How to Create an Online Course Goal and Structure

This blog post will teach you of how to create an online course goal & structure.  

In the previous post: teach an online course, you selected your course topic. 

Now, let’s take your course topic, give it a goal & make it into a structured online course. 

Let us begin. 

How to create an online course goal

There are millions of online courses published everyday in the market. 

So, to get students to your course, you should offer something unique. 

You can offer this uniqueness by setting a course goal. 

Use the goal to add value to your students using your own knowledge & experience. 

And, here are the steps to come up with your course goal. 

Identify who your course is not for

Make a list of 3-5 students who shouldn’t purchase your course. For ex: my online physics course is not for 

• Students who want an in depth understanding of the topic 
• Or students who want to prepare for IIT, NIT exams 
• Or for those who want to follow ICSE syllabus 

Weirdly, identifying who your course is not for, gives you clarity on who your course is for. For ex: 

My course will be for those who want to 

• Study physics 2-3 weeks before the exam 
• Pass physics with at least 75% marks 
• Understand & memorize concepts in a fun approach 

Follow this process to come up with your audience list. 

Identify student issues or dreams 

What problems do your audience face? What solutions are they looking for? 

You can use the student keywords from the teach an online course here. 

You can also go to udemy to find out 3 and 2-star ratings to understand your audience’s problems. 

Basically identify the fears, ambitions or needs of students from these comments. For ex: students feel 

• It is tough to learn physics for exam 
• Remember important formulas 
• Remember important topics

Think of all the problems or challenges your students will face and write it down. A list of 3-5 topics are good enough. 

Transform student issues into a course goal

Go back to your student’s problem list and simply reverse the problem to come up with your course goal. 

For ex: My students in class XII are very unorganized and feel it is tough to pass physics exam. 

Here is how my course transformation looks: 

 – Pass physics exam 2 weeks before the exam 

 – Remember formulas easily & even solve problems & have fun 

 – Understand the fundamentals of sureshot physics questions 

At the end of this course, students can pass the physics exam & get at least a 70% score and feel more confident about passing the exam. 

Likewise, writedown 3 transformations that your students want to achieve. This will be the goal of your course. 

Now, in the next step let us give this goal a structure and a plan 

How to create an online course structure

List the steps to achieve your course goal

Write down the end goal of your course. In my case, my goal is: 

To help student get a 70% score, even if they start 2 weeks before the exam

Now, write down all the steps required to achieve this goal. For ex: 

 – Know the Chapters to avoid based on mark distribution

 – Study important chapters

 – Remember important formulas

 – Practice repeated problems

Likewise, writedown the steps you need to cover to achieve your goals. 

Expand each step or section 

Now, focus on each individual step and build upon it. 

For ex: Let me go expand each section

 – Know the Chapters to avoid based on mark distribution

    – Know Mark Distribution pattern of NCERT (PDF) 

 – Most Important Chapters and topics 

    – Kinematics 

    – Newton’s laws of motion 

    – Thermodynamics Laws 

Likewise, you can expand each individual section required to achieve that main goal. 

By expanding and completing these steps, you will have a complete structure to your course 

You can simply do all these steps by writing it on a piece of paper or excel sheet. 

Alternatively, you can use a tool called XMIND and use the tree template to list down your course structure. 

Once you have the structure in place, schedule the time and a plan to create the content required for each section. 

In the next section, let us look at creating contents. 

To know more about building courses check our build a course archive

If you have not created your online academy yet, click the button below.