Why Should You Create A Digital Course?
I never thought I would create a digital course, but after some motivation I decided to try it out. The time is right for digital courses because E-learning is climbing to a $325 billion industry by 2025. I created my digital course to help teachers transition out of the classroom, The Teacher Career Coach, and it’s completely changed my life. I truly believe that other teachers should jump in to this market too.
Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links, meaning I receive commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links. This is at no additional cost to you.
Besides earning passive income, creating your own digital course looks amazing on a resume. Instructional Designers are one of the most sought after remote positions that hire teachers. If you’re applying for ID positions – they’ll value your experience working with an LMS. Teachers are a very natural fit becoming digital course authors because they make amazing storytellers and are naturally SME (Subject Matter Experts). If you love the following components of teaching, you should start considering it as your next adventure:
- Building your own lessons out of nothing.
- Learning new technology tools.
- Helping others learn.
- Assessing what you can do to improve in a lesson.
- Designing aesthetically pleasing visuals
Getting Started With An Idea
Whether you are looking to start a business in teaching, quit the classroom, or want to create some side income – your course needs to start with an idea. Some of the first questions to ask yourself are the following:
What problem can I solve for others? What am I an expert in?
For me, I had transitioned from the classroom for a position as an Educational Consultant. Like many other teachers in my position, I struggled to find resources while I was planning my exit strategy. In my new role (still working in education for a top technology company), I constantly had teachers asking me for career advice. I decided that I would build a course based on this experience.
Be Specific:
You’ll want to add as much detail as possible to your course idea. I wanted to walk you through how specific I was when creating my first digital course, The Teacher Career Coach Course.
What problem can I solve for others? What am I an expert in? I can walk teachers through the steps of transitioning out of the classroom. This includes identifying the jobs that best suit them at different levels in teaching experience, building their confidence, writing career transition resumes, networking, salary negotiation, and building passive income streams.
When it comes to being an expert, I know what you are already thinking. You’ll see the competition and think you can’t do it. “I’m not an expert like ________.” Let me stop you there, and tell you I felt the same way. It’s really easy to doubt yourself and your abilities. Don’t let impostor syndrome stop you from pursuing your goals.
Find Your Niche
Has this been done before? And if so, how will you add your own flair to it? You’ll need to find your niche to help target a specific audience that would need your course. For example – there are plenty of career coaching websites out there, but I created one just for teachers transitioning. In today’s day and age – almost everything has been done before, so don’t worry too hard about it, but you’ll need to scale it down some to suit a specific target audience.
Learn The Tools You Need
To create a digital course, you’ll need to start learning the tools. I created everything I needed for my course using Thinkific, Camtasia, Canva (for graphics), and ConvertKit.
- Thinkific – LMS that hosts my digital course. I chose this one because it’s easy to learn, reasonably priced (try for free using my link), and integrates with the other technology I was planning on using.
- Camtasia – I filmed and created all of my videos using Camtasia.
- Canva – I created all of my graphic design and presentations using Canva.
- ConvertKit – I used ConvertKit for my email marketing campaigns, forms for sign-ups, etc. This is how I gauged what my audience was most interested in before I created my course so I had the data to make the most informed decisions.
If you are looking to transition from the classroom, there is no better way to learn than to get hands-on real application. And after you finish, you’ll be able to use your page as a reference for a digital portfolio and to help add experience to your resume.
