GUEST BLOG from The Course Whisperer – Cindy Nicholson
How To Create Your Course Outline
Are you putting off creating your online course? Do you have so much info swimming around in your brain that you don’t even know where to start?
You’re not alone.
So many entrepreneurs have this course idea but stall from even getting started because they aren’t sure how to put a course together that makes sense for their clients.
The key to creating an amazing course starts with your course outline.
In this video, I walk through the steps I take (and the steps I take with my clients) to create a solid course outline.
How To Create Your Course Outline In 5 Easy Steps
So to recap:
Any good quality online course starts with a solid course outline. It’s really the first step to crystallize all of that information in your head into something that is organized and makes sense for your clients.
So how do you create that outline?
I’m glad you asked. 🙂
Here are the 5 steps I take when I create an online course (for me or my clients).
1. Determine your course outcome.
So tell me, what pain point are you solving for your clients when they take your course? What is the result that they will get? What is the outcome? I talk more about how to determine your course outcome in an earlier blog post but knowing the outcome your client will get by taking your course is fundamental to creating a good course…make sure you have this in place before you go any further.
2. Brainstorm
Get it all out. That’s right, take a pen to paper (sticky notes are even better) and dump all of the information that someone needs to know/do in order to get that outcome. No filtering here, just get everything out on paper (or computer) so it’s not clogging up your brain.
3. Batch
From your brainstorming session, step back and look at your results. At this point you want to see if you see any patterns or commonalities such that the info that you’ve jotted down can be batched into groups. Chances are, you’ll start to see that smaller subgroups can be created. By then end you may find that you’ve got a group of about 4 or 5 different ‘topics’ that relate to your outcome.
4. Create your journey
When your clients are taking your course they’re going to start at one point and end up at another point (the outcome). As a result, your client is going to go through a journey in order to get there. The idea is that you want to lay out the step-by-step process that you’re going to take your clients through. Each step will be its own little milestone. Plot out the steps that your client needs to take in order to get the outcome they’re looking for.
5. Create your modules and lesson titles
Let’s now start breaking down the journey you’ve designed. Each step in your journey will represent a module. Within that module will be your lessons. What does your client need to know/do in order to be able to accomplish that step?
Keep focused on the outcome for that particular module (and don’t try to cover too much!)
Once you get through this final step, you’ve now created your course outline. Once you’ve created this, creating the content within the course will be so much easier. If you focus on the course outcome, you’re now going to create a course that gets results!
Here’s to getting your course out there.
