Course Design Formula: How to Teach Anything to Anyone Online

PRAISE FOR Course Design Formula

"If you plan to start an online course or if you simply want to improve your online teaching skills, take the time to read Course Design Formula. How do students actually learn? What affordances and constraints are directly associated with online teaching? The author bases her book on simple psychology and pedagogy principles, cognitive science research, as well as her rich experience as an educator, both online and offline. Even at 400 pages, the book is an easy read, but the knowledge it provides is invaluable."

—Gabriel Ciordas, CEO/founder, Flipsnack

"Creating an online course is like building a bicycle shed; you might think it’s easy, until you actually try to do it! Then you realize that there’s a steep learning curve, and a serious risk that your first go at it will produce something that just doesn’t live up to your high standards. Thankfully, there’s an alternative: read Course Design Formula by Rebecca Frost Cuevas, do exactly what it teaches, and then celebrate when you find yourself with an online course that is clear, effective, and done a lot sooner than you thought it would be!"

—Danny Iny, CEO/founder, Mirasee

In my many years designing online courses, I have never encountered anything as intuitive and easy to follow as the Course Design Formula. This will become my go-to formula to design courses from now on.

—Mauricio Cadavid, Ed.D., senior instructional designer for California State University, San Bernardino

"The online course community needs this! It’s engaging, thought-provoking, and compels you to keep reading. If you’re like me, there are spots where you’ll even laugh out loud. I just may to send it to a few ‘gurus’ from whom I’ve purchased ineffective courses in the past. I’ve experienced the magic of creating my own course using Rebecca Cuevas’ formula and I can confidently say her stuff works.

—Cheri Merz, CEO/founder, Metaprosperity LLC

If you are looking for an outstanding textbook for a class that teaches how to design and deliver online learning, this book is for you and your students. It presents a learning design process that is informed by a deep understanding of the research, presented in a clear and logical way. It can serve as a springboard to help readers understand highly practical and relevant research findings about learning, media, and process. From there, readers can easily launch either into a deeper investigation of salient lines of research or move right into the production of online learning resources—from individual learning objects to full-length courses.

—Brian Newberry, Ph.D., instructional designer, Jackson College

In the information age, creating cognitively and socially engaging educational content continues to become increasingly important. Rebecca Frost Cuevas synthesizes principles of learning theory, instructional technology, visual design, and usability to create a clear approach to developing your online course. Each of these topics are addressed in other publications, but I have not seen them integrated into an action plan for online teaching and learning as effectively as Ms. Cuevas has done in this book. Her formula is brilliant. This is a must-read for anyone who wishes to teach online.

—Suzanne Ama, M.S., Education, professor of digital media arts

I could not put the book down. It’s an easy read and shows how much knowledge Rebecca has about the subject. In my experience, if someone can make a subject simple and fun, it is because they have mastery over it. I highly recommended this book! It’s an absolute delight and a must-read for online course creators.

—Neerja Ahuja, principal consultant and director, Ayurveda Awareness Centre (Perth, Australia)

Rebecca provides a wealth of knowledge on instructional design. This is a fabulous read for anyone interested in teaching anything. I can’t wait to put it into practice.

—Alison Cameron, economic development professional, City of Santa Cruz

This is the book I wish I’d had when I was one of the campus instructional design mentors in Tennessee. This is the book I would have gifted to my entire team when I was the instructional design manager at a tech company, leading a team of twenty designers, most whom were accidental instructional designers with subject expertise but no course development experience. This is a book that can be used in the corporate space, higher education, or by individuals who desire to share their own expertise online for fun or for profit. Each chapter has clearly defined objectives, real-life examples that readers can relate to, and most importantly, a wealth of resources to help the new or seasoned designer assess, design, and review their course idea and learning outcomes. This is by far, one of the best books I have read on course development in years.

—Mary Nunaley, Ms.ED., ATD Master Instructional Designer™, Founder of the Lavender Dragon Team, LLC

COPYRIGHT PAGE

Art credits appear here.

Disclaimer: This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering any kind of personal professional services in the book. The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book. Although every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this book, including phone numbers and internet addresses, was correct at publication, the author and publisher do not have any control over third-party websites or content.

Copyright © 2019 by Rebecca Frost Cuevas. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Learn and Get Smarter, Inc.

P.O. Box 5238

Riverside, CA. 92517

www.learnandgetsmarter.com

[email protected]

Course Design Formula® is a trademark of Learn and Get Smarter, Inc.

Cover design by Gus Yoo

Editing and production by Stephanie Gunning

Book Layout © Book Design Templates

Author photo by Virginia Shaffer Fesunoff, @DarkRmPro

Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number 2019910513

Course Design Formula/Rebecca Frost Cuevas —1st ed.

DEDICATION

For my online students—and yours

Introduction

This is a book about how to create online courses that really teach, at a deep level. It’s about how to create courses that people will finish, get results from, and talk about to their friends. It’s about how to create courses that make a profound difference in people’s lives.

This book will give you the background knowledge necessary to understand why it’s important to use an instructional design process to build your course and teach you a step-by-step course design process that will make your courses truly stand out from the crowd.1 You can begin using this process immediately. On my website, you also can find a set of free materials to help you get started (see Next Steps).

I’ve distilled a lifetime of professional training, experience, and research into creating products and services to help you shape your expertise into courses that achieve the goals you have for them. If you read this book, take my signature course, and use my workbooks, you will have the knowledge, skills, and tools to effectively outline any course, on any topic, in an hour.

I know this assertion may sound too good to be true. It may sound like pie in the sky. I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t created the Course Design Formula® myself and tested it with over one hundred experts like you, creating courses on all kinds of topics. Plain and simple, it works!

This book will help you understand what the Course Design Formula® is and why it works. (Spoiler alert: It works because it’s based on research into how people best learn the exact type of material your course teaches.)

An online course can help you make money because it is infinitely scalable. We all want and need to make money, but our focus at the moment is not on how to make money with online courses. This book is about how to make a difference with online courses. The difference you will make lies in setting up your courses to promote powerful learning.

The Course Design Formula® you’ll learn to implement in this book will help you design excellent courses to teach anything to anyone in a way that is fun, easy, effective, and fast. The formula cuts through the stress, confusion, and overwhelm many experts face as they try to figure out how to structure their course material.

The quality of an online course depends on its ability to deliver the transformation it promises. And that, in turn, depends on its ability to deliver learning. We’ll talk in depth in this book about what real learning involves, how to make it happen, and how specifically to make it happen in your online course. By the end, you’ll have the ability to quickly and easily create high-quality learning products that will appeal to your target audience.

I know how hard it is to create an online course—how much work, blood, sweat, and tears go into creating one. I know how deeply you care about helping people learn. My passion is to help you understand the principles of online course design that will lead to the outcomes you desire for your students and yourself: happy students who love what they are getting out of your course, can’t wait for your next one, gladly provide you with recurring income, and act as evangelists promoting your courses to everyone they know.

This scenario is win/win/win: Your students will get the learning and transformation they signed up for. You will get professional recognition, financial rewards, and deep fulfillment. And you know who will get the third win? The internet, and society as we know it: because we all will truly be helping each other learn and get smarter and helping make the world a better place.

Now that we’re clear on what we’re trying to do and why it’s important to do it, how do we get there? We get there through understanding the underlying principles of how people learn, and how to design courses that use those principles to help people learn.

There’s an infinite number of courses you could teach, each addressing different subject matter for different learners with different goals. Once you grasp the underlying principles of what makes for a great online learning experience, you will be able to teach any course your background and training qualify you for, online. You’ll be able to deliver powerful online learning with confidence and skill.

It’s not enough for you to know the subject matter.  You also have to know how to teach it effectively in the online learning space. In this book I am going to show you how to help your target audience learn the subject matter easily, permanently, and well.

And another thing . . . about that money I mentioned earlier? It’s not only important for you to earn the money you deserve from teaching your courses, it’s also important for you to save money you don’t need to spend to get your courses set up. Once you understand the principles of how people learn, you won’t need expensive materials or complex tools to make your courses stand out.

The end product of an online course is not fancy multimedia artifacts. The end product of an online course is learning.

Great learning happens because of great learning design. You don’t need fancy tools to design great learning. You just need to understand what makes learning great. Once you know that, you can build amazing courses using simple tools.

In fact, simple tools often can be the best ones, because fancy bells and whistles sometimes get in the way of learning.² The focus should not be on the tools you use or the interface your course is nestled in. Neither of those things is what makes your course beautiful. What makes your course beautiful is the learning your students get from it—the knowledge, transformation, and skills.

And that’s what I am going to teach you how to produce—not just for one course, one time, but for any course about any subject delivered anywhere and anytime.

What to Expect from This Book

This book distills my forty years of instructional design and teaching experience into a plan of action for creating your stellar online course. You’ll get the benefit of what I’ve learned from earning two master’s degrees in education and from creating public education programs that reached over 150,000 learners and won national awards. I’ve spent the past twelve years researching how to take great offline learning strategies and make them work well in the online space. I’ve created a research-based system, the Course Design Formula®, that cuts through the chaos and overwhelm to help you design any course fast and well.

Together, we will explore what works to help people learn. We will look at what I’ve discovered about what does not work, so you can save time, effort, and money as you create your own courses. We will:

Look at how people learn.

Clarify what outstanding teachers do to ensure their course participants learn.

Explore how you can do what outstanding teachers do, in the online teaching space.

Create a practical plan of action that you can use to design an unlimited number of online courses.

Who Is This Book For?

This book is for those whose passion is to serve others by creating quality online learning experiences. It’s for those who believe they will fulfill their life purpose by providing the highest and best learning experiences for their target audiences. It’s for experts and entrepreneurs who are dedicated to helping their customers, clients, and course participants learn and grow.

Is this book for you? Here’s how you can tell. When you think of your pain point—the thing that causes you stress and makes you lose sleep at night—is it this?

I can’t figure out how to provide the highest and best quality online learning experience for my course participants. I want to share my knowledge, wisdom, and insight in ways that transform people’s lives. I have a passion to reach people as an online educator and need help doing it. —You, if this book is for you

If those, or similar, ideas resonate with you, then you have come to the right place.

How You May Be Feeling Right Now

If you’re like a lot of the experts I work with, you may be feeling frustrated, stuck, and overwhelmed by your course creation project. You have so much expertise to share, and it’s important to present it in a way that honors your professionalism and authority in your field. You care deeply about this material; it’s your life’s work. Many of my students and clients are cutting-edge thought leaders in their fields, which means that the ideas and systems they want to teach are not yet familiar to the general public. It can feel completely overwhelming trying to shape your expertise into an online course that does justice to the dynamism and complexity of the content you want to share. Many experts and entrepreneurs spend years mulling their material over in their minds. They want to create an online course, but the project feels so amorphous and overwhelming that it never gets off the ground.

Now imagine that there was a simple, step-by-step process that could take away all your stress and overwhelm. Instead of going around and around in your own mind, trying to figure out the best way to present your material in an online course, you could have a high-quality learning product designed, built, and ready to go in less time than you ever thought possible. When I work with my private coaching clients, I take them from the state of mind I just described to a complete course outline so quickly that they’re amazed. Not only that—they end up loving the resulting course design.

So, if you’ve been dreading going through your existing content and media to try to shape it into an online course, lay your dread aside. Take a deep breath. Imagine there’s a treasure chest sitting just to the right of your workspace. Visualize yourself putting all your existing content into this treasure chest for the time being. Your content will be there ready for you to layer into your course once you have your course structure in place (which won’t take long). But you can’t actually design an effective online course structure by starting from your existing content. This is especially true if you’ve been teaching this material in an offline context.

What I learned, the hard way, is that you can’t just take an effective offline course, digitize it, and end up with an effective online course. Instead, you need to start by designing a new course structure that works specifically for online learning. And that requires you to (temporarily) let go of what you know works offline.

In this book, I will teach you to apply a research-based design process to the goal of creating an elegant and effective online course structure that you are going to love. (I promise!)

Who I Am and Why I Wrote This Book

I have always been a teacher. After my first day of kindergarten, I lined up all my stuffed animals and taught them everything I’d learned in school that day, and I’ve been teaching, in some form, ever since.

I earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard, and two master’s degrees in education. My first master’s, from Wheelock College Graduate School, is in curriculum design and development. My second, from California State University, San Bernardino, is in instructional technology.

For over forty years, I’ve taught people of different ages ranging from toddlers to senior citizens. I’ve taught English and foreign languages. I’ve taught advanced meditation techniques. I’ve taught values and ethics. I’ve taught about water and wastewater and electricity and resource conservation.

For fifteen years I designed and developed education programs for public agencies in Southern California. The education programs I created reached thousands of students in twelve school districts and won national awards. But more important to me than either numbers or awards were the letters I received from the teachers and students who participated in those education programs. Over a fifteen-year period, I received physical letters from the many thousands of students whose teachers had encouraged them to write to me after my school visits. In these letters, students shared the impact that my programs had on them, the insights they had gained from the learning activities I provided, and how those insights made them feel. They shared what they had learned and why it mattered to them. And that is what mattered to me.

In 2007, I decided to take my existing in-person education programs and put them online. I thought the transition would be smooth. The in-person education programs were effective and well-received. I had delivered them in hundreds of classrooms to rave reviews. Everything had been thoroughly tested. School administrators, teachers, and students praised them. I really thought it would be easy to put them online.

I was wrong.

When I set out to actually do that, I discovered that it was not easy at all. Sure, it was easy to create a digital version of a face-to-face teaching experience. But it was not easy to replicate the level of engagement and interaction I already knew how to achieve in person.

What I discovered the hard way is that you can’t just turn an existing face-to-face lesson into a series of digital files, put those files online, and create a great learning experience. This is true for people who are already highly trained and experienced teachers. For someone who has never taught in the real world (and so needs to first learn how to teach at all and then learn how to teach online)—it’s even harder.

The good news is that the methods I am going to share with you in this book will help you create an effective online course that promotes deep learning from the beginning, whether you are already an experienced teacher in offline settings or just starting out.

In my second master’s project, I spent seven years grappling with the question of how to design effective and engaging online instruction. I tried things that seemed intuitive to me as an experienced educator and found they did not work the same way online. I ran into many roadblocks and obstacles while trying to do what I already knew how to do in the physical classroom space. I worked hard at figuring this out, so you won’t have to!

Finally, I discovered a method that works to quickly design effective, engaging instruction in the online space. I developed that method into the Course Design Formula® that I’m about to share with you in this book.

Why This Book Is Needed Now

I am on a mission to transform the way people teach and learn online. My vision is to light up the planet, one mind at a time. My strategy is to help you become an inspired online educator by creating light-bulb moments for your course participants.

The Democratization of Online Course Creation

It used to be that courses and training materials could only be created by specialized agencies (textbook publishers, school districts, and organizations with large marketing and training budgets). But that is no longer the case. While individual teachers and parents have always created learning materials for their own students and children to use, now, for the first time, individuals can independently create and publish courses that have the potential to reach a worldwide audience.

What’s happening today is that the internet and online platforms for blogging and course creation have made it possible for anyone and everyone to create an online course. This is an exciting trend! I am all for it.

But while it’s exciting that now everyone has the opportunity to create online courses and share what they know, it’s also problematic. Teaching is an art, a science, and a skill. It takes time and training (and some might argue, a degree of inborn talent) to be a great teacher. Nowadays we have a medium (the internet) that allows everyone to teach online. But if that teaching is not informed by the art, science, skill, and talent required to teach well, how much of our desired messages are getting through?

Here is a shocking statistic. While many people sign up for online courses, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs) from renowned institutions, fully 90 percent don’t finish them. And some don’t even start.³ Even skilled, professional course creators in the online space, with huge budgets, face challenges in making