The Ultimate Course Creation Resource Guide

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View all posts by Nate Johnson → January 19, 2018

If you’ve been following our series of articles related to The 10 Step Blueprint Behind Every
Successful Course, so far you have:

With this foundational work complete, we now move into the second phase of the course
creation process…

It’s time to do some preparation to make things more efficient when we begin outlining our
course content and actually producing our course lessons.

There are a number of tools you can research and gather now to speed up your course
creation workflow and we’ll be discussing those tools in this guide.

While taking these steps now can help you create your course faster and ensure high-quality
course content, keep in mind that once you develop your own unique course creation workflow
it’s very likely that you will replace some of these tools with others or eliminate them from your
workflow altogether.

This is completely fine. Since we launched our first online course back in 2010, new tools have
become available to make our course creation process easier and some tools we used then
are now defunct. Just be open to making changes once you begin your own course creation
journey…it’s part of the process.

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Research Collection and Course Outline Tools
Mind Mapping Tools

When we initially begin outlining our courses, we prefer to use a mind map to create a broad
overview of the content we’ll be presenting and how lessons will be grouped. Mind maps allow
you to start with a central concept (your course) and then create a series of nodes related to
different course subject matter.

We generally start with our course title as the primary node and then create a node for each
module and attach multiple lesson nodes to the modules. Mind maps aren’t the best solution
for getting into the nitty-gritty details like writing scripts for individual videos, but they’re perfect
for quickly adding lesson ideas as you think of them and then organizing them into the most
logical order.

Now is the time to create an account with one of the web-based mind mapping tools, start a
new map for your course, and have it available to access quickly as ideas pop up.

For our course outlines, we use MindMeister. You can sign up for a free account with them
which includes up to three mind maps. That will be more than enough for the course creation
process. We chose to upgrade our plan to the $4.99 per month Personal plan as it allows you
to attach files to nodes within your mind map. This can sometimes be helpful when you come
across helpful research or resources but don’t know where it will fit into your course quite yet.

MindMeister also includes free mobile apps for iOS and Android. These tools offer a great way
to add to your course outline from your phone or tablet anywhere you go. We very often find
ourselves getting inspirational ideas when we’re away from the constraints of our dedicated
work spaces and these apps are a great way to quickly capture that inspiration.

Other popular free web-based mind mapping options include Coggle (which we’ve been using
quite a bit lately as well), bubbl.us, and WiseMapping.

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Project Management Tools

Again, while mind maps are a great way to organize brainstorming for your course outline, they
aren’t an efficient tool for organizing the fine details for your course.

Once we create a mind map of our course outline and have a good feel for the modules and
units we’ll begin creating, we transfer that outline to a dedicated project management tool.
There are a number of free web-based project management tools available and if you already
have one you’re familiar with and like using, just stick with it.

For our course creation process, we use Trello. Trello free is a free web-based kanban tool, but
it has quite a few powerful features and its user interface is dead simple which keeps you from
wasting time trying to learn more complicated platforms.

Once you set up your free Trello account, you’ll be able to create a project (your course), a
board for each of your modules, and cards within each board to represent your course lessons.
Within the cards, you can add notes, checklists, attachments, labels, and more.

If we’re producing a video for a particular lesson, we’ll include all of the information related to
the production of that video in the card’s notes. For example, we’ll indicate if the video is a
talking head video or a screencast. Then we’ll write an outline of what we’ll be saying and
covering in that video. If we’ll be producing a downloadable action guide for the video we’ll
attach it to the card. Finally, we use colored labels to indicate the status of each lessons
production…red indicates it has not been started, yellow means it is in production, and green
means that lesson’s content is complete.

Other similar free offerings include AirTable, Asana, and Kanban Tool.

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Bookmark Folders

Once we begin researching our course content, we prefer to create a special series of
bookmark folders in our web browsers. You’re likely already familiar with managing your own
bookmarks, so we won’t go into much detail here.

But we prefer to create one master bookmark folder for the entire course, a second level of
folders for our modules, and a third level of folders for individual lessons. As we come across
interesting websites which we think we can use to create content for a lesson, we bookmark
the page in the appropriate folder. This makes it super quick and easy to grab that exact group
of webpages and open them all once when we begin producing a particular lesson.

Cloud Storage and Folder Structures

Similar to bookmark folders, we set up course -> module -> unit level folders in our cloud
storage platform. We use the very cost-effective Amazon Web Services S3 cloud storage
system. It’s a bit tricky to configure, but it’s a powerful system that will offer unlimited storage at
a low price point. It has some other advantages as well, which we’ll discuss shortly.

Online courses can often reach several gigabytes worth of video content and resources, so it’s
not wise to store them on your local hard drive. You’ll also want to be sure that your course
content stays backed up and cloud storage provides this security.

Finally, by organizing all of your course content in Amazon S3, when it comes time to deliver
your video content through your course’s website you can simply embed your media files
without ever having to store course videos on the same server that your site is hosted on (bad
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idea!).

Within Amazon S3, we create a primary bucket for our course and then secondary buckets for
each module. Within each module bucket we upload our finished course videos as well as any
additional resources such as our presentation slides or downloadable PDF action guides.

When it comes time to place your course lesson videos on your site, we do have a plugin
called S3 Media Maestro which includes a media player and file sharing protection to prevent
paying customers from sharing your video with others.

Branded Course Assets and Templates

Course Logos

As we move on to other resources you’ll need to gather before you begin the production of
your course lessons, we’ll be compiling some necessities which will be branded for your
course. So before we start working on those, we’ll take some time to produce a logo for our
course materials.

Where you go to produce a logo for your course depends on your creative skills and your
budget. You don’t need to spend a great deal of time or money on a logo for your course, but
you should put some thought into creating something which will appeal to your ideal customer.

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We have one client who sells courses that teach theater costume production. That logo looks
much different than the logos we find on our clients’ sites that teach how to trade in the stock
market.

We have produced most of our logos for free using Canva. It’s a great tool that we’ve written
about before and it includes dozens of logo templates which you can get started with and not
have to create your logo from scratch.

If you’d like something more professional, you can post a job description on99Designs and
graphic designers from around the world will submit their proposed concepts to you. Once the
project invitation expires, you can choose the logo you like best and purchase it for $299 with a
30-day money back guarantee and design revisions provided by the winning designer.

Slide Templates

Once you have a logo and color scheme completed, you can move on to producing a couple of
other resources that you’ll be using daily during the course completion process.

If you’ll be producing video content for your course, you’ll need a variety of presentation slides
handy. These will be used as the background for the on-screen content you produce. At
minimum, we recommend creating the following types of slide layouts:

Lesson intro slide: This would be branded and presented consistently at the beginning
of each video.
Screencast slide: This layout can be branded with your logo and used as a frame for
videos which will include screen recordings, such as demonstrations of how to execute a
task on a website.
Presentation slides: These branded slides will be used for standard text and image rich
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 presentations, just like a traditional in-person presentation.
Talking head slides: These slides provide a template on which text and images can be
presented alongside a small video window of you talking about the content.
Lesson outro slides: This would be branded and presented consistently at the end of
each video.

While outsourcing logo creation can get a bit pricey, purchasing a done-for-you set of up to 200
custom slides is a cheap date. We prefer to use GraphicRiver to purchase slide template
packages for all of our projects and generally pay less than $20 for up to 200 slide templates.
It’s a massive time-saver when you have so much else to do to prepare your course.

If you'd like to work from the templates we use for our own courses, you can download that in
either Keynote or PowerPoint formats in the Article Resources section at the top of this guide.

Action Guide Templates

For our courses, we offer a downloadable PDF action guide within each lesson. The action
guide is originally created using presentation software (we use Keynote for Mac OS) and
includes:

Lesson title
Key concept summary in bullet points
Action items or checklists
A unique and interesting additional fact which was not presented in the video
Space for note taking

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If you choose to use action guides in your course lessons, they don’t need to be complex. You
can keep them to 2 or 3 pages for most lessons, but now is the time to create a template that
you can quickly edit for each course unit.

If you'd like to use our action guide templates for your course, you can download them in
Keynote or PowerPoint formats in the Article Resources section at the top of this guide.

Logo Reveals

Earlier, we discussed creating creating

template slides for the beginning and end of
your lesson videos. However, for every
course we’ve ever created, we’ve stepped
this up a notch.

Logo reveals are the short 8 to 15 second

videos you’ve seen which are an animated
sequence that ends with a logo. These are a
fantastic touch for branding your course
videos, making them look very professional,
and they’re just, well, fun!

They’re also very inexpensive. We’ve been

using IntroMaker since about 2011 to
produce our logo reveals which we then use
on the first and last slides of our presentation
templates. With IntroMaker, you simply
upload your logo and within a few minutes it
will generate a custom logo reveal video which you can preview and then purchase for
between $5 and $20, depending on the design you choose.

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Stock Music

In addition to using a logo reveal video in our intro and outro course slides, we add a short,
upbeat music track of just a few seconds at the beginning and end of our lesson videos.

We generally clip the length of the music snippet to match our logo reveal video and fade it out
after the intro and fade it in prior to the outro. We’ll talk more about the software we use for this
in just a moment.

AudioJungle is a great place to find a short audio track for the beginning and end of your
course media content. You can search through the available offerings by category which
allows you to choose a specific genre of music or tone. Most of the tracks designed for logo
reveals cost around $7 or $8.

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Audio and Video Production Tools
For all of the courses we’ve created, we have considered them business opportunities, as you
likely are viewing your prospective course. And as we’ve all heard before, “It takes money to
make money.”

Successful business ventures require an investment. And investing in audio and video quality
is a wise decision. Nothing will turn your students off faster than low-quality video or sound
recordings. Not only can it be distracting, it causes your paying customers to perceive your
course as less valuable. After all, if you’re asking them to spend money on your course, don’t
you owe it to them to invest in the quality of your content?

That being said, the cost of capable cameras, microphones, lighting, and backdrops is lower
than it’s ever been. In this section, where applicable we’ll present two options…a more
expensive, higher quality option and a second budget-conscious option that will get the job
done and get it done pretty well.

Cameras

Panasonic Lumix G7

Growing up with a mother who spent her career working in professional photography studios,
I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with cameras from almost every major manufacturer
over the last 25 years. None of them have fit me as a “lifestyle” camera like Panasonic’s Lumix

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series.

Not long ago, in the midst of creating one of my first online courses, my family and I decided to
sell our home and travel the world for a year while I worked remotely from different countries. I
needed to invest in high quality video for the course I was creating, but also wanted a compact,
lightweight camera which could pull double-duty while we were sightseeing during my time
away from work. The Lumix G7 was a perfect fit.

Most of the DSLR cameras which offered full 1080HD video capabilities and an external
microphone input were expensive and bulky. Not this one. It’s small enough to take anywhere
which will provide you a lot of flexibility when you want to keep your course videos interesting.
And since it’s lightweight, it can be used on small, inexpensive tripods.

Logitech 1080P ProStream Webcam

In many course creation resource guides, you’ll hear folks stating that a sub-$100 webcam is
more than enough for creating video content for online courses. I’m not completely sold on
this. I don’t think any webcam on the market is a serious substitute for investing in a high-
quality camera.

But if any of them come close, the Logitech 1080P ProStream Webcam does. I use this
webcam daily for internal team meetings and often for recording short videos which we use
within our business. If you don’t have the money to initially invest in a more expensive
dedicated video camera, it’s a solid choice.

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And having used many different webcams over the years, it produces surprisingly good audio
results. For straight voiceovers on your screen recordings or presentation slides, I would still
recommend using a dedicated USB microphone, but the audio quality on this Logitech model
is good enough that you won’t need to run both the camera and a microphone to your
computer for capturing talking head videos.

Microphones

Blue Yeti Pro

The Blue Yeti Pro has been my go-to microphone for years. I use it for software tutorial videos,
podcasts, course creation, and have even captured some pitiful attempts at recording music
with it.

The Yeti Pro is a multi-pattern USB condenser microphone. This means that not only can you
plug it straight into your computer without any adapters or a mixing board, but you can change
the direction in which it picks up sound. If you’re recording an interview with a subject matter
expert, you can place it on a table and select the omnidirectional setting to capture both
voices. For screen recordings where you want to be able to speak straight into the mic without
picking up background noises, you can choose the cardioid mode.

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Audio-Technica ATR-2500USB

For those on a budget who still want their course to include a high-quality audio experience,
the Audio-Technica ATR-2500USB is a great option. Again, this condenser microphone
includes the ability to plug straight into your computer via USB, which makes it simple to
quickly capture recordings which you can file away in the folder structure you’ve set up.

It only offers a single cardioid recording mode, but for creating course audio this is fine in
almost all circumstances.

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Lapel Microphone

As previously mentioned, I like to do some of my video shoots in my workspace or in other

spots around my house. When I do this I also like to use a long depth of field with my camera
to produce that cinematic effect that everyone loves…the sharp subject and blurred
background. Since this involves creating a lot of distance between the camera and my body,
as well as my body and the background, I’m frequently speaking a good distance from the
camera which reduces the audio quality.

When this is the case, I use a small lapel condenser microphone and run that to the external
microphone jack on the camera. It’s almost invisible if you position it just right on your clothing,
and most of the lapel microphones in the $20 range offer great audio quality as well as more
than enough audio cable to reach your camera in a variety of situations.

Another cool feature is that most of them can also be plugged into your phone or tablet for on
the go audio recording if needed.

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Other Audio Accessories

For most online courses, students

hear the instructor much more than
they see them. If you truly want to
record high-quality audio for your
course, you need to do three more
things…eliminate all vibration to your
microphone, prevent air from your
speech from reaching the
microphone, and eliminate sound
reverberation.

We recommend using a few extra

tools to accomplish this:

Pop filter: This is simply a

windscreen mounted at the
front of your microphone to
reduce the incredibly annoying popping sound which results from speaking sharp
consonants such as p’s and t’s.
Boom stand: Boom stands allow you to mount your microphone away from your desk
and extend it toward your mouth without it touching anything but the floor. Nothing is
more distracting than hearing an instructor loudly pecking away on their keyboard or
mouse during a demonstration.
Shock mount: A shock mount is another tool for reducing mechanically-transmitted
noise. It uses an elastic suspension system which allows your mic to float independently
of the mic stand. They’re available for most USB microphones for under $10 or if you’re
really on a budget, check YouTube for how to make one using things you can find
around the house.
Sound panels: This is a little over the top for most of us, but sound panels can be used
around your workspace to create radio-quality voice recordings by preventing your voice
from reflecting off hard surfaces like walls or hardwood floors. They can get pretty
expensive, but if you’re serious about your recordings they work great. With my first
podcast several years ago, I actually created a sound booth with two twin-size
mattresses that were collecting dust in our basement.

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Lighting and Backdrops

While not completely necessary, video

lighting and backdrop kits are a nice touch to
help you create professional-looking video for
your course. I generally prefer to use a white
backdrop for creating talking head videos so
that I can place them on a slide template so
that I actually appear to be in the slide.
Dedicated lighting also helps to eliminate any
shadows that make it difficult to blend you
and your white backdrop into a white slide
template.

For the courses we’ve created, I like to shoot some of the video in my workspace or in other
places around my home to create an intimate and authentic situation when I’m speaking to our
students. Inexpensive and lightweight lighting stands are very simple to fold up and carry
wherever you want to record your next lesson. Even when I’m recoding near a window which
offers natural light, I still often use one lighting stand with a translucent umbrella to eliminate
shadows created by my facial features and clothing.

While there are a number of options available, the most recent package I’ve started using is
from a company called Emart and is available on Amazon for under $90. It comes with two
lighting stands, a translucent and reflective umbrella for each stand, a 10-foot adjustable
crossbar for backdrops, two backdrop clamps, one basic backdrop, and a carrying case. It
doesn’t include a green screen backdrop for digitally manipulating your background, but those
can be order separately for around $30.

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Video & Audio Production Software
The final tool that we encourage you to become familiar with prior to embarking on your course
creation journey is one that you will spend hours and hours using…

Video and audio editing software.

This will become the tool that you use day in and day out to produce your final product…your
course lessons.

All of our courses have been created using Screenflow. It’s a very powerful, yet easy to use
software package that can be utilized to edit, splice, and export your finished video and audio.
Best of all, at $129 it’s less expensive than all of the high-profile video production packages out
there which will all end up being overkill for creating a course.

The only catch is that it’s currently only available for Mac OS.

If you’re running a Windows machine, there’s a very similar software called Camtasia. It’s a bit
more expensive at $199, but again this is going to be the critical piece of software that your
course is built with.

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It’s beyond the scope of this guide to go into the use of either of these software packages, but I
would highly recommend that you begin experimenting with one of them so that when you
begin creating your course content you will be able to work efficiently. There are a number of
free tutorials for both of them on YouTube which you can find with a quick search.

And There You Have It!

While this list of tools and resources may seem a bit overwhelming, you don’t need all of it at
once. The most important thing is to find the tools that allow you to produce the best quality
course content possible for your budget and to find a process that creates the most efficient
workflow.

As always, if you have any questions about any of our recommendations we hope that
you’ll feel free to reach out to us. We’re always here to help if you need us!

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