Researching to Teach and Testing Your Ideas with Chris Biscardi

09/12/22 • 46 min

Once you've got an idea for a course or some other kind of educational product, there are a number of steps you can take to make sure that it's a good idea and to refine the instructional design before you spend the time recording.

Chris Biscardi uses multiple mediums to try out new ideas. A great starting point is Twitch since the format isn't expected to be as refined and there's more interaction between you and the viewers.

Next you might consider recording a YouTube video or writing up a blog post. These are more refined but nearly the same level of commitment as a course. You'll also be able to gauge interest based on how people react to it.

Not only will you be able to gauge interest, you'll also be to use the questions and feedback you might get to adjust the design of the course.

Chris also discusses creating good example projects, course maintenance, thinking about your content as various streams, and how he deals with people finding ways to access his paid content for free.

Links

Chris Biscardi uses multiple mediums to try out new ideas. A great starting point is Twitch since the format isn't expected to be as refined and there's more interaction between you and the viewers.

Not only will you be able to gauge interest, you'll also be to use the questions and feedback you might get to adjust the design of the course.

Chris also discusses creating good example projects, course maintenance, thinking about your content as various streams, and how he deals with people finding ways to access his paid content for free.

Links

Previous Episode

Using Existing Course Platforms to Deliver More Content with Mark Shust

If your main interest is to actually get straight into producing content and start selling it, you probably don't want to jump into developing a custom platform.

Mark Shust has seen many people get into building there own platforms and have all their time sucked into getting it running, when they could've been delivering a course.

It can take much longer than you might expect. Over a year even depending on if you are working full-time or not. There's a ton of things that you'll have to deal with yourself such as payments, refunds, subscriptions, upgrades, authentication, streaming video, and more.

Mark also chats about how he designs his courses by reverse-engineering projects, tax compliance, and how to look beyond what people are saying and figure out what they're needing.

Next Episode

Engaging Learners with a Chance to Struggle with Josh W. Comeau

Making your courses engaging is always the goal, but it's something that's easier said than done. But, Josh Comeau has several strategies that he uses to ensure that his content is as engaging to learners as possible.

There's the element of active practice. A learner shouldn't be able to go through 100% of a course's content on their phone. Exercises are a great way to get the learner involved. By giving the learner a chance to struggle with something you give them an opportunity to think about what they learned deeper, and potentially reach a lightbulb moment.

Another technique Josh uses is to make his content multimodal, which is a fancy term for using multiple mediums. His lessons will have both written and video content so that learners switch gears and learn in different ways.

Josh also discusses how it took him much longer than expected to build his custom platform, how he designs his courses with expanding bullet outlines, the maintenance he's done on his course, and how the strength of his following helped him launch the CSS for JS successfully.