I’ve been hard at work building out the “Basic Training” version of my course….learning to use Articulate and Storyline 360 at the same time. Here’s a screenshot of what I’m up to so far…I still have about 1.5 modules to create, plus adding in some coaching sessions and designing the marketing materials.

Then I’ll be ready to get it out there online…I’m aiming for right after the first of the year. Let me know if you’d be interested in being part of my pilot.

The course will take you from not having your course designed and built, to having it finished, in about 8 weeks.

My course is not a substitute for Course Builder’s Lab, Courses that Convert, the Great eCourse Adventure, etc. You would still need those courses to learn about marketing, tech and all the other great things they teach. What MY course does in depth, though, that most of those others only touch on briefly, is help you get the INSTRUCTIONAL part of your course (the part that actually teaches people things) set up right for the way people learn the specific kind of material you’re teaching.

I can save you a lot of time, stress, and wrong turns by showing you how to apply a powerful instructional design process in short, easy to understand steps. Interested? Let me know.

Next I will be learning how to add an Aweber sign up form to my Facebook business page for Learn and Get Smarter.. that way, I can start getting people on the mailing list for the course now. (That’s when I will really, hopefully, get out of Validation Swamp).

I need this “backbone” product to serve as the foundation for everything else I’ll be building. This course will be on Thinkific…. but I plan to host Course Crafters Camp on my own membership site. I’ve been too busy building this out to focus on anything else…I’ve basically created a whole elearning course in a month.. while learning how to use the software (Articulate and Storyline). Once this is built, I can use it as a “Basic Training” induction module for Course Crafters Camp.

I’ve also been thinking of some other tag lines for Course Crafters Camp, such as:
Course Crafters Camp: promoting engagement and excellence in online learning design
Course Crafters Camp: it’s like an Extreme Mudder for your mind

I’ve ordered my green screen and lighting kit, and Blue Yeti mic with pop filter. I’m excited to start working on the video modules in here (Great e Course Adventure) and start thinking about how I can create the universe of Course Crafters Camp.

I think the way that my “Create your Online Course in 10 minutes a day” course will relate to Course Crafters Camp, is that it will help people with the basic instructional design backbone of their course, especially if they are in a hurry or have trouble finding the time for course design (which is the main issue I discovered in my deep dive survey). I’m attaching a screenshot of what my course is looking like right now on Thinkific.
The young lady you see in my course is Jenelle, my virtual Virtual Assistant. She’s not a real person, but she plays one in this course. Also we are serving free virtual doughnuts in the breakroom. All calories have been removed. (You’re welcome). Enjoy!

Hi Kari, @kari Spencer
Thanks for your support and great ideas! I have not really looked at Tough Mudder either (except to stare in awe at my FB feed as some of my friends have actually done it!). Thanks for the idea, I will check it out in more detail.

Ok so here is my issue when it comes to metaphors. I love the metaphor and gamification concept, these are clearly the next big thing in online education, and I love and deeply appreciate THIS course and what we are learning here. And I think that the adult summer camp metaphor in general is going to work really well for what I want to accomplish.

That said… the challenge in using any metaphor, in any context, is: what does your metaphor actually stand for, and how does it contribute to your message and goal. For example in THIS course, we can all deeply relate to the concept that launching an online course is like climbing a mountain (it even gets MORE challenging the higher you go… yet the view from the top is going to make the challenge and effort worthwhile). It’s a great metaphor because it helps us accomplish our learning goal of actually launching our course. If this was not a metaphor but an ACTUAL course about mountain climbing, then strict fidelity to what you are likely to find on mountains in general, or on any particular mountain, would be an important part of the learning goal. Mountains generally do not have swamps (like validation swamp)… but validation swamp is a perfect metaphor for validating a course (the true subject matter here) and it’s close enough to the general outdoors/nature concept, so it works really well. Similarly, you don’t generally find Chinese wisdom teachers, Siberian-style shamans, and hippies who had ecourses in the 1960’s (LOve it! LOL) all in the same place. But each of these is a perfect metaphor for things we need to learn how to do in THIS course, so they all work wonderfully. If Brad and Andy had constrained themselves to only things you find on any actual mountain (all in one place) in a realistic scientific way, this course would have missed out on some of the BEST things about it… I find these are the things I remember and go back over in my own mind as I think about what I’m learning here in the Great eCourse Adventure.

So for my camp, I find that I want to include elements of adventure travel, thrill rides, personal training (for the daily discipline), outdoor activities, fun and relaxation, and other things relating to leisure and physical and sensory activity. One reason I like the camp metaphor is that it allows for a lot of tactile and kinesthetic learning and a lot of naturalistic intelligence, all of which are often missing from online learning which tends to be more auditory, visual, indoors and sedentary. The camp metaphor as a general theme works because it says, y ou are coming to a place (my membership site that I haven’t created yet) where you will be welcomed, can kick back, relax, have fun, do things you would not normally do in your city or office life, challenge yourself, make new friends, enjoy healthy and delicious food, and all those other things people do at camp. It is a refuge and a sanctuary and a break from your regular life (even if it’s only a 10 minute a day break since it’s only a virtual camp). That said, I don’t want to map the metaphors in my camp to any one specific adult camp. The metaphors need to map to the truth about instructional design, NOT the truth about outdoor camps.. just as the metaphors in THIS course map to the truth about launching an eCourse, NOT the geological and geographic and demographic realities of actual mountains. I hope this makes sense.

I’ve been fighting my way out of a paper bag about this topic ever since Brad told me I can’t have virtual trainers, thrill rides and adventure travel at my outdoor camp (becasue real outdoor camps don’t have those), and that I should check out what real outdoor camps do have and make my course work for that. Here’s my thought on that though: if people want a REAL outdoor camp, they can and should go to one. I can’t compete with or provide what a real outdoor camp does, and that’s not the goal and purpose of my course. The goal and purpose of my course is to help online course creators design outstanding learning experiences based on the way people actually learn, and to bring an instructional design focus into the world of independent online course creation in a fun and engaging way. (There’s plenty of instructional design focus among professional elearning creators in business and academia, but I see almost none in the world of independent online course creation that we are are all part of here). So you have these silos with instructional design and education professionals off in one corner, talking to each other using language we all understand… and then you have the online course creation world focused mainly on MARKETING online courses (which is very important and we all need to do it… and that’s something the corporate and academic course creators don’t have to worry about because they create their courses in a market that’s already been built for them).

For example, I posted this here and in a few other online groups I belong to.. and so far, the only people who have responded (all with very thoughtful responses, like yours) have been OTHER educational professionals. What I am trying to do though is to infuse instructional design into the marketing side of online course creation, in a fun and engaging way… so for my metaphor, I want to include ALL the fun activities. My virtual camp will have things you don’t even get in an actual camp… mine will have adventure travel, spa days, The Hot Mess Disco (where you dance out the steps of the creative process), and many other things.. all mapped to the realities of learning experience design, NOT the realities of going to outdoor camp. I hope this makes sense. I know it sounds like I’m arguing with you @bradleytmorris, but I’m not. I ‘m arguing (or at least, talking loudly, so I can hear myself) with MYSELF in an effort to understand what I’m actually doing and what my metaphor needs to accomplish. Determining your course goal is the first and most important step of building any learning experience. For example in Great eCourse adventure, the course goal is to successfully launch our course. So the goal of reaching the summit of launch mountain is the perfect metaphor for that. Once that’s been determined, then everything else in the course MUST contribute to teh course goal.. and it does. Chinese swamis, techno hippies, swamps, etc.. they all work perfectly because they help us get to launch summit.

I think the issue I need to work out for Course Crafters CAmp (and maybe it goes along with the still not totally clear tagline), is exactly what the course goal for Course Crafters Camp IS. What will camp participants be able to do AFTER completing course crafters camp, that they could not do before? Maybe I need to start doing more market research in both the instructional design/elearning communities and the world of “earn six figures with online courses”, in order to understand what people need and want. For example, the elearning folks know their stuff as far as instructional design… but.. are they having fun? ARe they creating their OWN courses along wiht the rest of us? I have no idea.

Extreme mudder is a great metaphor if my goal is to present my course as an intense challenge that pushes you to the utmost. I want that to be a PART of my course but not the whole thing. I also want to have relaxation, social times, etc. The course I’m creating now (the basic training version) is really intense because it’s very challenging to design and build an online course in 10 minutes a day. Those are going to have to be some ten minutes to get that done. But not everyone is going to want to live at that pace. So I see the “xtreme mudder” experience as PART of what I am trying to do, but not the whole thing.

I hope this makes sense. I know it sounds like I’m arguing but I’m not .. I’m trying to figure out what exactly my goal is with Course Crafters CAmp. I think the answer is that I don’t have a clear goal yet and that’s ok because I need to find out more about what my potential future course participants want and need.

So let me start here: What would YOU GUYS want and need? What aspects of figuring out how to actually design and build your course instruction, feel challenging or you would like more help with?

Hi Guys,
Please forgive me for being AWOL.. I went so far down the rabbit hole I popped out in China lol (not literally).

But for example, yesterday I started to work on my Storyline file around 8 AM and stopped around 1 AM today… with only minor breaks for food and water. I am not making this up.

The good news is, I finally finished my lesson and I am really psyched about it. I’m creating an actual machine: you put ideas in and they come out as fully developed course ideas. In going through my own lesson multiple times (to make sure it was working right from a purely software/tech point of view), I already came up with multiple course ideas for Course Crafters Camp…. just by using the tool I developed for that lesson. How exciting is that? (one of the most exciting things I’ve ever experienced in my life. And I’ve jumped out of an airplane and got married in an exotic foreign land. Don’t try any of this at home).

Ok so..this is really a thrill ride and it will be one when I create it for Course Crafters Camp.

The best part is that I am seeing how this “Basic Training” course I’m creating on Thinkific now, will serve as the starting point for Course Crafters Camp.. but CCC will go far beyond it. I’ve gotten a great response to the whacky green screen video I created riding my exercise bike in my living room.. I am excited about incorporating more kinesthetic learning and more naturalist, bodily, and spatial intelligence into online learning, and Course Crafters Camp will give me the perfect way to do that.

Please forgive me if I am babbling incoherently. I have honestly never worked as hard in my life as I did this past month (and I’ve been the divorced Mom of a teenager while working full time and going to school). So yeah.. on Monday I did not even know what day it was. But it’s all worth it because this is coming out GREAT. I am eager to finish my Thinkific course (pilot)so I can get something out there and take it for a spin… at the same time, I need to start working on my video plan for THIS course and think about how I can build out Course Crafters Camp.

One of the ideas that arose from today’s work was to create a podcast called “The Attitude Adjustment Hour with Mother Rebecca”. We’ll talk about adopting an instructional design mindset for creating online learning. Etc.

Honestly I know I am babbling now and I have to switch over to Thanksgiving preparation mode. I am so thankful for this great course and for all the fun and excitement that Brad and Andy and all of you bring to creating online courses. Love you guys! Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m attaching a screenshot of the back and front end of some Storyline files. I cannot rave enough about this software.
It is designed to create interactive elearning and that’s what it does. It’s taken me about six weeks to get the hang of it and there’s a lot I still need to learn, but it’s like… wow.

https://articulate.com/360/storyline

What you can see in the first screenshot attached, is how you can use hotspots that you can put on images in a slide in Storyline, to create a branching scenario. Depending on which hotspot the user clicks on, they will then follow a different path through your lesson. One reason this was so hard for me was that I had to create five different versions of my lesson and keep them all separate and keep them all straight. The second screenshot shows you a results slide. When the user clicks on “print results” they see a page that shows them all the inputs they entered into the slides as they went through the lesson. I had a heck of a time getting my results slides to show what I wanted them to.. but now I’ve done it, thank God.

I’m also showing you a screenshot of what the printed results slide looks like (the contents will vary depending on what the user inputs into the lesson). Then I will have them download a fillable PDF (the final screenshot) that they can fill out in more depth based on the results slide notes from going through the lesson.

So I had to create the lesson (5 different ways) and then create five different PDFs, and then make them all fillable. And then upload to Amazon s3 and then link to the right place within the lesson. And oh did I mention adding alt tags (short text descriptions) to all the images (in both the Storyline file and the PDFs) so that people using screenreaders (for the blind) will be able to “read” the images using verbal descriptors.

So yeah.

Now I just have to remember how to interact like a normal human who is not attached to a computer all day. lol

Thanks Bobby, @xbobby, for your support and excellent advice. I do need to take a break (Thanksgiving will be good for that) and get some rest. I enjoyed reading your description about your course as well. How are you doing with Storyline, are you using it? How is your course coming along? Happy Thanksgiving to you as well!

Hi Brad @bradleytmorris,
Happy Thanksgiving!
I am thankful for you and for this course!

Ok so fascinating comment. You wrote,
“I can’t wait to see how your AI technology works”.
That’s a perfectly logical and understandable comment since I had said that I created a “machine” that
helps you come up with a fully developed course outline.
However, this machine does not work with artificial intelligence.
It works with HUMAN intelligence.
I’ve created a structure into which people put their own thoughts and ideas,
apply their OWN intelligence, and come up with a fully developed course outline.

It’s a teaching machine for human learning.

This topic is fascinating to me as the whole subject of artificial intelligence vs. human intelligence is very topical right now, and where more relevant than when it comes to online learning?

As course creators, we are in the business of fostering HUMAN learning.

One reason the Great eCourse Adventure is such a breath of fresh air, is that it focuses on the ways that we as humans enjoy learning the most.. through story, community, creativity, imagination, etc.

While I value and appreciate artificial intelligence for the ways in which it can serve humans and make our lives better, I feel we need to be extremely vigilant about ensuring that bots are our servants and not our masters. (It’s ok to say that because we can’t hurt their feelings. They don’t have feelings. They are trying to learn how to copy ad mimic OUR feelings in  order to get us to do things, such as buy products or provide data. But it’s all fake because they are not real, they are algorithms).

So no, I did not create an algorithm. I create a learning experience into which a human puts their human thoughts and ideas, applies their human intelligence, and out comes a fully developed course idea.

I like the idea of calling it a learning machine (as a metaphor) because we all understand what a machine is, how it works, and that it can (hopefully) be counted on to produce reliable results every time. But this machine only works if people put their own thoughts and creativity into it.

(Thanks for the opportunity to think out loud. I’m gearing up to create a blog post/podcast/book chapter on the subject of artificial intelligence vs human intelligence. While I know a lot about human intelligence, I’m not as well versed in ai so I have to do some more research).

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.. Brad and anyone else who cares to chime in.

Education  is about leading out (that’s what education means, literally, in Latin) that which is within the (HUMAN) mind in order to help us learn and get smarter.  My learning machine (which is not an algorithm, but an artifact, a created thing designed to produce results when human intelligence is applied to it) is designed to help humans do that. No bots allowed, lol.

Finished my mood board (attached). Love it!

Next up: finish my pilot course on Thinkific (down the rabbit hole, using Storyline).

After that: launch the pilot, and figure out if I prefer to host Course Crafters Camp on Thinkific or on my WordPress membership site (that I still have to set up). Will be migrating my WordPress site to Siteground hosting in the next few weeks. I may try it both ways and see what works best.

Does anyone have any thoughts/insights/experience on using Thinkific vs. WordPress for your platform? I like the flexibility and creativity possible on my own WordPress site, but my main concerns are security (I already have a security expert helping me, but even so) and back-end tech issues relating to membership sign ups.

If you have insights or wisdom to share, I’d love to hear it.