online course workbooks

Online Course Workbooks: How to Create a Successful One

Salmaan Ahmad

Salmaan Ahmad

July 17, 2023

An online course can be an excellent way to make money, build your brand, and market your expertise. Online courses exist for every subject you can imagine. With all the available courses out there, how do you help yours stand out? One way is creating online course workbooks that enhance learning. Your course will benefit from online course workbooks that ensure your students are learning the material.

Create Successful Online Course Workbooks

Do you have a skill you’d like to share? Whatever you’re an expert in, there is someone out there who wants to learn how do what you do. Every day, people willingly pay money to learn something that will help them earn money, improve their career prospects, or get more enjoyment out of life.

Fill Your Online Course

Do you know where to find students for your online courses? One popular method is to work with a course platform. These platforms help instructors by offering a place where they can make money selling their courses and digital downloads make it easy to market your course. Creating online course workbooks makes your course more attractive to potential students.

  • Teachable: This platform hosts courses, coaching, and digital downloads. The site offers a free trial session so you can try it before you buy. After that, there are two levels of paid membership available.
  • Thinkific: This platform offers a course builder and Zoom integration. You can offer courses or digital downloads, and the platform will grow with you. There are four pricing levels.
  • Kajabi: This site is aimed at course creators who have limited technical knowledge and want an easy way to build and market an online course. There is a 30-day free trial. Kajabi has three subscription levels.
  • Udemy: This popular platform offers courses on many subjects at affordable rates for students. At Udemy, you don’t pay for the platform to host your course. Instead, your pay depends on the number of students who enroll in your course.

Launch it yourself

You can skip using a platform and launch your online course directly from your business website. Many successful online courses start this way. You’ll save on hosting fees, but you will need a solid marketing plan to find students. You may also use your online course as a lead magnet.

Steps to Creating Online Course Workbooks

The right online course workbooks helps students grasp and retain information. Instead of sitting and passively watching your lecture or demonstration, they will be engaged in active learning. Here’s how to write and design the right one.

Understand your readers for online course workbooks

Put yourself in your students’ shoes. Think about what you used as helpful tools when you were learning this material. Was it charts and graphs? Did you use visual aids? Did you learn by practicing techniques over and over?

If it worked for you, chances are, it will work for the people you’re teaching. You’re an expert on the subject now, but you weren’t when you started. How did you get through the first initial steps in your own training?

At some point, you probably had an “Ah-ha!” moment where you realized you finally understood the subject. You may have had more than one along the way. Share them with your students. Emphasize that only time and a little work stand between where they are and where you are now.

Take a positive, encouraging approach. Students want to feel that they can master the material they’re being presented if they pay attention, study, and do the homework. Make it clear that there is a clear path from point A (lack of any knowledge) to point B, which is a complete grasp of the topic.

Clarify your goals for creating online course workbooks

Before you begin writing online course workbooks, make sure you know what you expect from the book. How will it add to your course? How do you want students to use it? Once that’s clear in your mind, you can decide how to write online course workbooks you need.

Here are some typical ways teachers use online course workbooks. Your online course workbooks may have one or more of these goals.

  • To improve recall of the material: online course workbooks may provide a brief summary of what the lesson covered and lists of key points. It may have exercises and questions designed to test the student’s recall of key facts, equations, and glossary terms. It may have space for students to write their own notes on the material as they watch the course.
  • To prompt writing: Some online course workbooks are designed to help students write their own material. Online course workbooks might prompt journaling by asking a series of questions about the student’s thoughts and feelings, followed by space on the page to write. It may ask students to test their comprehension by rewriting important concepts in their own words.
  • To perform learning drills: Repetition is key to learning. Make it work for your students with online course workbooks that invite them to answer multiple choice questions, brief essay questions, and word problems using the material covered in class.
  • To prepare for tests: When it’s testing time, well-designed online course workbooks are a valuable resource for students. Online course workbooks filled with notes, tests, and definitions is a study guide they can rely on when it’s time to test their knowledge.
  • To solve real-world problems: If you are teaching an online course designed to help the students with current professional or personal problems, online course workbooks may help them develop a step-by-step solution to the problem. Each chapter of the workbook may offer suggestions on applying what they’ve learned to real-life situations and offer room for them to write their own solutions.

Plan your content

Once you’ve decided what you want from your workbook, you’ll have a clear idea of what you want to write. Don’t worry about design and layout at this point. Focus only on the written material you plan to include.

Keep the language clear and direct. Most online training courses are designed to appeal to people from diverse backgrounds and education levels. If your course is aimed at experts in the field looking for advanced learning, it’s fine to use industry jargon that they’ll understand, but otherwise, keep it as simple as possible.

Start with a summary of what the workbook is and how you would like your students to use it. For instance, “This workbook will help you retain the information presented in this class. After you watch the classroom presentation, open your workbook to the appropriate chapter, and complete the assignments for that unit. Don’t skip this step! Enhancing your learning along the way will help you remember what we covered and help you put your knowledge to work more quickly. It’s easy and shouldn’t take too much time.”

Use a template

Creating online course workbooks may seem like a formidable job. Using a template makes it much easier. You can find free templates for course workbooks from:

Add visual elements

You can improve online course workbooks by adding visual aids. They make the workbook easier to read and more visually appealing. They also improve understanding and recall. Use pictures, photographs, charts, graphs, and infographics to make your text come alive.

When you design your layout, use plenty of white space. Be sure to emphasize key points with bulleted lists, bolded texts, callouts, and other visual features that make it easy to read.

Put It All Together for a Successful Online Course

Creating an online course can improve your visibility, work as a lead magnet, or become a profitable side business. If you want to ensure your course’s success, enhance it with well-designed online course workbooks. Are you planning to have your workbook professionally printed? Talk to Publishing Xpress about our outstanding customer service and affordable rates.

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