Launching a self-paced online course is no small feat. Whether you're a seasoned course creator or taking your first steps in the digital education realm, a structured checklist can be your guiding light.

As we’re about to launch our second self-paced course at Forte Labs this Black Friday, I’ve created the following checklist to streamline the course creation journey, making sure you and I don’t miss any vital steps.

Dive in and let's bring your course to life!

(This checklist assumes that you have an existing audience so it doesn’t include any audience-building steps.)

Kick Off the Project

Before you jump right into doing, let’s pause and make a plan. Creating a new course is a project and benefits from some basic project management. Here’s why this is so important and best practices to follow.

At a minimum, you’ll need to make the following key decisions:

• [ ] Schedule a go-live date (announce it publicly for accountability)
• [ ] Pick an ideal audience (Who is this course for?)
• [ ] Name the course (here’s a guide to help you find the perfect name)
• [ ] Pick a price (here’s a data-driven approach)
  • [ ] What should the launch price be? (if running a special promotion)
  • [ ] What should the evergreen price be?
• [ ] Decide on a money-back guarantee (if any)
• [ ] Decide on access (e.g. lifetime or limited access)

Prepare the Course Content

Let your subject matter expertise shine! These are the steps to creating the course itself.

• [ ] Pull together all source material into one document or folder for easy access
• [ ] Draft learning objectives for the course (ChatGPT can help formulate these)
• [ ] Outline the curriculum and add learning objectives for each lesson
• [ ] Create videos for each lesson (if using)
  • [ ] Script videos
  • [ ] Prepare slides/dummy accounts and data
  • [ ] Film videos (A-roll & B-roll)
  • [ ] Edit videos
• [ ] Draft content accompanying each lesson
  • [ ] Lesson description (What will the student get out of each lesson?)
  • [ ] Exercises (How will they put what they learned into practice?)
  • [ ] Downloadable assets (e.g. checklists)
  • [ ] Additional resources (e.g. tools and apps)