Sharing my why: I have been focused on teaching and instructional design in some form or other, for the past 40 years… and on understanding how to design online instruction for the past 10. My why for creating an online course has always been a part of me.

My why for participating in and completing THIS course is that it is awesome and transformative. I deeply appreciate the integration of right brain and left brain approaches and the inclusion of multi sensory learning that this course provides. This is what I’m passionate about and truly enjoy: designing experiences and creating materials that help people learn and grow and achieve their goals.

Creating online courses is part of my multi- pronged approach to changing the face of online learning (as you guys are so beautifully and skillfully doing with THIS course). I’m excited to participate in the learning that lies ahead and to go on to launch other great learning experiences from here. I appreciate the opportunity to learn from you and with you and to make my course that much more fun and effective and engaging as a result.

Most of all, I feel like I’ve finally found my tribe… creative educators whose passion for creating online courses is focused on creating great learning. We all want and need to make money to survive in the world and provide for our families. But making money is not my why for creating online courses. Making myself and others both  smarter and wiser,  and making our planet a more inspired and connected place…that’s my why.

Also, I am having a huge amount of fun. It feels like thoughts, ideas, inspirations and projects I’ve been working on separately for the past many years are all coming together and making sense. Thank you!

Hi Dr. Wayne!

Thanks for the lovely shout out! I look forward to the chat…just say when and where!

Look forward to learning more about your teaching and your course.

Rebecca

Journey Map Notes:

I’d say my course is a vision quest. It should take about 2 months for learners to complete. I will also create shorter, day trek and walk in the park versions that can be used as lead magnets and trip wires (free, and low cost) and also as refresher or planning tools to help people do a quick birds eye view level outline of their course.

It’s not a problem for me to create a vision quest course. This is not my first online course.. My Masters Project course took a long time to create (and I got to make a lot of mistakes and learn from them along the way). I am sure I will make new mistakes this time but at least I won’t make those same ones lol.

In fact, some of the things that were “mistakes” in my Masters project, are going to be useful and re-usable this time around, which is very encouraging.

My fantastic WHO:

My customer avatar is an expert in her field and wants to create an online course to share her expertise in ways that help others.

She is  skilled at teaching and  presenting in person, but what keeps her up at night is trying to figure out how to teach as effectively and engagingly online as she does in person.

She’s tried everything she can think of to make it work but it always falls flat.

Shes crammed every tidbit of information she can think of into her course. It’s got 20 hours of video and 200 PDFs

that are each 10 pages long. She’s put so much value into it so it’s hard to understand why her students aren’t engaged and learning.

She feels heartbroken about this and wants to find a solution soon.

Hi @mars! Thanks for your kind words and warm welcome! I’m looking forward to seeing what you create too!

Rebecca

Hi, @bradleytmorris,

Thank you so much for your support and kind words (and for this wonderful course!). I just got back from a conference where I had  a chance to actually talk at length with several course creators (and would-be course creators) who are perfect examples of my customer avatar (my “who”). That was incredibly exciting and empowering… because I saw that helping them structure the instructional-design “bones” of their course was really going to make a difference for them.

Oh.. and I told everyone who would listen (a lot of people) about THIS course and I am going to send them all links to sign up for the free trial to this course, in my post-conference follow up emails.

The negative thing about the conference (probably the ONLY negative thing, but it was good in its own way as I’ll explain in a second) is that I did not have my computer with me. So far several days I was only on mobile and tablet (I am still recovering from the trauma lol). No seriously what it showed me is how challenging it can be for people who are ONLY on mobile and tablet, to respond at length to forum  posts and so on. In the end this will be good input for me because I want to create a mobile version of my course that will work for people with only micro amounts of time and only mobile access (like, a texting version of my course). I have no idea how I will do it yet, I just see that it would be helpful for some users.

This begs the question you asked, about the actual content of my course. I am going to be filling that in next now that I’m home and can sit at a keyboard and type properly and have access to my Evernote files from Architekt forest. I did not have access to those while at the conference (and I did not have the time, energy or peace of mind to devote to the exercises, that they deserve). So I was a BAD BAD GIRL and did what you do not want us to do, I watched the videos first before filling in the material. I know you do not want us to do that, and I do not want to set a bad example for others (or spread bad vibes around the mountain, heaven forfend). At the same time, I really wanted to see what was next in the course and keep up the feeling of forward momentum to the extent that I could, even though I did not have access to what I needed to do the writing exercises.

I also have a giant beef with the whole issue of dripping content. I know everyone does it and I can see the benefit in terms of not letting people get ahead of themselves and not letting them skim over the course content in a superficial way without completing it. However I knew that for me, I would not be getting ahead of myself (because I have been doing this kind of thing for 40 years). And I knew that I would not skip over the content because my entire plan was to get home (I just got home, I’m not even unpacked) and delve into the writing and thinking exercises of Architekt Forest, in depth. For me, it sometimes to works better to have a birds-eye overview of the material and then zoom in close to do the detail work. Philosophically, I  agree with Clark and Mayer (2011, p. 319) when they say that advanced learners do better when allowed to control the pace of instruction for themselves:

https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Science-Instruction-Guidelines-Multimedia/dp/0470874309

(That is an awesome book by the way).

So anyway, I used my time at the conference as wisely as I could to keep up with the course by watching the videos, and now (as promised, and pledged, and pinky sweared with my hand over my heart –which is challenging to do while pinky swearing, lol—) I will go back and fill in the exercises and add them below.

So no one else should follow my example because I don’t want anyone to get in trouble.  Listen to Brad and do what he says. Nothing to see here. Professional driver on closed road. Don’t try this at home. These are not the droids you’re looking for. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. (Etc).

Stay tuned for the details about my course! So excited to share them with you guys. This is what I’ve been waiting for!

xoxoxoxo

Rebecca