Creating Online Professional Development Courses

Grow with Angie and April: A Podcast for Teacherpreneurs

Selling online courses is a great way to add an additional income stream to your TpT business. If you feel this is outside of your wheelhouse, you won't want to miss this information. We are continuing the conversation in our Mastermind group. Head over there to share what questions you have about creating an online course: www.growwithusmastermind.com. Selling online professional development courses is a big part of my business. Courses and getting teachers to use your resources go hand-in-hand. You can reach a large audience by combining the two. And, if you're getting a lot of questions about how to implement your resources, it's an effective way to answer questions and teach the information. I'm going to share what I've learned throughout the past few years of online course creation, but first, here's a little of my story. A little of my own story creating an online course Two years ago I decided to put together a video series about project-based learning. I released the first video and started getting a lot of questions. I would refer people to a blog post or video that I had already created answering their questions. Then I realized I should put it all together in one easy to access place in more of a course platform. This concept was starting to become really popular in the TpT world. Another reason I thought it would be a good idea to tackle a course is that my resources are for 3rd - 5th grade, but I was getting lots of questions from teachers outside of this range. I didn't have any resources for them but wanted to be able to help them use project-based learning in their classrooms. I was using project-based learning in my own room, and with a class of 35 students, many struggling to learn English, I had really learned to simplify the process. So, I felt I had a lot to offer knowledge so I started putting the course together. [caption id="attachment_1252" align="aligncenter" width="662"] Original Course (On Teachable)[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1253" align="aligncenter" width="662"] Original Course (On Teachable)[/caption] The results of my online course Launching the course was a lot of work but I started to get people buying it. And, I was really surprised at how many districts were interested in it. I put the course out there and districts were wanting to purchase 20 or 30 licenses for it. It was surprising to me because I didn't know districts would pay for this. But, the people they bring in for training charge a lot of money and they're barely able to scrape the surface of whatever it is they are trying to teach. Teachers need actionable steps. Another reason districts were interested is when you hire people to come to the school you have recommendations or website to look at but aren't really able to see how they are teaching the teachers. I think this helped me because when my course was created, I had a lot of videos out there that they could watch beforehand. They could see how I did the training. This was good for getting both teachers and districts to sign up. With that quick overview, here are the answers to the questions we hear most often about course creation: When is the right time to create a course? I think if you have something that teachers are constantly emailing you about, whether it's good feedback or something they're confused about, then it's time to create a course. If teachers are having problems in their classroom, many are willing to pay for the training to learn what they