Recently, we received a question from a reader about copyright infringement rules as it applies to online course creation. The reader is considering creating a Udemy course but wants to base the outline, structure, examples and flow of content on a known textbook.
The reader said that it would be obvious that the course was based on this textbook. He asked if we had experience with other instructors on the issue of copyright infringement.
Understanding teaching styles, like learning styles, is part and parcel of being an effective teacher. We thought it suitable to follow up our previous article on learning styles with some similar advice on teaching styles and how to incorporate them into your Udemy course.
Why are teaching styles important to consider as an online instructor? Well if there are a variety of learning styles, then it follows that a variety of teaching styles should be considered to adapt to the various learning styles.
Do you want to teach online? Check out this list before embarking on your online teaching journey. (5-minute read)
As we all know from shopping on Amazon or eBay, doing something in the physical world versus the virtual world differs in many ways. How do you shop on Amazon? Well, you’ve probably had a lot of practice shopping in the brick and mortar world. So you use what you know from that experience and then adapt it to shopping in the virtual world. Over time while shopping on Amazon, you try and learn new things – for instance, Amazon Prime or Subscribe and Save, and then tweak your shopping experience accordingly.
Learning styles are a big topic in the realms of traditional classroom education. Teachers hear a lot about different learning styles and how they should try to adapt their teaching methods to different kinds of learners. A lot of research has been done on the topic of learning styles and suggestions abound for how to cater to different learning needs in the classroom.
Have you considered as an online instructor that the thousands of students who enroll in your course might have several different learning styles? You might ask yourself why do learning styles matter – it’s just a $10 course? Well for starters, personal learning styles, in part, affect the learning outcomes for your students. By default that affects the ratings and reviews they give your course.
The journey to creating an online course involves a multitude of decisions and steps. It can be a daunting prospect to get started, especially for those new to online course creation.
Even if you have created an online course before, you may be looking to improve your course creation process. You might be having less success than you would like and are wondering where you might be going wrong. Regardless of your situation, some questions you might have included:
Those who get into online teaching and course creation have, among other goals, the primary goal of making money. You may be looking for some extra income, wanting to leave your day job entirely, or want to make money following your passion. The big question is: How can you become good enough and popular enough on Udemy or other platforms to do that? Who are the top Udemy instructors and how do they create top selling Udemy courses?
One way is to learn from people who have achieved strong financial results by creating the most popular Udemy courses. This is not so easy to do – Udemy has over 25,000 instructors and 85,000 courses covering over 1000 topics as of September 2018. So how do the top Udemy instructors do it?
Online learning platform solutions can be a confusing market space to navigate as an online course instructor. Online course platforms range from “marketplaces” such as Udemy, where anyone can create and sell an online course of virtually any quality, to Coursera which partners only with educational institutions, to Thinkific and other LMS platforms that allow instructors to create a proprietary online course platform and market their online classes.
If you want to create and sell online courses in a so-called “marketplace” like Udemy, which makes selling online courses relatively easy, you may wonder what alternatives to Udemy exist. Given the brand recognition and market share Udemy boasts, it may be hard to figure out what other online course marketplaces exist and how they are different.
Online course design should look to traditional course design principles for inspiration as these are rooted in years of research on instructional design practices. So when you sit down to design your next online course, keep in mind a few key course design principles that will help guide your content creation and organization. How you incorporate these may differ slightly depending on which online course platform you are using and what the end purpose and audience for your online course are.
(5 minute read)
Teachinguide often receives requests for assistance from readers who need help getting started in online teaching and course creation. We decided to put together 8 first steps to take and factors to consider if you are contemplating making a move to teaching online.
How you proceed breaking into teaching online will depend very much on your teaching and domain experience – whether you have any at all, have a lot, and everything in between. So, keep this in mind as your read. In addition, you must consider whether your goal is to make some cash on the side or to make an entire career of teaching online.
Here’s a list of some of your options:
Generating online course ideas that will make money seems to be getting more difficult for the masses of entrepreneurs who have flocked to Udemy and other online course platforms in search of financial freedom. It’s one thing to daydream about online course ideas you’d like to create. It’s another thing entirely to determine if you can turn your idea into a money-making machine.
