🗣️ Transcript
Hello there and welcome to this opening lesson which I’m calling Online Course Anatomy 101. And we’re going to look at how online courses are typically structured. You’ll see why in a moment.
So here’s what you’ll learn:
- Why we need to talk about platforms now
- How most course platforms organise content
- The structure of a typical online course
So let’s set the scene by talking about online course platforms.
I don’t mean the ins and outs of this platform versus that platform. I mean what course platforms generally have in common when it comes to structuring your curriculum.
Because that’s what this module is all about. Turning your cascade into a blueprint for a curriculum showing all the content you need to create.
Because at some point your finished course will end up on a platform like Podia, Thinkific or Kajabi, and those types of tools assume courses are structured in a certain way.
So gaining an understanding of that structure would be a good idea, right?
Most of the concepts I’m going to talk about should be familiar, particularly since you’re using a course platform right now! but I want to make sure we’re 100% on the same page.
Ready to get started? Let’s do it.
The first thing to understand is that most platforms organise your course content into different-sized “containers”.
That’s my term but I think it’s apt and the easiest way to explain it is to jump right in.
The largest container is, quite naturally, the Course. Most platforms let you host multiple courses on the same site. And all of the content for a particular course lives inside of that Course “container”.
The next largest container is the module (sometimes called a unit or a category or a section). And its job is to organise your course content into logical “buckets”.
You’re already familiar with modules because that’s how this course is organised. You’re inside the “Building Your Blueprint” module right now.
The good thing about modules is they stop longer courses from getting overwhelming. After all, if your course has 50 lessons with no higher-level grouping, it’s not going to be very user-friendly.
On the flipside, a small course like a mini-course may not need any modules, it can just be a list of lessons.
Quick side note: Some platforms also allow submodules, which break things down even further, but I find it’s best to stick to just one level if at all possible.
The container one size smaller than the module is the lesson.
That’s usually a video or block of text representing a self-contained piece of course content, just like the lesson you’re studying right now.
This container is where the bulk of the content lives in a typical course.
The other thing to note about the lesson container is that if your platform lets users mark content as complete to help them track their progress, that functionality normally happens at the lesson level. A bit technical, but useful to know.
Also, here’s a quick warning…
The term “lesson” can actually be a little confusing.
That’s because what most platforms generically call a lesson can often be used to hold other things, like assignments or quizzes too.
So this container won’t always contain content you’d think of as a lesson.
I’ll talk a bit more about that in a moment.
And then the final type of container is the file (sometimes called a download).
It’s a digital asset like a PDF or an audio file that you can attach to a lesson for students to download. In fact, it’s a lot like an attachment you add to an email.
Files give you a lot of flexibility for adding content to your course that doesn’t fit the lesson model.
So those four containers give us our typical course structure. A course has multiple modules, a module has multiple lessons and a lesson can have multiple files attached.
Okay, so that’s the basics. But here’s an important distinction I want to make sure you understand…
Your platform provides you with a bunch of different containers for your course.
But it doesn’t know or care what you put into those containers.
It’s a bit like buying a bookshelf from IKEA. You can put books on it as the designer intended.
or you can fill it with family photos, cereal boxes, or your prized collection of ceramic owls. In other words, it’s entirely up to you how you use that available space. And some uses will work better than others.
You could store your favourite ice cream on the bookshelf if you really wanted to, but you’ll probably end up regretting it!
Likewise, it’s up to you how you make use of your content containers.
You could use the file container for your lessons, instead of using the lesson container provided by the platform, but that’s unlikely to be the best experience for your students.
The point is just to understand there are two different concepts here.
There are the containers provided by the average course platform, and there’s the content that you choose to put inside those containers.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about in the next lesson.
See you there.