How To Create An Online Course With The Quenza Platform

Online education witnessed a boost with the COVID-19 lockdown when commuting was restricted. Coursera’s registered learner base rose by 31Mn in 2020, a 66% increase compared with the previous year.[1]

Even before the pandemic, the online education market was forecasted to reach USD 350 Billion by 2025. So, a positive revision of this forecast is probably due soon. [2]

With these statistics and potential, who wouldn’t want to create an online course to share your knowledge with the world?

Why Create Your Own Online Course

There are many reasons to create an online course, and some might be unique to the course you have in mind or your future clientelle. However, here are five popular reasons to create your own, singular, online course.

1. Establish yourself as an expert — Having a quality online course gives you domain authority and tells the world that you’re an expert.
2. Get new clients — If you host your course on a platform that already has a large subscriber base, you can attract new clients.
3. Create more impact — With an online course, you can reach many more people than by conducting one-on-one consultations.
4. Down sell other services — Most clients are not ready to spend on your expensive offerings until they get to know you and trust your services. A reasonably priced online course can be their entryway to your range of services.
5. Create a passive income stream — Once you create the course, you don’t have to do anything else except for periodic marketing campaigns. You will keep generating some income without having to recreate another product.

6 Steps To Develop An Effective Course Outline

A course outline should contain prerequisites, course schedule, learning outcomes, content breakdown by session, instructional methods, course evaluation process, and grading scale.

Here’s how you can create an effective outline for your course.

1. Pick a subject matter — What type of clients do you service the most? Do you have a specialization area in mind? Your subject matter should align with your long-term goals and target clientele.
2. Pick a course topic — Once you have an idea about the subject, you can pick a suitable course topic. The topic will be a subcategory that falls into your subject.
3. Test the topic — To ensure that there will be enough interest in the topic, you need to test the topic. You can talk to your network, clients, and friends about this. In addition, social media and search engine volumes can give you a good idea about online interest on the topic.
4. Brainstorm course modules — Once you’ve established the topic as viable, brainstorm all the subtopics you can cover in the course. Explore your competition. Maybe even take a few courses out there, so you learn about the gaps in current courses.
5. Adjust for the flow of modules — Look at all your brainstorming notes and take out modules that may be too broad or unrelated. Then decide on how the course should logically flow.
6. Get feedback — Invite a few clients or target learners to take a look at your course outline. Their feedback will be invaluable in tweaking the outline and finalizing it.

3 Templates and Examples of Mental Health Courses

• Mental Health for Remote Work: This is a course template for remote workers’ mental health concerns. The template includes comprehensive content of four chapters, source files for editing, documents for knowledge checks, and interactive learning content.
• Mental Health for the Workplace: The course covers mental health challenges in the workplace, and all you have to do is add your specific details and launch your training. This cuts down on time to invent a course from scratch.
• Top Mental Health Courses on Coursera: Coursera is a leading player in the online education market. You can check out the platform’s top mental health courses from leading universities in the world.

How To Create A Course with Quenza Software

Quenza is the ideal platform with which you can create a course, as it has the building tools you need to construct your course. What follows are the logical steps you would apply in the content creation process.

• Finalize courses outline

As discussed above, you can finalize the course outline after getting some preliminary feedback from potential learners.

• Create a realistic plan

Based on the outline, you can develop a plan to create the course modules. Take into account your other commitments and set realistic deadlines that you can meet.

• Create activities for tasks and modules

According to the plan, create all the modules. If questions or research areas come up while creating modules, list them to look at later. You can use Quenza activities to create tasks for each module.

• Use pathways to link modules

You can use pathways to link the activities, aka tasks and modules, to create the flow of the course outline. The activities can be scheduled at predetermined intervals as required.

• Brand the course

After the course is created, add your branding and logos to all the modules using Quenza White Label. This will make the content look professional.

• Test course with beta users

Before launching the course, test the content and technology with beta users. Don’t forget to ask these users about a price they are willing to pay for the course as well.

• Action on feedback

It is essential to take action on the feedback you get and tweak the modules as needed.

• Launch your online course!

You are ready to start selling your course now.

Building Video Lessons with the Platform

1. Create your video lessons using any recording device you prefer. You may need to create a script in advance.
2. Once the videos are ready, save them on the device you use to access Quenza.
3. Use the Quenza activity feature to create the lesson that needs the video. You can upload the recording from your device and add instructions/notes to activities.

Your video lesson is ready now! It’s that simple.

Making and Selling Your Course: 6 Expert Tips

Regardless of how good your course is, it won’t create the impact you want if you don’t market it.

1. Sales Strategy: There are many options to selling your online course: rent, outright sale, subscription, and payment plan. Pick the best option for your target clientele. In addition, your sales strategy should consider how you can upsell your other services.
2. Pricing: Your pricing strategy is crucial to the success of your course. If you price it too high, sales may be low, and if you price it too low, it can be perceived as a low-quality course. Finding the sweet spot may take some trial and error.
3. Marketing Strategy: How are you planning to market your online course? Can you use your existing social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram? How are you splitting your marketing budget between blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, webinars, and paid advertisements? Consider referrals, influencers, and affiliate programs too.
4. Sustainable Learning Community: Your goal should not be to create one course and be done. Creating a course funnel is crucial if courses are an integral part of your expansion strategy. Courses also provide a way of establishing expertise by creating a suite of courses.
5. Think Automation: Quenza lets you automate all steps of the course using pathways. However, your life will be much easier if you can automate your ongoing marketing strategy as well.
6. Multilingual Strategy: Lots of learners use other languages like Spanish and French. Significant learner communities exist in China, India, Japan, Russia, and Africa. If you have evidence that these learners are interested in your course, you can consider translating the course or using voice-over features to bridge the language barrier.

Final Thoughts

Creating an online course can take time, but is a fantastic challenge to conquer. Don’t get discouraged because once you have created the main content, only tweaks will be needed to maintain the course in the long term. In addition, the course will be an income earner as long as you have an ongoing marketing strategy that promotes the course.

If you are keen to get started creating your online course, try out the Quenza Lite package for just $1 during the first month.

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