- Dec 11, 2021
- 4 min read

Course Design & Structuring Guide Step By Step

How to Design and Structure Your Course Effectively

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, the graph of online learning has experienced a steep upturn. Research has shown that people learn, grasp concepts faster and retain the knowledge better with an online mode of education than by visiting an offline classroom.

This is exactly the time when you can tap into the online e-learning segment and market your courses. But the biggest problem that you will face is - How to make a course that is different from thousands of courses available online.

Hence, we have determined a detailed course structure that will help you in structuring your thoughts and material and build a masterpiece for your target audience.

Why course design and structuring is important

So grab a cup of coffee and dive into our comprehensive guide on course creation.

Course Design Guide Step by Step

We have put together 9 actionable steps that you can take to design and strategically develop your course that will leave your audience inspired and motivated.

Let's get into more details about each of the mentioned steps.

1. Define course goals and objectives

By determining the goals and objectives of your course in the initial stage, you can decide:

What mode of presentation you should be using for better delivery
What type of content is pertinent to your course, and
How to structure your course

To make a comprehensive list of goals and objectives, join various Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, follow Reddit, Twitter and Quora threads to understand what your target audience is looking for.

This analysis will help you in deciding upon the topics that you will cover, the scope of the course, pricing etc.

2. Decide course content

Plan out a robust structure for your course content and decide the estimated timeline for your course. List down all the topics you will be covering. Divide them into categories and sub-categories.

Refine the list by keeping the relevant topic intact and scraping out the rest. Organise your content meticulously by following the steps given below:

Arranging the topics and sub-topics in a logical order,
Maintaining a systematic flow for better understanding, and
Adding actionable tips, stories, advice, testimonials to make your course more interesting and real.

3. Start curating

Once you have an encapsulated course syllabus ready, start working on the content. For this, conduct surveys and connect with people who are a part of your target audience. This will help you in keeping the content flow simple.

At the same time, look at other similar courses, their delivery method, add-ons and perks so that you can decide upon timelines for content curation, editing, designing and community building. You can find these courses by doing a web search or looking through LinkedIn events. Oftentimes, course creators will create an event on LinkedIn (or Facebook) to drive traffic and registrations to their course.

4. Involve others

Once the course content is ready and your mode of delivery is ready, start A/B testing the course design and content organisation. Get a handful of individuals and run them through the general design of the course, using two or more variations of text, images, organisation, delivery method, and more. Get their initial feedback on each variation based on the most important attributes of the course.

You can also hire an agency, freelancer or a contractor to do any designing or editing that may be required after the A/B test results.

5. Get beta clients

Once your content is ready and the design + editing has been done, distribute the course to 10 people who are also your ideal customers (for no cost). Do a practice run through the course with these individuals. After they've completed the beta testing, have a survey for them to provide their detailed feedback. Take that feedback and that is your action plan of what you can improve upon.

6. Plan assignments and exams for evaluation

No matter the course type you offer, evaluation is an undeniably important part of your curriculum to ensure concept clarity and understanding. While your beta clients are consuming your course to give feedback, start building case studies, assignments, templates or checklists that can be offered as add-ons or perks for people who participate in your courses.

7. Mention course policies clearly

Once your add-ons are ready, draft a document explaining and enlisting your course policies. Include all the modules you are offering. Mention if you are available for a one-on-one mentorship video call or how will you focus on the course participants' problems, etc.

This will help your audience to make a more informed decision.

8. Post feedback editing

At this point, you would have completed the beta testing process with your 10 individuals doing the practice run. From there, get the survey results. If you have time, it is also good to do a verbal follow-up meeting with each participant to ensure you can properly capture all of their feedback and response to your course.

From here, take all of your data and organize it into one document. Go through each point and revise your course accordingly.

9. You are ready for the launch

If you are at this stage, congratulations! You have done approximately 90% of your task successfully and finished with your course design.

Now you have to prepare for the marketing of your course. Explore platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Quora etc. to get organic sales for your course.

If you need help with creating a marketing strategy for your course on social media in 2022, we have an entire article on that.

There, we have discussed the effective use of hashtags, influencer marketing, SMART goals and much more that will help you take your business to the next level in 2022.