How to Create a Course in 5 Easy Steps

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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Step 1: Ask Your Students What They Want To Learn

What's the very first thing that you should start with when creating a course? Learning outcomes?

Not exactly.

First thing that you should do is go and ask your students, what do they want to learn?

Dozens of studies have shown that internal motivation from the student is a greater predictor of success, rather than grades or external achievements.

Beyond that we've all heard the dreaded, “why am I learning this?”

So by asking the students upfront what they want to learn, you tap into the internal motivation and you avoid that dreaded question.

So, how do we go about asking them?

Well, I recommend setting up a Calendly or some sort of online scheduler. Then having one-on-one zoom calls with your students and asking them directly, “What is it that you need to know about this topic? Where are you struggling? What concepts are you not understanding?

Most importantly, “what are you afraid about within this topic and what do you desire most to do with this knowledge, once you've learned it?”

Step 2: Create an Outline

Now, what exactly is an outline when you're creating a course? It's more than just a document of everything that your students are going to learn.

It's a roadmap of where they are now in their life and where they want to be.

And your course is going to be the vehicle for that transformation. This means there's a specific sequence of steps that they need to go through in order to achieve that transformation.

Now you're an expert. You know all the things that they need to learn. Why are you going to go through the hassle of actually creating an outline before you begin making your course?

Well, as the expert, you have the entirety of your knowledge set and years of experience all stuck inside your head. Without an outline, you're going to miss those key milestones that the learner needs in order to take that journey from novice to expert, like you.

The outline is going to help you organize the thoughts in your head in a logical way in logical sequence for that learner to follow.

How do you go about doing this?

Every time that I start a course, I just open up a Google doc and I vomit all the ideas, thoughts, and knowledge sets that I have onto the page. I don't care about what order they're in or if it entirely makes sense. I just need to get it out from my head onto the page.

Then after everything is out, you can go back and start to reorganize those thoughts and ideas in a logical sequence of steps that the student needs to go through in order to make that transformation.

Here's step one, this is what they need to know. Them step two, step three and so on.

Step 3: Developing Your Lessons

Now that you've gotten everything within an outline, you know all the pieces of knowledge that you're going to try and deliver to these people, you have to start developing lessons for each one of the steps in the outline.

But how are you going to put it into a framework that actually makes sense to the student?

In all of our courses at Plato University, and everything that we teach, including this article right now, we use the What, Why, How framework.

• What: What is the topic from a first principles perspective, that base level knowledge definition.
• Why: Why is this topic important to them? Or why is this lesson important to them?
• How: How are they going to apply this knowledge?

Now the reason that this works is because you're combining theory with application and using the students' internal motivation as the bridge between those two.

You're taking them from what the topic is, telling them why it's important, and then how they're going to apply it.

Theory into action.

This is going to make your lessons much more effective, more meaningful to the student, and most importantly allow for the ever elusive transfer of knowledge: taking theory to application, from one setting to the other.

So, how do we go about doing this?

You're going to take each one of those steps that you created in your outline and turn it into a lesson.

For each lesson, you're going to:

• Explain what the topic is
• Why it matters to them, how that information is going to affect their life and how they move through it.
• And then finally, in a logical order, give them a bit of direction for how they're going to apply this knowledge to their life, or in their work, or whatever they're going to be doing.

Now this can be done for tangible skills, like podcasting, where there's a very easy sequence that you need to follow from recording, to editing, to publishing, getting it out there and marketing it, so on and so forth.

Or more esoteric skills, like finding your purpose, where you're starting with curiosity, you're testing some things out, you develop it into a passion, and you take that passion and put it in service of other people creating a purpose.

So no matter if you're doing a 60 second video or a three hour long course, you can use the What, Why, How framework for each of your lessons to quickly get knowledge into actionable steps.

Step 4: Choose a Multimedia Format for Your Lessons

So you've talked to your students. You’ve created an outline. You've developed your lessons and now you need to actually record them. This means you need to choose a medium for those lessons to be delivered.

Depending on the format of your course and the topics that you're covering, you may be using different mediums.

For example, you might be creating:

• video course
• audio course
• book
• email sequence
• video game
• webinar
• in-person training

Knowledge can be delivered in a multitude of ways.

Your objective is to choose one that's going to reach your students where they are in the way that they want to learn, and that you're most comfortable in delivering.

Why does this matter?

Your knowledge is useless if you can't get it into the hands and minds of your learners.

So it's imperative that you go and meet them where they are, on whatever platforms they happen to be consuming educational knowledge.

On the other hand, you're the one that's going to have to record this. So you need to be comfortable with the medium that you're choosing and also have the equipment in order to do so.

At Plato University we create audio and video courses because it can be distributed on free platforms like YouTube and podcasts, and I already have all the equipment to do it.

So, how do you go about choosing the right format, medium and platforms?

Remember on step one in this series, when you went and interviewed your students. You probably found them on specific platforms or communities. Return to those places.

Find out:

• How are they consuming their educational content?
• What's going to serve your students best?
• What’s going to serve the lessons and topics that you're covering, best?

For example in the podcasting course that I created, I put the course out as a podcast so that when students were learning they were also sinking themselves into the environment that they would eventually be creating. When I started talking about podcasting apps, they could look at the podcasting app that they were in specifically.

Once you've got a good idea of where your people are and where the content is that they're consuming, you need to gather whatever equipment you need in order to record in that environment.

I have a podcast mic and a video camera. I have lighting equipment. Everything that I need in order to put out this content type of content.

Now you need to actually record your lessons!

My biggest piece of advice for this is give yourself permission to suck.

I guarantee you, if you went back to my first videos or my first lessons of anything that I did, I sounded terrible. I looked terrible. But that's okay.

As long as the knowledge is good and it's going to help your students, that's all the matters.

As you do more lessons, you're going to get better. And the nice thing is, is you can just keep recording if you mess up and just edit it out later. It doesn't matter. They never need to know.

Step 5: Deliver Your Course

Delivering your course means:

• Publishing it on whatever platform you chose.
• Marketing it and letting your students know that it exists.
• Supporting them as they go through the course so that the course actually changes their life.

The reason this is important is because you've already done so much work putting this course together, but that was only half the battle.

Now you need to get it out to your students. And if you want to effectively change their lives, then you need to support them as they're consuming the course, otherwise they may not get the full knowledge set. They're going to trip over things. There's going to be a couple steps that maybe you missed in the milestones that they need to reach in order to go from that novice to expert.

Although, this is a complex topic. Let's quickly discuss how you're going to deliver your course.

When you're publishing, you've already recorded all your lessons. Go back to your outline, and that logical sequence of steps that you created, and use that to lay out the lessons in your learning management systems or on the different course platforms that you may be publishing on.

Now, if you're doing something unique, like taking this course and putting it into a book, that sequence of steps become your chapters and it just lays out in a logical way for people to consume.

Next, is to actually market your course. So you need to go back to the places where you found your students and let them know that your course actually exists now. Most importantly, let them know why this course is going to change their lives and help solve their problems.

And lastly, is the support mechanisms of your course. Consider the other items that are going to help your learners integrate the information and be able to apply it in their life.

This could be things like:

• one-on-one coaching
• forums
• mentors
• projects for them to apply the skills
• internships
• additional resources and other courses for them to go deeper into a topic

Anything that's going to help them take it from theory to action.

Because we want them actually applying the knowledge that they learn.

Still struggling to Create Your Course?

Now creating a course can be quite overwhelming. I know I've done it a dozen times.

Hopefully these steps make it easy.

However, if you want to make it even easier on yourself, you can use the link below to schedule a free call with me and I'll hold your hand through these steps in order to help you turn your wisdom into actionable education.

Let’s build something great together.