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Create a Course that Inspires

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Create a Course that Inspires

If you find yourself in the position of having to create a course for the workplace, there are many considerations before you even start to draft the first word. Having a brief guideline is not sufficient; you need to ascertain what the needs are of the company and the needs of those who are attending. To do that, organize a meeting with the management team who will have requested the course initially to find out the types of problems that have occurred previously and that may have acted as a trigger to bring your course-writing skills onboard. To create a course that is professional and beneficial, you need to develop the mindset of a trainer and to create bullet points or stepping stones from the idea through to completion.

Courses are usually required because there is a genuine need within the workplace and although the employers may be keen to have the course in place, often the employees are not. Embarking on a physical or online course can still strike fear into the heart of those allocated to do so, rule number one therefore is to make the course simplistic to follow even if the course is complex regarding the information that it contains.

So for the starting point, create an itemized list for yourself and include all of the points that will need to be covered within the course, ensuring that each can be managed in bite-size chunks. Consider those that will be attending or utilizing the course. Some may not have studied for some time and others may have more limited attention spans or have less time to dip out of their department to attend any type of training sessions.

The key to writing a good course, is to make it enjoyable. If you can engage the learner you have a much better chance of creating a learning system that delivers. Traditional workshops rely on the personality and charismatic traits of the trainer to capture attention, to oversee learning and to provide motivational support throughout. If you are creating an online course, then you need to think how to grab the attention of the learner and to keep them motivated throughout without someone on hand and this means also looking at aesthetics. Even the most uninspiring of subjects can take on a new lease of life if you can carefully set out the information in a carefully thought out and well-presented manner.

When you create a course, you also have to think about the order of content and providing tips and reminders throughout so that any mini-test material should be easily accessible and will endorse the sections that they have read. There should also be relevant reminders throughout that continues the learning process and helps to consolidate the information that they have absorbed.

If you can present the learning material and utilize a variety of training tools, employing multimedia and even interactive content, you will engage learners. You can also create opportunities for employees to be able to interact with others through the medium of your online course; this enables learners to feel less isolated when studying an online course and more engaged competitively.

Importantly it is vital to publish learning objectives and outcomes. Employees need to understand what they are striving to achieve and how to access the systems, comprehending the method and remit of the system. Once they feel confident and are engaged, they will feel compelled to complete the course to their highest level. When you create a course, you must also build in the opportunity for management to be able to access the results readily from an internal database or via excel downloads. Reporting tools are as vital to show progression as are a customizable program. If you keep all this in mind, you will create a course that inspires.

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David Miller is an educational researcher, involved in the fields of teaching and online learning. He is associated with prestigious universities and many leading educational research organizations. As an ed-tech veteran, his area of research also includes new technologies such as LMS Systems. Currently David is experimenting with flipped classroom models and eLearning software.

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