How to create a course outline

You know that you are going to offer an online course. You have the necessary expertise to teach the offered course. However, structuring your course by creating a course outline is a must to ensure that students’ learning is systematically scaffolded. Remember that teaching is about guiding your audience through an idea, step by step. To create a good course outline, consider the following questions:

1. What are the learning objectives?

2. What should be learned at the beginning, and what should be learned later?

3. What logically connects one subject to another?

4. At what point can a student be considered as having learned enough about the subject?

5. What are expected learning outcomes in terms of skills and knowledge?

Having answered these questions, structure the content in the form of lessons. Thereafter, break each lesson into topics and sub-topics and decide where the exercises and assessments would best fit. Ensure that each lesson has a clear learning objective and a structured assessment that helps the learner and teacher gauge learning pace.