Very great advice Wendy! I work at a philosophy non profit and we host our own courses. I definitely will bring some of these ideas to my team and implement them in my courses!
Fantastic summary, thanks! I’ve also seen that being clear about timing (and sticking to it) is critical. Share that you’ll be done at 4pm? Learners are counting on you to wrap it up on time.
Thanks for this, Wendy. Timely and informative. I'd add that course materials should be professional and engaging. For instance, I recently took a Substack course with a fairly successful Substack creator and their materials were awful - blank Google sheets with no branding and the text all mashed together. It was ugly and distracting.
Yes, I agree. I've seen some very good course materials and dreadful ones too. If I'd given out poor training materials in my role as an L&D Manager, I'd have been blasted by both my colleagues and my trainees.
I lived this second-hand via my ex, who was helping shephard 10 or so subject matter experts create a variety of training courses for IT pros about unstructured document management (and capture). Anyway, good design and editing for a training course -- especially when you're charging $1500 a person or more for some of them -- is REALLY fucking hard.
The best reward for me was to see that people had not looked once at their watch during the workshop and came out after 5 hours with the satisfaction of learning something valuable for their career development. And everyone saying they really enjoyed the training.
That's great. If you can hold your student's attention for five hours you must be doing it right! Knowing that you audience found it valuable makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it?
Great advice and insights in this article. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. It was the perfect timing for me to get this. Nature seems to know what I'm working on... :-)
Great post, thank you. Worth reminding yourself of even if you have done it before, bears repeating
Thanks. These beginner mistakes but that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes fall into them ourselves lol.
Excellent Job for a 'killer"Topic
Thanks. Now I'm thinking of the Scream horror movies!
Very great advice Wendy! I work at a philosophy non profit and we host our own courses. I definitely will bring some of these ideas to my team and implement them in my courses!
Great, any other questions about creating courses, let me know 😊
thank you - I'll bear this in mind when I start mine
Awesome! Any questions, let me know 😊
Fantastic summary, thanks! I’ve also seen that being clear about timing (and sticking to it) is critical. Share that you’ll be done at 4pm? Learners are counting on you to wrap it up on time.
Yes, that's a great tip too. I've been on a few courses where the trainer ran out of time, and I felt cheated.
Thanks for this, Wendy. Timely and informative. I'd add that course materials should be professional and engaging. For instance, I recently took a Substack course with a fairly successful Substack creator and their materials were awful - blank Google sheets with no branding and the text all mashed together. It was ugly and distracting.
Yes, I agree. I've seen some very good course materials and dreadful ones too. If I'd given out poor training materials in my role as an L&D Manager, I'd have been blasted by both my colleagues and my trainees.
I lived this second-hand via my ex, who was helping shephard 10 or so subject matter experts create a variety of training courses for IT pros about unstructured document management (and capture). Anyway, good design and editing for a training course -- especially when you're charging $1500 a person or more for some of them -- is REALLY fucking hard.
Lol thanks. Course design is something that looks easy to the attendee but takes time and skill in reality!
Excellent Wendy and totally agree with you!
The best reward for me was to see that people had not looked once at their watch during the workshop and came out after 5 hours with the satisfaction of learning something valuable for their career development. And everyone saying they really enjoyed the training.
That's great. If you can hold your student's attention for five hours you must be doing it right! Knowing that you audience found it valuable makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
Anyone will be in great hands with you to learn how to design great courses.
Thank you 😊
There is SO much excellent advice in here!
Great advice and insights in this article. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. It was the perfect timing for me to get this. Nature seems to know what I'm working on... :-)
Glad you found it useful, Daniel.
Nature must have given me a hint lol!