources with professional looking covers to add perceived value when your students access them.

Some topics are more detailed and require more discussion and more planning than just winging it during an audio or video recording. Furthermore, not all of us are natural presenters. We've developed some helpful workflow techniques for creating and implementing scripts during the course creation process and in this lesson we'll share those with you.

When it comes to preparing the content that you’ll be using to prepare your lessons, you need to find a balance between maintaining your creativity and enthusiasm for the course creation process and being efficient in terms of production. In this lesson’s video, we discuss some ways to chunk up or break up your content creation and lesson production into batches of lessons that will keep you both motivated and efficient.

In these lessons, we cover four resources you can use to have some of the hard work of course content creation taken care of for you, allowing you to get your course to market as quickly as possible.

By taking some time to prepare an effective and efficient course production process before beginning it, you’re ensuring that your course gets done right and in as little time as possible. Now that you have all of your course assets prepared, it’s time to begin producing your course!