Why Structured approaches to teaching create well-loved courses
And why unstructured approaches too often fail
In 2004, I tried to create an online course and failed.
I was teaching in an SAT Prep center at the time. Each instructor used pre-written lessons, but I made my own adjustments to make the lessons work better. I wanted to put my insights into a self-guided course, so I spent days writing and felt like I was getting nowhere.
I soon abandoned the project.
But nearly a year later, I started again and got the course created in a matter of weeks.
What changed?
I purchased a course from Nick Daws, who showed me how to use simple structures to create teaching content. Once I implemented these structures, writing became faster and easier.
That's why, today, I advocate a structured approach to creating the lessons and modules for your course.
But what is a structured approach to creating teaching content?
A structured approach involves having formats you can use repeatedly to make your ideas understandable to others.
These structures allow you to take your expertise and put it into a format that others can understand. They free you from having to "figure out" how to organize your ideas; instead, you can choose a format that works.
But is an unstructured approach so bad?
In short, yes.
When we lack structures to guide us, we have an extra burden
We all have the burden of getting the ideas out of our heads and onto paper (or a text document).
Once there, we then have the second burden of figuring out how to arrange those ideas so others can understand them.
This can be exhausting.
Most course creators aren't aware of the hidden structures of teaching, so the structure they create may not be ideal for their teaching objective.
So, not only is it a struggle to create the learning materials, but students also struggle to learn from them. By using proven teaching structures, you solve both problems.
You are happier, and your students are happier.
But there's a concern some people have with structure.
They wonder, "Will they limit my creativity?"
Fortunately, structure often aids creativity rather than destroys it.
Harvard Business Review published a review of 145 studies on the effectiveness of constraints (another word for structure) on creativity and innovation.
It showed that constraints benefit creativity.
In fact, too much freedom can get in the way, just as it did for me when I tried to create my first self-guided course. I had no guardrails, so I just floundered.
Fortunately, you don't have to go through the struggle I did.
Now that you know the value of a structured approach to creating content, you might wonder how to learn some of these structures.
I teach an entire framework for creating a course in The Atomic Course Blueprint. You’ll discover how to structure a high-level outline view of your course and how to structure each lesson.
You’ll take your free-form thoughts and ideas and put them into a format that others can easily understand.
See for yourself.