How to Structure Your Online Course for Maximum Impact

Each course is unique, and its exact structure depends on various factors, such as subject matter and teaching style. In this blog, we will provide you with valuable insights on how to structure your online course, including addressing common questions like “How long should an online course be?“

Before diving into the structure, it’s crucial to first check our audience’s pain points. What is the customer’s main predicament? Speaking from our own experience of providing online course solutions for almost a decade, the only reason someone would purchase a course is to solve a problem they have or if they believe it will improve the quality of their life.

The course should target audiences that have demonstrated a need for your content and offer them actionable strategies for overcoming their pain points.

Keep these points in mind as you outline the structure for your online course.

Key takeaways:

• A well-organized course makes the learning process smoother and more effective, so you need to allocate enough time for creating an outline of its structure.
  

• You can use online course templates to simplify the process of creating an outline for your course.
• When working on the structure of your course, start with the basics, break down your content into clear, manageable modules, and make sure everything stays consistent from start to finish.

9 Steps to Creating an Effective Online Course Structure

A well-structured online course is essential for engaging learners and achieving optimal learning outcomes. This step-by-step guide will walk you through the process of building a clear, effective, and learner-centric course structure. Let’s dive in!

1. Learn the Key Elements of the Structure

A well-structured online course is key to delivering a successful learning experience. You should organize content in a logical and easy-to-navigate manner to enhance students’ understanding, engagement, and overall satisfaction with the course. When you structure an online course, consider the following elements:

1. Course outline: Develop a comprehensive outline listing all topics and subtopics. This roadmap helps organize content and establish clear learning objectives.
2. Modules and sections: Break content into manageable modules, each focusing on a specific topic. Within modules, use sections to detail various aspects of the topic.
3. Sequencing: Arrange modules logically for progressive learning. For subjects that require students to build on previously learned concepts, use a sequential structure that leads students through the content step-by-step. For subjects that can be learned independently, you may opt for a more flexible structure, allowing students to choose their own learning path.
4. Consistency: Maintain consistency in format, layout, and content presentation to help students focus on learning without distractions. This includes using similar headings, fonts, colors, and images, as well as consistently presenting information. 
5. Navigation: Provide clear labels, menus, and links for easy course navigation and access to materials.

By focusing on these elements when structuring your online course, you can create an organized and user-friendly learning environment that encourages student success.

2. Group Similar Ideas into Modules

An effective way to get your content to learners is to organize content based on similar characteristics. This technique is easy when all the information is equal (without a specific sequence). Grouping content into categories reduces screen clutter by bringing together similar content. These groups can then be called ‘modules’.

Note: Modules do not have to be of equal sizes. Some of your modules can have 3 lessons in them, while others may have over 20, and that’s completely okay.

Once you create online learning modules, determine the best order for them. You can go by the difficulty level or base them on the type of content you’re creating. Your lessons can go in any order you like – it all depends on what you’re teaching.

Wondering how to structure an online course based on modules? Here is an example:

As you can see, the order of your content depends on the nature of your learning material. You can always go back to the content and restructure it in a way that you feel is most natural. You may realize that you have missed something valuable when you look at them, so do add extra tips if you think it can make your content more informative.

Once you are happy with the order of the content, you can move on to the next step: choosing an online course format.

3. Select the Type of Content

There are a lot of different types of content for online courses: classes can be on slideshows, videos, documents, and so on. Students often prefer videos because they make the course more interesting and dynamic, but don’t limit yourself only to standard formats.

Other types of content include:

• Live broadcasts: They give you a chance to interact with your students in real-time.
• Slide: While the video is always better for engagement levels, there are cases when text and images are just more convenient for everyone.
• Audio: We recommend using audio for brief explanations. You can also add a link to a more in-depth podcast to discuss it with the class.
• PDFs: If the online course has supporting material that students need to refer to, they are usually provided as PDF documents.

4. Organize an Online Course by Choosing a Format

You can choose from three main formats as the basis of your online course structure:

1. A step-by-step course
2. A week-by-week course
3. Reference course

Let’s dive deeper into each of them!

1) A step-by-step course

A step-by-step course is the most popular online course format that guides students on a clear journey, with each module building on the previous one. Typically, a course has 3 to 5 main steps or modules, each containing several lessons.

To arrive at an outline, you can either:

• Start with the course goal and work backward to identify the necessary steps.

          or

• Put yourself in your client’s shoes and try to guesstimate the easiest path for the student, mapping out the main steps to achieve the desired outcome.

Here’s an example that demonstrates how to organize an online course. Suppose your course is about organic home gardening. It can have the following 5 modules (main steps in the course):

• An introduction to organic gardening
• Selecting easy-to-grow plants
• Growing plants (this is the main objective of the course)
• Caring for the growing plants (including harvesting)
• Help, my plants are dying (troubleshooting common issues)

Once the students reach the end of the course, they will learn how to grow plants in their backyard. They will have a greater understanding of the theory and concepts backing it, as well as the practical skills and steps needed to grow plants. They can easily jump from one section of the course to another if or when they have a specific issue that needs to be addressed.

2) A week-by-week course

A week-by-week course is similar to a step-by-step course but is organized over a specific period, with time-sensitive modules for each week. For example, you may have a 10-week gardening course or a 5-week web developing course.

This format is ideal for skills that require time to practice and develop. However, it’s less effective for theoretical content, where a sequential, step-by-step approach might be more suitable. Teaching how to grow plants, for instance, lends itself to a step-by-step approach where you take your clients through a set of sequential steps they need to learn.

3) Reference course

If your course doesn’t fit into either of the above two structures, then it may be classified as a reference course.

A reference course is a collection of organized content that students can access in any order, depending on their needs. Unlike other courses, it’s not linear and allows students to jump between sections as needed.

While similar information might be available online, a reference course adds value by presenting it in a well-organized, engaging format, saving students time and effort in finding and understanding the content.

5. Develop a Mechanism for Tracking Attendance

Tracking attendance in an online course can be challenging but is essential for monitoring student engagement and progress.

Acceptable indications of attendance in an online course may include:

• Logging into the course platform
• Participating in discussion forums
• Completing assignments or quizzes
• Watching videos or attending live sessions

On the other hand, the following actions do not sufficiently indicate attendance:

• Merely logging into the course platform without engaging with the content
• Passively watching videos without any form of interaction or completion of assignments
• Infrequent or inconsistent participation in course activities

6. Provide Supportive Content to Students

To enhance your course’s value, consider including additional resources. These could be a straightforward checklist of essential tools and equipment or a collection of PDFs and worksheets designed to guide students through the course.

Position these additional materials as ‘free bonuses’ to highlight the extra value you’re providing. These little extras can set your course apart from competitors and increase conversions.

7. Remember: Consistency Is Important

Consistency is key to successful online learning. Just as traditional classrooms follow a regular schedule, online students thrive with a predictable routine. Maintain consistent assignment due dates and module start days to help students establish effective learning habits.

Students will also appreciate having an overview of each module that describes what they will do and learn. This “advance organizer” should outline module objectives, required readings, and links to assignments, discussions, and quizzes.

8. Add a Link for Discussions

Online discussions among students and teachers have been identified as a cornerstone of online course effectiveness. A common practice to facilitate high levels of interaction is to place direct links at the end of each lesson for the course. The discussion should be based on the module and encourage student participation. 

9. Finish Your Course with Exams

Exams are essential to online courses, as they assess student understanding and measure learning outcomes. When designing exams for an online course, consider the following:

• Use a mix of question types, such as multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay questions, to test various levels of understanding.
• Implement timed exams to encourage students to study and prepare.
• Consider using proctoring software to maintain academic integrity and prevent cheating.
• Offer opportunities for students to practice with sample exams or quizzes before taking the exam.

You can organize exams through various learning management platforms. For obvious reasons, exams are time-sensitive and must be completed before a specific deadline.

Here are some other ways of encouraging engagement around online training courses, including, but not limited to:

• Providing quizzes
• Giving users assignments and exams to complete before proceeding to the next module
• Weekly Q/A sessions 
• Leaderboards
• Points awarded
• Badges for completing activities
• Profiles
• Contests
• Public recognition
• Graduation bonuses

Note: Remember that the structure of the course is only a part of the process, and you will also need to build an online course platform to share your knowledge with the world.

Once you are happy with the order of the content, you can move on to the next steps choosing an online course format.

Optimal Course Structure Template

Creating an online course that sticks with your audience is all about how you organize it. A well-structured course makes learning easy and keeps your students engaged from start to finish. 

In this section, we’re sharing a free, tried-and-true online course structure template to help you build your course. This template covers all the essential stages every successful course should include, so you can focus on delivering value and helping your students achieve their goals.

Every successful online course follows a similar path. Here’s a breakdown of the essential stages:

If you have already managed to create a good structure for your course but struggling with the production part, consider using specialized software to create an online course.

Review (and Revise) the Course Outline

With the structure of the course outline complete, it’s now time to take a breather.

Leave the course for a few days and sit down again to review it. This will allow you to take a fresh look at the course and make more informed decisions about its structure. Ask yourself the following questions to determine if the course is well organized:

• Does the course outline make sense?
• Is there anything missing from the course outline?
• Does the course have more steps than is needed?
• Are there any modules that could have been used as an additional resource instead?

Once you have all the answers, you will get a better idea of your current course outline and whether you need to create online learning modules that were not added before.

While answering the question of how to organize an online course effectively, you may also want to ask yourself how to create an online course.

Conclusion

Building an online course that really connects with your students takes some thoughtful planning, but it’s worth the effort. By following these steps and using our online course design template, you can create online course platform that’s not only well-organized and engaging but also truly effective in helping your students achieve their goals. 

As you wrap things up, take a moment to review your course outline and make any tweaks that might be needed. A strong course structure is the backbone of successful online teaching, and it will help you connect with your students in a meaningful way.

Now that you’ve learned how to structure an online course, it’s time to start building one using our Open edX platform. Educate your learners in a hyper-intuitive learning interface. Click here to get started.