How to create online educational content quickly and easily

There are times (like now, in this COVID-19 world) when you need to create online educational content quickly. But a fast turnaround doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice the quality or message of your course. Instead, take a deep breath, organize your notes and resources, then use these four tried-and-true tips for creating online education quickly and easily:

1. Start simple.
2. Lead with a story.
3. Save time with prebuilt content.
4. Repurpose your content.

Creating online educational content makes sense for transitioning classroom content into independent study. That’s especially true when you’re using a flipped classroom model, where students learn concepts at home and then discuss what they’ve learned in the classroom.  

Regardless of your teaching style, let’s take a closer look at each of these tips so that you can create educational content quickly. 

1. Start simple.

Keep your content focused on specific points that you need to convey. Remember, your main goal is to communicate information that helps your students do something better or learn something new. So, try not to confuse them with too much information at once. 

Later, if you find that you need to supplement content, you can revise your course. Or, you can build additional courses or lessons that allow your students to dive deeper into the subject. Presenting information in small segments that are easy to remember is an especially effective way for students to learn. You can even create an entire curriculum by bundling together a series of mini courses into a guided learning path.

2. Lead with a story.

Everybody loves a good story. If you need to engage students quickly, open your course with a real-life scenario that introduces your topic. Sharing a story-based scenario that’s relatable makes the topic more relevant—and aids information retention. 

Just be sure to stay on topic. If you’ve ever searched for a recipe online and had to scroll through the author’s life story before you get to the ingredients and instructions, you understand how frustrating it can be to wade through nonessential information. Keep your story short and to the point.

3. Save time with prebuilt content.

As a busy educator, you have to ask yourself whether building your online course from scratch is really the best use of your time—especially when all-in-one systems like Rise give you access to prebuilt lessons and course templates that you can easily edit. 

Using prebuilt lesson content can be a huge timesaver when you’re covering topics like communication skills, problem-solving, time management, and more. Prebuilt lessons are professionally designed by training pros and include high-quality video, instructional text, and interactive exercises that encourage students to explore the topic at hand. They even contain knowledge check questions that give students a chance to reflect on what they’re learning. 

Best of all, prebuilt lessons can be dropped into any Rise course—one you’ve built from scratch or even a course template—and you can either customize them to your heart’s content or use them as is. 

Rise course templates are another great option for kick-starting the course creation process. With templates, you don’t need to agonize over how to structure your content for online learning, and you don’t need to worry about your graphic design skills. 

Just like our prebuilt lessons, Rise templates are designed by learning experts who know how to create engaging and effective online courses. With dozens of topical course templates to choose from, all of the visual design elements—such as header images, buttons, icons, and even animations—are already built in. Rise templates include robust course outlines, placeholders for text and images, and instructional prompts that make it easy to create an effective online course in no time. All you have to do is add your own content. 

Using prebuilt content saves you from having to become an e-learning design expert, so you’re free to focus on what you do best: writing great educational content for your students.

4. Repurpose your content.

If you’ve been teaching for a while, you probably have a lot of content already on hand. You can refresh this content by adding in new examples that are more current, or reworking information so that it targets a different age group. 

Or maybe you need to reinforce information that your students have already been introduced to. Reformat your educational content into a Q&A, or do a roundup of top tips to illustrate specific points. There’s no need to rewrite your content completely if you’re sharing essentially the same points. 

It’s important to note that when working with existing content, you’ll need to be intentional about converting it from one type of learning experience to another. If your lesson is currently structured as a lecture without a lot of student interaction, you’ll want to adjust that content to be more concise and include interactions that keep learners engaged. Your goal is to keep students focused and thinking about the information you’re sharing. And with Rise, you can add engaging, hands-on interactions, such as scenarios, sorting activities, flashcards, and knowledge checks in a few clicks.

Let’s recap

This won’t be the last time you have to scramble to create educational content quickly. But the need to work swiftly doesn’t mean you need to cut corners on creating quality lessons for your students. By keeping your content focused, using a compelling story to draw students in, and relying on templates and prebuilt lessons to streamline course creation, you can develop helpful, engaging, and relevant educational content super fast.

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