I published a course back in 2013 {yikes, a while ago} which desperately needed updating. I had a mini-goal of publishing a second course to this platform. So I took that oldy, but goody, out of mothballs for an overhaul today and started updating my online courses. I am pleased to say I appear to have learned a good deal since I wrote that last one.

When I went back through the course the first things I noted was the staggering amount of text. Yeah, if that is what you wanted information. Boo, if you were a human trying to take this all in. I broke up the text into smaller chunks on the page and into more pages so that I could interspersed text features, call out boxes, headers, etc. And then I visited Pexels and Pixabay for Topical Images I could use in the course. For the image upgrades I selected a three color palette and all the images I had pulled from my image resource pages. Within Canva I created a title image, using topical images and the colors I had pulled. And then I used the same color palette and fonts in smaller opening/closing images for the course. I then scaled down the design and simplified the colors to unify my remaining images for disbursement throughout the course – breaking up that text further.

In updating an old online course I used many of the instructional design principles I have embraced…
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I also noted that I had many more synchronous events in a self-paced course than I should have. I eliminated many places where I ask requested students participation which was dependent on my participation. I have no wish to slow down the participants, but I did take advantage of the features Atly made available to participants for access to teachers for an elevated fee. I think participants will be happier over all, controlling that element and not potentially waiting on me to provide feedback.

My newest course on starting a blog is now available for anyone who wants to enroll. I can pretty much guarantee I will not want nearly five years to update it!

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