Published on <a href="http://ift.tt/2pVxogp">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Krisztina Szerovay <img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2okqVf4">
I became an online teacher recently. My goal with this article is to share what I’ve learnt along the way. I hope my tips and advice are going to be valuable for fellow UX designers playing with the idea of getting into online teaching.
<h3>Why should a UX designer consider getting into online teaching?</h3>
There are two main reasons. First, it is a trending category, and there are not too many UX-related courses out there. For instance on Udemy you can look at the <a href="http://ift.tt/2pUO2dg">hot topics</a>, “UX” is one of them.
<img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2okjlRA">
Additionally, you can choose from a wide range of topics, there are many parts of a UX design process, for instance:
<ul>
<li>you can explain a certain part of the UX research phase, like how to conduct user interviews;</li>
<li>teach how to analyze and synthesize the data collected throughout the UX research;</li>
<li>there are also many parts of the actual design process, like how to design an information architecture, user flows and interactions;</li>
<li>you can teach how to use a certain prototyping tool;</li>
<li>there are various testing methods to talk about;</li>
<li>and since a UX process is most of the time is a teamwork, you can also introduce various collaborative techniques to your students.</li>
</ul>
<h3>The topic of your course</h3>
<h4>Choosing the topic</h4>
When you choose your topic, you need to consider two main things:
<ul>
<li>it helps if you are passionate about it,</li>
<li>since an online course is basically a digital product, it is also nice if there is a demand, if others want to learn about the chosen topic.</li>
</ul>
Obviously, you can create a successful online course if you only pay attention to the second factor, but your students will feel if you truly love the thing you are talking about, it will add an additional layer of credibility to your teaching material.
So next to looking at the numbers, think about what skills, knowledge you would like to share most.
<h4>Getting inspiration</h4>
My advice here is that attend as many meetups, conferences, workshops, networking events as possible, inspiration can come from very surprising places! And surround yourself with other like-minded creative professionals! It is especially important if you are a freelancer, playing hide and seek in your own room all the time. 🙂
You should not rush, wait with the decision, try to get inspiration from various sources, and at some point, you will realize what should be the course about by connecting the dots, each little impulse you get.
However, if it is your second, third… etc. course, you should listen to your existing students as well: what are topics they want to learn about from you?
<h3>The process of creation</h3>
If you are on the fence about getting into online teaching: I can’t recommend it enough, you will learn a lot of things (not only about how to create teaching materials, but about yourself) along the way. Creating an online course is a long journey, but at the same time a very rewarding one.
<h4>Preliminary steps</h4>
First, you need to decide where you want to publish your course:
<ul>
<li>you want to self-publish it on your own website, inside your own framework, or</li>
<li>you are planning to use an existing teaching and learning platform (<a href="http://ift.tt/2lApG9G">here</a> you can find a nice collection of platforms under the “Courses” category).</li>
</ul>
While there are certain advantages of the first option (you can keep all the revenue, you set the quality standards, there are no restrictions on what you can put on your cover pictures etc.), if you utilize an existing platform, they will provide you their user base, and they spend a lot of money on marketing. And obviously, if there are no rules against it, you can publish your material on multiple platforms.
If you have the chosen platform, you should take a look at their requirements and suggestions: for example on Udemy, a 4-hour long course is fine, but on Skillshare the sweet spot is around 40 minutes. So to put it simply, you need to know your audience and the framework you are planning to use.
<h4>Your voice &amp; Teaching style</h4>
If you are not confident with the way you use your voice, find a voice trainer, or as a starting point, take a look at the videos on YouTube, e.g. on how to warm-up your vocal cords. It is good if you have a strong, confident voice. Additionally, your voice should not be monotonous: you can highlight the important things by using pauses, increasing your volume and so on (it is just like establishing visual hierarchy: with white space and size you can emphasize things, and show the relationship between the elements).
And if you are not a native English speaker, and you think that you have a strong accent, you can always use captions.
<h4>The course material</h4>
So you know your topic, great! Your next task is to decide how much you want to zoom-in! I recommend that for your first course, you should not choose a very board topic for two reasons:
<ul>
<li>maybe you will try to include everything, so there is a risk that your course is going to stay in the development phase forever, and you are never going to complete it,</li>
<li>if it is only about general statements, your students may not find it valuable.</li>
</ul>
For example you want to make a course about Design Thinking, that is a great idea! My suggestion is that you should take a look at the different phases of it, choose one, or even zoom-in more, and just explain a certain method.
After you narrowed down your topic, try to build a logical, step by step chain. Deconstruct the knowledge you are planning to share into bigger chunks (these are going to be your chapters or sessions), then create smaller chunks inside the bigger ones (these are going to be the lectures). For instance on Udemy, lectures must be between 2 and 20 minutes in length.
After creating the structure — what are the main parts (chapters), and what are the different topics inside these (lectures), I recommend you to create separate documents or pages for each of them, so that you can collect links, your thoughts, quotes from others separately (for instance it is a good idea to use MS OneNote, and create pages for each lecture).
There is one more thing: it is nice to include activities, exercises so your students can try out what they have just learnt from you. For instance if you teach using a prototyping tool, like Axure RP, UXPin or InVision, give your students a project to work on, so they are going to have a portfolio piece at the end of the course. If you explain various brainstorming methods for idea generation, ask your students to pause the video, and try out the methods on their own.
<h4>The tools</h4>
One of the most important things is that you should only work with quality tools. Getting into online teaching does not require a big investment (in terms of money), but you will certainly need:
<ul>
<li>a good microphone — I used a <a href="http://ift.tt/1QUgKiU">Blue Yeti</a> USB microphone (cost: ~$160), and I also applied a Pop Filter (cost: ~$15),</li>
<li>a decent camera — an iPhone camera will do the job (cost: if you already have an iPhone, zero 🙂 ),</li>
<li>a video and an audio recording/editing software — I use <a href="http://ift.tt/2pUSQ2o">CyberLink PowerDirector</a> for editing video, and <a href="http://ift.tt/1QxMVWY">Audacity</a> for recording and editing voice (cost: PowerDirector: ~$70, Audacity: free),</li>
<li>and it is nice if you have good headphones as well — luckily I have a quite good Sennheiser from a previous life, when I was playing my electric guitar a lot :).</li>
</ul>
<img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2pUO2Ki">Blue Yeti + Sennheiser Headphones + Pop Filter
<a href="http://ift.tt/2okhUCO">Here you can check out</a> what audio and video equipment are recommended by Udemy.
Since you will possibly create videos for your online teaching material (you won’t only use slides), there might be one more aspect to think about: light conditions. Here are the different paths (or a combination of these) to take:
<ul>
<li>you will show a workflow inside a software (like Photoshop, Axure RP, MS Excel etc.) — in this case, you only need a good screen recorder software (e.g. CyberLink PowerDirector has a screen recorder part as well);</li>
<li>you want to record how you are drawing or sketching using “traditional tools” — I will show you a setup for this case;</li>
<li>you want to include the so called “talking-head” lecture format, it means that your students see you talking directly to them on camera — for instance Udemy recommends making your introductory video in a talking-head style — in this case you will need a green screen and some quality light sources.</li>
</ul>
So if you want to record how you draw, illustrate, sketch and so on, I recommend the setup I came up with (obviously there are more professional ways to do this, but for your first course it is fine, and it is easy to “build”):
<ul>
<li>a desk lamp with a flat head (so you can put the phone on the top) and great LED bulbs,</li>
<li>a nano pad/board to make sure that the phone won’t slip off,</li>
<li>an additional floor standing lamp to support the other lamp.</li>
</ul>
<img alt="" src="http://ift.tt/2pURioL">Desk Lamp + Nano Pad
Next to these tools, I use Trello to manage tasks, and Google Drive to store and share files with my team (and as I already mentioned, I utilize MS OneNote for organizing my thoughts).
<h4>Before reaching the finish line</h4>
There is an important factor I would like to highlight: after recording and editing most of the video and audio files, you may feel that you are getting there, you are going to be able to publish the course soon. However, there are many-many tasks right before publishing your course, for instance:
<ul>
<li>meeting the final requirements of the chosen platform, for example on Udemy these include submitting a test video, becoming a premium instructor, asking approval for the intended cover slides and the watermark etc.,</li>
<li>creating a landing page for the course,</li>
<li>designing and preparing a newsletter for community-building purposes,</li>
<li>preparing your social media channels,</li>
<li>writing a great course description, checking the relevant keywords,</li>
<li>watching back all the videos your recorded, correcting the mistakes, making the slower parts faster etc.,</li>
<li>creating handouts for your students (like about the different resources, or hotkeys inside a software).</li>
</ul>
So be prepared, the period right before publishing your course won’t be easy, it is hard to think about each and every aspect. By the way, if you have any questions, I’ll gladly help!
<h3>The show is not over, it has just started!</h3>
The most important thing to keep in mind is that your work is not done by publishing your course, it is quite the opposite!
If you want to reach as many students as possible, use your social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc. And provide relevant content next to promotion: for example create a newsletter, and start a challenge for your subscribers. Long-term engagement is great.
And you should make your course better and better over time! Ask your students what points could be improved, learn from their feedback. Create additional, bonus lectures, and add them to the existing teaching material.
Build a community around your courses, help your students along the way, send them interesting links, encourage them to show you their achievements, and always be responsive, answer their questions.
And start to think about the topic of your next course. Ask your students what things they would like to learn about.
<h3>Summary — My advice for future online teachers</h3>
So to sum up, here are the most important things I’ve learnt along the way:
<ul>
<li>Creating an online course is a long-term investment, you need to be ready to work many-many hours for free.</li>
<li>Get inspiration from other online teachers, analyze their course structure, the way they use their voice, what downloadable content they provide, and so on. You can learn from others a lot.</li>
<li>Knowledge-sharing is great. I’m sure you’ve learnt a lot of things on the Internet, giving back a bit to your community feels good. This was my main motivation and intent with creating my first course.</li>
<li>Build a community around your courses, keep in touch with your students, ask for their feedback, and also to send you what they have created or achieved thanks to the things they learned from you. You can showcase these pieces on the website dedicated to your course, or on the different social media channels.</li>
<li>Keep in touch with your students in a personal way, approach them individually, follow their process.</li>
<li>Constantly improve the quality of your teaching material over time: add new lectures, update it (for instance if your course is about showing a workflow inside a software, show the recent changes).</li>
<li>Think about your target audience! For example communicate clearly what skill levels is your course for, list out the prerequisites, and so on. It is great if your course meets the students’ expectations.</li>
<li>Don’t waste your students’ time. Cut out the pauses, speed up the uninteresting parts, and don’t repeat yourself too much :).</li>
<li>Provide free content! For instance on Udemy you can choose which lectures you want to share as a free preview, my advice is to include long and really valuable lectures as well, so you can help anyone interested in your topic.</li>
</ul>
I hope I could give you some useful insights, and good luck with online teaching! 🙂
If you have any comments or questions please reach out to me here or on Twitter:
<a href="http://twitter.com/krisztaszerovay">@krisztaszerovay</a>
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<a href="http://ift.tt/2pUO3hk">It is a Great Time for UX Designers for Getting into Online Teaching!</a> was originally published in <a href="http://ift.tt/2cAqCpx">Prototyping: From UX to Front End</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It is a Great Time for UX Designers for Getting into Online Teaching!

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