Think of topics that need to be taught — like React or Node
Make a list of all the different areas of that topic that need to be learned - templating, data fetching, caching, image resizing, authentication, file uploads, realtime
Dream up an example application that is equal parts fun to build and real world enough that it would apply to your real work.
Research the crap out of the topic - even if it's something I've been doing for years I always research different possible ways of building the application, best practices, gotchas. I usually do this by reading all the docs of a project, reading blog posts from industry experts and watching conference talks on YouTube.
Build the thing we are going to build - I usually do this a few times and then refactor every line until I'm happy with it. I put a lot of effort into making the application easy to grok a few months later so you'll notice that I sometimes forgo dozens of small index.js files that can easily confuse and ruin a tutorial for you.
Once I'm happy with what we are going to build, I have a few industry experts code review it - make sure everything is up to snuff with best practices.
Then the hardest part is figuring out how to incrementally build the application in steps. Each video should be less than 20 minutes long, but we should also have something working by the end of it. Application development isn't always linear so this is something I've spent a lot of time on.
once it's all broken down into sections - I have rough notes on what needs to happen in each video and then I record!
It's a lot of work - this process takes 4-5 months.
My advice would be to not worry about process too much and just start creating things - you'll figure it out pretty quickly. What I do might not work for everyone :)
What's your process for planning an online course? What advice would you have for someone interested in doing that?
It mostly boils down to:
It's a lot of work - this process takes 4-5 months.
My advice would be to not worry about process too much and just start creating things - you'll figure it out pretty quickly. What I do might not work for everyone :)
Do you work on one project for 4-5 months at a time or do you do a few things at once?
Other than tending to my own course platform, doing conf talks, and doing little code-pen type stuff, it's almost entirely one thing.