Pre-Course Activities

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Prepare to build your course!

These tasks should be completed before heading into the next topic, Creating Your Course. They will help you to prepare to create your first course in OLC.

If you are taking part in the ALPHAS webinar in conjunction with this course, you will need to complete these tasks before the date of the webinar. It is suggested that you allow yourself a couple of hours spread over a few days to complete these tasks!


Task 1 (5 -10 minutes)

Think of a subject that you (and your organisation) are well-placed to teach people about.

The subject should be something that:

  • people can learn in half an hour or so
  • is beneficial, genuinely interesting and/or otherwise useful for people to find out about

The subject should not be:
  • An advertisement for a product or service, or your organisation generally
  • Something that most people will already know about (unless you’re offering a unique perspective on that topic)

Stuck for ideas?

Try asking yourself some of these questions:
  • "If the right answer is 'me' or 'my business', what question are your customers asking?"
  • "What behind-the-scenes skills or expertise do I have that my customers would be impressed by?"
  • "Is there a surprising link between what I do and a popular hobby or pastime?"
  • "Does my business support a particular charity or cause? Why?"
  • "How did we design our logo or branding?"
  • "How did we create our vision and mission statements?"
  • "Why should people choose me/us (and not your competitors/ Amazon/ Google/ etc)?"
  • "Do we already deliver a really good staff training session that others could benefit from?"
For example, you might want to teach people how to use a spreadsheet to solve a particular, everyday problem more quickly; help people without a scientific background to understand a specific scientific concept; train staff to ; lead people through how to get started with a relevant hobby, or provide a “how-to” for getting started with a piece of open-source software.


Task 2 (10 - 15 minutes)

Collect some materials relevant to teaching that subject, such as:

  • Reasons why people may want to learn about your chosen subject
  • A written description of how to complete each step
  • Images or diagrams that may help to explain the concepts, understand the steps, or represent the subject generally (make sure you have permission to use these! We’ll cover copyright and Creative Commons licencing later in the course)
  • Youtube (or other embeddable) videos that help to demonstrate procedures or explain concepts
  • Some ideas for what people could do (or questions they could answer) to convince themselves that they’ve understood the subject properly

Task 3 (2 minutes)

Decide on a title for the course you will create on your chosen subject.

Task 4 (5 minutes)

  1. In 100 words or less explain what your course is and why people would want to take it.
  2. Respond to this post on the course discussion forum: copy-and-paste your answer to #1 and post it!
  3. Respond to and/or rate someone else's idea for a course. Be positive and supportive!
Last modified: Sunday, 22 November 2020, 7:08 PM