In this practical part, we will follow the process I described earlier, progressing from zero to having a Course Content Plan. We will:

• Develop the Course Concept
• Identify the Goals
• Brainstorm Ideas for the Course Concept

In this lesson, we’ll focus on developing the Course Concept.

Open the Course Document. By now, you should have already filled in the title of your course in the document. If not, pause the video, open the template, and fill in the introductory information, including:

• The Descriptive Title of Your Course
• The Training Program This Course Belongs To
• Your Name as the Author

Now, let’s delete all the dummy text from the document. We are ready to begin.

The Course Outcome for the Student

Let’s take a topic that I’m currently working on. Together, we’ll develop a new course: How to Write a Book, as you may have gathered from my course title.

First, I’ll write a clear statement outlining the final outcome my students will achieve upon completing the course.

If this were a comprehensive course designed to help students complete their first book, I might say:

“My students will learn how to write and publish a book in the genre of non-fiction self-help and will publish their first book.”

This appears to be a very clear outcome. However, this outcome might evolve as we develop the client path to this goal.

Let me outline some ideas.

To write and publish a book as part of this course, a student would need to:

1. Define the Concept
2. Outline the Main Topics
3. Draft the Manuscript
4. Proofread and Reference the Content
5. Develop the Interior Design
6. Create a Cover
7. Publish

We now have seven steps, resulting in a comprehensive course that could take months or more to complete.

But what if I want to create a minicourse—a course that can be completed within seven days? A minicourse would only cover part of the entire process.

What should I do then? Remember, every course should culminate in a valuable result.

What if we focus the minicourse solely on writing the book? That’s a great idea. Let’s redefine the outcome:

“My students will learn how to write a book and will have a ready manuscript for the publishing process.”

This sounds great because some students might prefer to outsource the publishing aspect.

In this case, the steps for them would be:

1. Define the Concept
2. Outline the Main Topics
3. Draft the Manuscript

I often like to use SmartArt for visualizing concepts in my document, so I’ll finalize my concept this way. Go to the Insert tab, click on the SmartArt button, and choose Basic Process.

These are the steps for my students. You can take it a step further by adding sub-steps for each student.

To do this, we need to adjust our SmartArt and turn the Basic Process SmartArt into a Horizontal Bulleted List.

To add a bulleted list under each heading, simply type a new line in the text input box and demote it to the second level. It will automatically align where you need it. Alternatively, you can start typing directly into the SmartArt graphic.

Let’s add bullet points to each step so we remember the sub-steps each student should take.

Don’t worry about accuracy at this stage—you’re just mapping out the process. You can and will make changes as you continue to refine your work.

I might actually add one more step that I believe is important and should be separate: Research and Fact-Finding.

Now, with this structure in place, we can move on to the next practical lesson: Identifying the Goals our students will achieve during the course. See you in the next lesson.