How To Create an Online Course on Udemy?
The creation of legal educational resources (LER) requires a desire to improve accessibility in law. Legal educational resources cover a wide range of online formats, including online textbooks, video lectures, YouTube clips, web-based textual materials designed for independent study, or Massive Open Online Courses ("MOOCs"). Regardless of the category of content, the resource should be available for educational use.
Recently, in collaboration with Documate, we launched the Beginner's Guide to Document Automation in Udemy. This course is comprised of 12 lectures for a total of 4.5 hours of free content. In this course, you can learn how to automate your legal documents using Documate while receiving a certification from Udemy. However, those 4.5 hours of content required countless hours of planning, execution, and editing.
The course came with a simple objective: create an open resource that could help the legal industry. However, along the way, we learned how to make a Udemy course. Now, we want to share our own experiences and how you can create your own Udemy course. Let us dig into it.
Define the objective of your course. Defining a goal is the first step in your course creation journey. It's crucial to have a vision that will guide your entire course. Decide what you want to teach and be specific.
Scope the content. After having a specific idea of the content you want to teach, you'll have to scope your course content and make sure there is enough valuable content. If you intend to offer your course for free, the total video content length must be less than 2 hours. If you have more than 2 hours of content, you'll have to select a price tier for your course. The lowest price tier you can have is $19.99.
Create a script or talking points. Before creating your course, you'll need to draft a script or a document with a set of talking points for each module. For example, in our course, we had talking points for the 12 modules. When you create your script or talking points, break down the content into small lectures.
Define the flow of your course. Before getting to the fun part, decide how you want to visually present your content. Video animation? Video lectures? Slides? You can be creative and try different combinations. In our case, we used a fantastic tool called Loom. Loom is an easy-to-use web application in which you can easily record your screen while recording yourself. In other words, it's a dual recording,
Sign up as a Udemy instructor. Before creating the content, you will have to make a different account as a Udemy instructor. This account will help you to receive out payments, analyze metrics, or edit your content.
Test your content. If you are making video lectures, we highly recommend submitting a sample video and getting feedback from Udemy before recording the entire course. It will be frustrating if you record your complete course and get rejected for a minor technical issue. To have a successful course, a good microphone and camera will be helpful. See some suggested options here.
Film your course. This is where the fun part begins. Recording a lecture is supposed to take you a lot of time. Udemy usually rejects courses when the video and audio qualities are not up to standard. Take your time and make sure you are using the same equipment you used for the test video. For more practical courses, try to show what's going on your screen. That's what we did for our Udemy course. If you want more tricks, you can take a free online course from the Udemy Instructor Team on How to Film a Udemy Course.
Edit your videos. If you have never edited a video, you can always take a course or contract someone else to help you. You can use simple tools, such as Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Creative Cloud, or iMovie. It can take a little bit of practice, but you can do your own editing. However, editing is usually the longest part of the process. For example, for one hour of recorded video, there can be 10 hours of edition work. Take your time, and remember, this is usually the most critical part of the process. Please make sure to cut off the pieces where you sneezed.
Create your course landing page in Udemy. You will have to fill out some sections, such as the title, description, preview, and other relevant information about your course. In the section titled "Curriculum," you will have to upload module by module with your video content. You can also upload additional resources, assignments, or quizzes.
Submit the course for a final review. Once you're done with all these steps, hit Submit for Review. Once you submit your course, Udemy will review your course and approve it or tell you what needs to be improved. During this step, Udemy may require you to sing some forms about the content's copyrights to ensure your course does not infringe on the content from a third party. Ensure that your content is original or secure the necessary rights to use a third party's content. Udemy may require you to show evidence of the rights secured from a third party.
Final Thoughts
It costs nothing to create a Udemy course that will get exposed to millions of eager students. It takes just a clear vision and investment of time. Our course took over 30 days to be launched. But, hey, you don't have to rush it. You can get an excellent course up and running following these simple steps. If you need additional help, you can contact us as you begin your journey as a Udemy instructor.
