Lindsay Does Languages

February 14th, 2020

How to Teach an Online Course for Languages

As you begin to expand and reach more students with your online teaching, it soon becomes apparent that there’s a limit to how many students you can teach and how much impact you can have in the limited time you have. One of the best ways to expand and teach more students online is with online courses. But how? Read on to learn how to teach an online course for languages.

One of the best ways to expand and teach more students online is with online courses. But how? Read on to learn how to teach an online course for languages. ➔

I’ve been teaching languages online since 2014 and online courses have allowed me to teach so many more students than just 1:1 lessons would have. To learn more about my own story of teaching languages online, watch this video of my teaching story on YouTube.

Online courses have majorly expanded the amount of students I’m able to teach online. The access and ease of people being able to study as much or as little as they like in their own time makes it such a helpful thing to give to people. Knowing that I’m helping people who may never be able to find the time for a live session but still want to learn is really satisfying.

It’s also great for you to be able to offer another way for people to learn with you when they reach out or come across your website. So if you’re curious about how to get started, you’re in the right place.

Page Contents

HOW TO TEACH AN ONLINE COURSE

Step 1: Validate Your Idea

You probably already have an idea (or seventeen) bubbling around right now that you could teach with an online course. Before you pick one and create anything, the first thing you’ll want to do is validate your idea. Do people actually want or need the course you’re thinking of making? How does it help?

At this point, it can be helpful to survey your audience to see what they could most use help with right now. That will give you an idea of what people want.

There’s two other points here as well though: what you’re good at and what you enjoy teaching, and what you are known for or already have experience teaching.

When you have one idea rising to they top, it can be helpful here to ask again, and maybe even bring on some early students either for free or a lower price who agree to test the course for you when it’s ready.

Step 2: Start Early Promotion

When I say promotion here, I’m not talking about promoting the course yet. Rather, you’re promoting yourself and creating things to share and build your audience before your course is ready to go live.

That includes things such as writing blog articles, making videos, recording podcasts, starting conversations on social media. With all of this, if you have something free to offer as well (in exchange for an email address), then you can give people a taste of how incredibly amazing you are and what they can expect when they learn with you.

Ensure that these efforts are connected in some way to your course so it doesn’t just appear out of the blue!

It could also be worth reaching out to others for collaborations. Being interviewed on podcasts, writing guest posts, featuring on other people’s YouTube channels…all of these can be helpful to connect with new people who may head over to your own website to learn more after discovering you.

Step 3: Create The Course

Once you have one idea and a schedule in place to help people find you before your course exists, it’s time to actually make the course exist!

Creating your course will be different for everyone depending on what equipment and experience you have, and how you prefer to teach.

Many online courses include videos, downloadable workbooks and other PDFs, audio, and text among other things. There’s no rules though. Teach in the way that works best for you and for what you’re teaching.

You may also want to start thinking about community. Will there be any live or communal elements to the course? This could include a forum/group such as Facebook or Slack, live group calls with you, in-person event tickets etc.

An easy mistake to make here is thinking that you need to include EVERYTHING. Don’t stuff your course with fluff. People want to learn with you, but they also want the course to help them as efficiently as possible.

Step 4: Add Useful Bonuses

It’s always nice to have a little something extra to share with people when they join your course, especially when you’re opening it live.

One thing to avoid here though is adding irrelevant bonuses that aren’t related to the main course. This doesn’t really inspire people to join as much as something relevant could.

Another thing to avoid is adding too many bonuses. Don’t feel compelled to add 15 hours worth of live calls, 7 other courses, 3 books, and a live 1:1 with you. I mean, you can, but if you do, consider how much time this would take you to put together and whether or not the bonuses really support the main course.

Good examples of bonuses on the other hand then are any chance of contact with you such as live group calls (upload recordings too if people can’t make it live!), a mini course that follows on from where the main course ends, and an ebook that supports people through a particular stage of the main course.

Decide what’s most relevant to your main course, what you can have time to create and add to the course as a bonus, and what would inspire people to join.

Step 5: Promote Your Course

After all your initial promotion, you’ll want to plan a week or so of actively sharing your course and the offer with the bonuses.

Set a deadline, stick to it and spread the word.

This is your chance to really tell people how your course can help them and how cool what you have just made is. Don’t be shy about your brand new shiny thing!

Write about it, talk about it, do live videos about it. This is your time to inspire people to start learning with you. You know what you’ve made is amazing so get that message across.

Step 6: Review It All

Phew! After that deadline ends and your course launch is over, remember to take a little time to review how it all went.

What worked? What didn’t work?

What would you spend more time on next time? What was a waste of time?

How many people joined and how are they enjoying it?

There’s plenty of angles to come from here and lots of questions you can ask to help get a clear picture of how well your course was received. Use everything you learn from this step to make it even better next time!