What is a standard course?

A standard course dives deep into a subject through a series of milestones and lessons to give students a meaningful transformation.

A standard course is digestible but still robust. The transformation it provides is often a shortcut to an outcome—it helps students achieve something that would otherwise be hard to navigate without your guidance.

For more examples, read our guide on creating online courses.

Why create a standard course?

• You want to create a comprehensive course on your topic.
• You want a primary offering in your online course business.
• You want to sell a course for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

How is this template structured?

This template uses 3 sections:

Welcome section

• What to expect in this course: Welcome your students and get them excited by reaffirming the outcomes they’ll achieve through completing this course.
• About the instructor: You might like to create a video to introduce yourself and set the tone for this course, but text and images are fine too.
• Resources: You might like to provide your students with some downloadable content like a workbook, slides, or templates. You can move this lesson to the end of the course, or even skip this lesson and add resources to individual lessons instead.

Key concept sections

Each key concept section can contain multiple lessons.

• Concept introduction: To reinforce the outcome, it can be helpful to provide an overview of what they’ll learn in each section.
• Lessons: Here’s where you dive deep into the concept. Add text, images, files, video, or a mix of them to each lesson. Each lesson does not need to contain the same types of content, so feel free to mix it up.
• Test your learning: Test their knowledge with a quiz to immediately apply their learnings. You might prefer to skip a quiz for each concept and create one big quiz at the end of the course instead.

We’ve given you 3 key concept sections to start with, but feel free to add more if needed.

Wrap up section

• Course recap: Celebrate their accomplishment and bring it home with a summary of what they’ve just learned. Remember, they might complete this course over a longer period of time so reinforce the key concepts you want to stick.
• Leave a review: Add a survey so your students can share their thoughts on your course. You can use their feedback to create testimonials, or learn how you might improve your course for future students.
• What’s next? Now that they’ve finished your course, provide your students with a clear path on what to do next. Often, this might be an upsell to another course with a coupon, a way to subscribe to future content, or some other call-to-action that you want them to take.

Before you publish…

• Rename all sections and lectures to fit your content. (For example, replace “Lesson 1” with a name that shares what students will learn.)
• Delete this “How to use this template” section.