Why Planning

This is the first and most important step of your course creation journey.

Planning your course out helps you create a solid foundation for building a successful Outreach subject /course. Here we will cover:

• Deciding what you want to teach
• Crafting your course goals
• Structuring the way you will teach the course
• Figure out your teaching style
• Creating practice activities for your course

Decide what you want to teach: You probably have an idea of what you want to teach already. Now is when you get really specific about your topic and who your target audience is. The more differentiated your course is from the rest of the courses in the marketplace, the better it will do.

Craft your  subject/course goals: Once you’ve decided on the topic and your target audience, the next step is to outline what your target student will get out of the course. What will they be able to do at the end of the course? What are the specific skills they will learn? Thinking about this early on will help you when you’re making decisions on what concepts you will cover and how you will cover them.

Structure what you will teach in your subject /course: Based on your course goals, you will now plan out the sections and lectures of your course, what you will cover in each lecture, and how you will cover it.  Do make sure you follow our best practices for structured teaching, and then create a course outline that you can get feedback on. While mapping your outline, you might also want to think about the format you will use for each lecture.

Figure out your teaching style:  Your teaching style is a double-edged sword. It has the potential to truly delight or seriously disappoint your students. We have provided some insights and data on how to craft your perfect teaching style.

Create practice activities for your subject/course: As part of mapping out your outline, you should also consider different projects, quizzes and exercises that you can integrate into your course to help students practice and build on concepts they’ve learnt.

Once you’re done with planning your course, the next stage is “Producing” your course.