How to Rapid-Prototype a Course

The following is an excerpt from Jenny Blake’s Momentum Community. Jenny is the author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One; learn more at PivotMethod.com and check out the Pivot Podcast.

Creating online courses does not require huge investment in time or money. Although they certainly can cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce, with professional video editing and branding, they don't have to. In fact, my favorite way to create and launch a course is with my future students!

This follows agile design principles (check out the agile manifesto here). The goal is developing rapidly, with frequent input from key stakeholders, not building so much behind-the-scenes that what you’re working on becomes out-of-date or out of touch with what your audience and potential future students actually need. Here’s a breakdown on how I love launching and creating courses.

Pre-Course: Initial Design and Vision

  • Survey your audience to find out what their biggest challenges and goals are

    • Update the survey settings to send each participant a copy of their responses; this will help them benchmark and celebrate progress when they take the post-survey. 

    • Pre-surveys are also a learning tool, and create initial sparks for each participant about what their biggest challenges are, and what support would be most helpful.

  • Narrow in on topic and ideal course participant. This can go beyond demographics (age, location) and also cover psychographics: 

    • How do they think? 

    • What values are important to them? 

    • What are their biggest challenges? 

    • Where else do they “hang out” online? 

  • Identify Know / Feel / Do / Resources and create an outline. What do you want participants to know upon completing your course? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do? What resources do you want them to check out? Answer these for the following sections (see template below): 

    • Entire course

    • 3-4 Major sections within the course

    • Each lesson within the 3-4 major sections

  • Create a content delivery schedule for your course

    • For example, for a 5-day live course: 4 days of content, 1 day of Q&A (people don’t have an attention span for much more than this)

  • Identify course delivery program and complementary applications. 

    • For my own courses, I use Kajabi for housing the course and sending email notifications. 

Enrollment & Develop Materials

  • Create the course overview page and set the dates if the course will run live. 

    • I recommend a live version to start, so you can build the course with direct feedback — then you’ll know exactly how to revise it 

  • Create an onboarding survey that people take upon signing up for the course

    • Be sure to include some high-level questions, then one question for each day of the course (ideal outcomes and/or biggest sticking points on those specific topics). For example, here is the onboarding survey for (He)art of Podcasting, a 5-day live course. 

  • Now you know exactly what course participants want to know the most, for each part of your course! 

  • From here you can tailor your discussion and resources, and can even create handouts before going live. You can also pre-populate Q&A sections of the course with what came in on your survey. 

  • Develop your materials, starting with the outline for each session. If you have an hour, how will it flow? What are the interactive components? Do you want to assign homework? Will you want to create slides, polls, or accompanying worksheets?

During the Course

  • If you are conducting a live course, record each day and try to keep your lessons as evergreen as possible. 

    • What does that mean? Try not to mention day/month/year/season, or even what’s in the news on that specific day (unless it’s relevant to the course), and keep your stories and examples relevant even if someone were watching one year from now (or at least as relevant as possible!). This allows you to create an asset for the business, not just a one-and-done version.  

  • Establish systems for participant support: answering questions, troubleshooting technical difficulties, etc. 

    • You might even consider thinking through these questions in advance, and creating an FAQ that lives within the course materials. 

  • Set up communication systems that will let your participants know where to find course materials, how to participate in the course live, and how they can participate if they are unable to participate live (e.g. submitting questions in advance, viewing recordings)

  • As soon as recordings are complete for each of your lessons, send them in for transcription. 

    • Temi offers automated transcription at 10 cents/minute; Rev offers higher quality transcription for $1/minute 

Post-Course

  • After your course is finished, send a post-survey to help you make adjustments and get an idea of next-level content this group might want from you. 

    • Bonus! This will also allow your participants to benchmark and celebrate their learning; they can look at their pre-survey results and compare them to their reflection and progress in the post-course survey.

    • If you want to collect testimonials to share publicly, add a question for this and ask for explicit permission to share it. You can also ask how they prefer to be attributed: anonymously, first name only, first name last initial, first & last name. 

  • Encourage participants to join your ongoing community (or higher level of working with you) once your course is complete. Consider how you will nurture the relationship with participants moving forward, and even if there’s a next, more advanced course you could create for the next step on their transformation journey! 

  • Package your course recordings, and adjust the enrollment page and process to reflect that the course has been pre-recorded. You can lower the price for the evergreen version, but you don’t have to. You might also consider re-recording the course based off of the transcripts, with edits based on participant (and course creator) feedback. 

Final Thoughts 

Build with the end in mind, and don’t be afraid to create as you go. Consider: 

  • What content is crucial to create or collect prior to launch?

  • What content will be created once the course is live? (Ex: Q&A calls, transcripts) 

  • What can you add over time?

  • What bonuses can you offer to students? 

  • What’s next for them upon course completion? Both personally, and in terms of staying connected to your community? 

  • How could you turn this into a book or larger piece of “public original thinking” or intellectual property?


Take Action: