Description: Interview with instructional designer Dr. Kelly Edmonds, creator of Your Great and Gorgeous e-Course.
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About Kelly Edmonds & Wired Learning Designs
Dr. Kelly Edmonds is a professional instructional designer with over 15 years experience working with universities and corporate organizations. She recently expanded her business to provide coaching to independent experts and entrepreneurs who teach online.
Learn more about Kelly and her work at Wired Learning Designs, and check out her flagship product Your Great & Gorgeous E-Course.
Key Points & Takeaways
- An effective way to find early customers is to go to in-person events and conferences. You can make connections through these events that lead to other communities and opportunities.
- Being authentic means being fully present in your course and truly caring for your clients and community. Your content may be able to stand on its own, but to create a truly authentic learning experience you need to take the journey with your students.
- Completion and participation are things that you will probably always struggle with, especially in informal learning. You must come in with the understanding that not everyone will complete everything, and allow for flexibility. Keep your course open and allow learners to come back to work through materials. Adults are self-driven and know their own needs.
- Entrepreneurs can learn a lot about course creation through instructional design. A critical takeaway is to chunk down your content into bite-sized pieces.
- Use the Do, Know, Feel approach to help you design your course. Identify 2 or 3 actions/outcomes you want for your students, and create content that supports these outcomes. Fight the urge to add in extra information — this can only lead to frustration on the part of your participants.
- Courses should be an experience. Your goal as the instructor is to guide students through the experience by providing coaching, support, and activities that let them apply what they’re learning. Don’t just talk at your students; invite them to try things.
Kelly’s #1 question to inspire your teaching
Begin with this provocative question:
What’s your big idea?
For example, say you’re creating a course on photography.
Wrap your teaching into an idea that’s bigger than practicalities or technical details. So, you might frame your course as being about “capturing light.” Use that framing to motivate your students.
If you feel stuck, a great source of “big ideas” is TED talks. Review a number of TED talks to see how they concisely present “big ideas.”
Combine a “big idea” with clear, focused goals and you can design a powerful course!
Resources & Links
Get Kelly’s free E-Course Starter Kit.
Transcript
Coming soon!
