In This article, I have answered: “How Much Time Is Required To Create An Online Course?”.This is a frequently requested question, which I understand perfectly. Before I created our first online course, I had no idea how long it would take or whether we would have the time to complete it.
As a result, how long does it take to construct an online course?
Depending on the length and complexity of the course, it can take anywhere between 25 and 500 hours to create an online course.
You may develop a mini-course in a couple of days using only four or five films. Completing a thorough flagship course with many modules and lessons may take up to eight weeks.
These are only indicative figures to serve as a guide.
The time required to construct your course is determined by a number of factors, which I will describe in greater detail below.
To begin, let’s look at the key duties involved in producing an online course.
How Much Time Is Required To Create An Online Course: The 4 Main Stages
1) Conduct a preliminary study on online education.
This phase will entail conducting market research and choosing a course topic. You may also like to select an online course platform, for which you should prepare by taking a course on online course building or, at the very least, seeing some free training.
2) Creating a Course Outline
The next stage is to develop a course outline for your online course. This will ensure that your course contains all relevant content and also follows a logical framework.
Additionally, it can assist in breaking down what may appear to be a massive endeavour into manageable parts.
3) Assembling Your Online Course
It’s now time to get your hands dirty and start creating course content. This would often involve making a series of videos based on the course outline, but it may also contain supplementary materials such as pdfs, spreadsheets, and written content to augment the video lectures.
4) Creating an Online Course
Finally, after all of the course materials are prepared, they must be published online. Depending on your budget and level of technical expertise, you can either do this yourself or pay a freelancer to do it for you.
In either situation, you’ll need to structure your course content and make it accessible to students.
Consider the Following Factors That Affect the Time Required To Create An Online Course
Now that you have a notion of the time commitment required, let’s examine some of the primary elements that can determine how long it takes to build your course.
1: What Is The Length Of The Course?
This will have the greatest impact on the amount of time required to construct your online course, as the course’s size and depth are directly linked to the amount of time required to create it.
A beginner’s course may consist of only five to twenty courses and focus on a single facet of a bigger subject, or it may cover the subject in great detail. A basic course typically costs between $50 and $200.
A flagship course may consist of 20–100 courses and comprehensively cover all elements of a subject, with ample supplemental materials and maybe a community component as well. It is estimated to be worth between $200 and $2000+.
If you’re developing a Flagship course, each of the four stages of course development will take much longer, especially the period during which you generate the course material.
Each session will involve a specific amount of time for planning, filming, editing, and creating extra resources. Additionally, the process can take longer if you require additional courses.
On the other side, if you’re designing a novice course, you can keep things simple and short.
This is the approach I propose if this is your first attempt at designing a course. It helps you to begin and experience accomplishment without feeling as though you’re climbing a massive mountain.
You can easily revisit and expand on the course material later, or even develop a more comprehensive flagship course.
2: Will You Handle Everything Yourself?
This has a huge influence as well.
If you intend to complete all of the research, planning, course materials, filming, editing, and course website setup on your own, the process will take substantially longer than if you outsource some parts.
Not simply because you’ll be performing more work; you’ll be taking on duties you’ve never taken on before, needing substantial research and the learning of new abilities.
This can take a long time, and if you have the budget, it may be far faster to employ a freelancer who has the skills, will work more rapidly, and almost likely will do a better job than you.
I would pay someone to perform the following duties (in this order):
- Even if you’re an expert, editing videos might take a long time.
- While you can film your videos on your phone for a starting course, a flagship course that sells for a premium price demands high-quality video, which can take time to master on your own.
- Setting up your course website — with today’s user-friendly course platforms, anyone can accomplish this on their own, but it does take time to get everything set up.
3: Do You Possess Any Valuable Skills?
Have you ever worked in film production, editing, or website design?
If this is the case, you will complete your course more quickly than someone who lacks this experience and does not have the financial resources to seek assistance.
If you lack expertise with these abilities, it is not a problem; with a little effort and drive, you can simply learn how to accomplish each one.
I had never done any of these things before to develop our first online course, and we did everything ourselves at the time because we were bootstrapping everything.
I’ve heard the same thing from multiple other course authors, so don’t let this discourage you — just keep in mind that completing the course will take longer.
4: What Time Allotment Do You Have To Complete Your Course?
The more time you can dedicate each day or week to this, the faster you will complete your course.
Apart from the obvious fact that spending more time on something results in a faster completion time, this is also true for the following key reasons:
- You’ll get momentum, which will aid you in keeping the essential motivation to accomplish the project (lots of people start and then never finish because they lose the motivation)
- You’ll find yourself ‘in the zone’ of course creation, allowing you to perform things more rapidly than you would if you had to constantly refocus on other duties.
Now, I recognize well that the bulk of individuals will be unable to spend their entire time constructing their online courses.
We are all likely to be unable to do so due to existing work, family, and personal commitments.
However, if you can block out considerable chunks of time to focus on your course, the process will go much more quickly and enjoyably.
You’ll be able to maintain concentrate on each step as you go, and you’ll also notice improvements far more quickly.
If this is not possible for you due to a full-time job, have no fear – you may still complete your course by working on it one hour at a time.
Numerous individuals achieve this in this method; however, it takes substantially longer than taking a week off work and concentrating totally on it.
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