3 Course Design Mistakes That Scream 'Low Value'

Don't put your brand-new course in the sale bin

The gurus have been lying to you. Everyone can't create a course.

Not a good one anyway.

I know, I know. In the creator economy, we all have valuable insights to share and skills to teach. We're all f*cking amazing.

But online course creation isn’t just about having skills — it’s about knowing how to teach them. And that’s where most subject matter experts (SMEs) fall down.

You may be great at what you do but that doesn’t mean your great at course design. Without a solid chunk of instructional design theory even competent professionals end up delivering ineffective learning.

Even the pros sometimes get it wrong. I once went on a mandatory SharePoint course.

I was thankful that I'd learn how to use SharePoint properly. It was a disaster.

The trainer clicked and mumbled through his script, refusing to slow down or let us try anything ourselves.

The only thing I learned in that course was that I needed to find another provider for Microsoft product training.

If course designers employed by a large training company can mess up so badly, how well do you think an untrained subject matter expert will fare?

That's right. Not very well. And that's not your fault.

I couldn't do your job either. But if you are creating courses to share your knowledge, you must learn how to design them well.

If you're a newbie course creator dreaming of becoming the next Amy Porterfield or Tony Robbins, here are three common mistakes to avoid:

Stop Rambling—Your learners want a quick win

No one is interested in hearing you ramble on about irrelevant topics. Your audience is busy, which means they want results and want them delivered quickly.

Here are three areas where you need to be concise:

Why your backstory might be killing your course

I bought a course from a big-name creator who promised email list growth. The first video was 90 minutes long. I stopped listening after a 25-minute monologue about her life story.

Sure, she has valuable information to impart. But I got so bored with her rambling on about herself that I didn't finish the video.

Yes, your audience will want to know who you are and why you are qualified to teach them. But you can do that in three sentences.

For me, that would be:

• I'm a Brit living in New Zealand

• I've got two toy poodles and a cat

• I've spent the last 40 years in management in Learning & Development roles

That's it. Throw in a few personal photos if you want, but remember that the course is about your students, not you.

Cut the clutter

Consider what your learners need to know when deciding what to include in your course.

• Are they beginners or advanced?

• Do they know acronyms and jargon?

• How will they use what they've learned after the course?

Early in my L&D career, I hired a lawyer to teach contracts. He drowned the trainees in legal detail. They left overwhelmed, unclear about what bits they needed to remember.

Include enough information for your students to become competent, but leave out complicated scenarios they won't understand and don't need.

You're not as binge-worthy as Netflix

You've got the intro right and know the level of detail appropriate for your audience.

Your next challenge is to avoid telling too many stories.

Stories are great for elaborating a point, but you don't need too many.

When I rolled out a leadership course to 80 managers, one trainer kept telling long stories. The action-oriented audience hated it and complained.

Please keep it to one story per point, keep them short, and don't allow yourself or the students to go off on tangents.

Yes, you want to keep your students engaged and motivated. Yes, storytelling is a great teaching tool. But don't get so carried away with the stories that you compromise your students' learning.

Without a roadmap, everyone’s lost

Anyone can tell someone what they know, but that isn't a training course. You need structure, whether it's a workshop or a two-hour course or an ongoing weekly challenge.

No structure, no learning

When I worked in corporate, I often collaborated with subject matter experts to create courses. And the words I dreaded the most?

"I've created a course. Here are the slides".

I'd get a slide deck full of what the SME knew in no particular order.

What I knew, and they didn't, was that students need structure to make sense of the content.

For example, if I'm teaching someone to make a cup of tea, I'd structure the session like this:

1. The tools and equipment you need to make a cup of tea

2. How to brew the tea

3. Adding milk and sugar

This way, your students will know the big picture, consisting of three steps.

Organizing what you're going to teach into a clear, big-picture structure will help your students learn. Telling them everything you know without explaining how it all fits together will not.

Badly ordered topics equals confused students

The second issue with structure is putting the topics in the wrong order.

For example, showing people how to operate a new online customer service system without explaining the change.

When you don't order your course, your students will wonder about what you haven't told them, rather than listen to you.

• What was wrong with the old system?

• What time's lunch?

• Can we ask questions?

• Who is this woman, and why is she the one training us?

Make your course easy to digest by following this structure:

• Welcome & Housekeeping

• Introduce yourself

• Tell the students what they'll be able to do at the end of the course

• Tell the students why it's helpful to them

• Ask if any of the students have prior experience

• Explain the course structure

• Go through each module

• Address final questions

• Hand out assessments if applicable

• Get feedback on the course

If you're a creator and it's a paid course, include a brief upsell to your core offer at the beginning and at the end.

Why course transitions matter

If your students are new to the topic, they may not understand how all the information fits together. It's up to you to make the transitions between course modules smooth.

One course I took ended a video mid-sentence—the next module picked it up. They'd just chopped the video in half, which was clunky and disconcerting.

As a course creator, you must guide your students through the content and tell them what they will learn.

A simplified structure for each topic is to:

• Teach the topic

• Check for understanding

• Do a recap

• Link to the next topic by explaining how the two topics fit together.

Ensure your learners know your course's overall structure and how each module fits into the big picture.

Broken promises breach trust

We've all been on courses that didn't live up to our expectations. Either the information was too basic, the trainer was hopeless, or the content wasn't what we'd been led to believe.

If you design a course, it must live up to its promise. Otherwise, you'll get poor reviews and no repeat business.

What's in it for them?

People attend courses to learn something new, and you'll get better attendance if you are specific about what the course will do for your learners.

You can call these your course objectives, learning outcomes, or a transformation. It doesn't matter.

What matters is that you and your students know what they can do at the end of the course that they couldn't do at the beginning.

When you're writing course objectives, write them like this:

"By the end of the course, you will be able to [do something]."

For example:

• By the end of the course, you will be able to write SMART goals

• By the end of the course, you will be able to list your values

• By the end of the course, you will be able to operate the forklift truck safely and according to organizational procedures

You don't have to be formal when describing the objectives to your students, but you do need to clarify exactly what they will learn.

When your content misses the mark

Now that you've clearly stated what your students will learn, make sure that's what you teach. It's easy to get distracted and include material that varies from your original course brief.

Ensure every piece of content matches one of your objectives, or your students will be annoyed.

I once attended a live online coaching course to learn how to set up a coaching business. The content was all about coaching.

The only thing we learned about setting up a coaching business was to post about our new business on Facebook and ask friends to share it.

Although the coaching component was useful, the coaching course didn't live up to its promise, and I've never forgotten that.

Speak their language, not yours

When I went on a course to learn a new Learning Management System, the training material was useless.

The LMS sales team promised it could do everything, short of making tea, and that we'd get free training.

Well, that was a load of crap. Firstly, the system couldn’t do all the things the sales team had promised. Secondly, the training was a run-through of the user manual written in IT speak geared to tech experts, not end users.

I came out of the training none the wiser and had to figure out how the LMS worked on my own. Then I wrote training manuals for the team.

You may not be designing courses for users of giant tech systems, but create your courses for your learners, not anyone else.

Summary

If you want to share your knowledge and skills via courses, you must know how to do it properly.

A disorganized brain dump doesn't help anyone, so it pays to learn how to create courses well.

What to do when building your course:

Avoid:

• Talking too much about yourself

• Including details that the students don't need

• Telling too many stories

Make sure:

• Your course has a clear structure

• The structure is in the correct order and makes sense

• You make it clear how all the course modules fit into the big picture

• You have clear course objectives

• Your content matches the objectives

• Your content is designed for your learners

This isn't all there is to creating a course, but it's a good start.

Want to turn your knowledge into unforgettable courses? Join 100s of savvy creators at Learning & Development Rocks and start designing courses that actually work.

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