How I Design Mini Courses That People Actually Finish
In this post, I’ll show you how I build mini courses with consultants, coaches, and other course creator that learners actually finish with tangible work samples.
Who should read this?
People who want to teach a skill, but don’t have time to build a massive course
Creators and consultants who need a repeatable way to package existing content
Trainers that teach learners with varied skillsets and knowledge levels
What is a mini-course
In the eleanring and instructional design industry, mini courses are called “microlearning” and are short 30-minute skills-based courses. I define it differently. When I say mini course, it means:
A short, outcome-based learning experience
Divided into 5-7 lessons, 10-20 minutes a day
Motivated learners can complete the entire course in 60-120 minutes
Narrow scope, clear deliverable, minimal fluff
Designed to be completed, not “consumed someday”
Why I use this approach: My most successful course
When I sold online courses, my most successful course that students consistently finished and provided ~4.8 star ratings had a simple format.
Short Lesson 90 seconds - 3 minute slide-based video
Quick quiz to assess what they loved most
This course had about 20 lessons, so it wasn’t a mini course by definition, but it was something that people would often finish in a couple days or a week. And they couldn’t get enough—students wrote me to ask about more lessons! What made the course appealing was that each lesson was self-contained. They would learn something, and immediately apply it, generating confidence, a sense of achievement, and desire to do it again. I don’t know why I ever strayed from this format, but as I get ready to design and launch courses again for the first time in 10 years, there’s a few things I’ve learned from this course that I plan to keep in practice.
Mini Courses of 5-7 Lessons
I am keeping it simple and breaking up what used to be very long courses, such as SEO or Build an Online Course into smaller topics, such as Keyword Research and Placement and Creating a Course Outline. In my coaching practice, I learned that my students felt overwhelmed with being present of a list of tasks to work through, but giving them small bites, like work on a list of topics for your course, or create a list of keywords, was doable. So, I’ve decided to take the same approach in My DIY courses. Each course is 5-7 lessons and can be completed over the course of 5-7 days, or in a couple hours by a motivated learner who wants to do it all at once.
Activities After Every Lesson
When I’ve taken courses or looked at course structure and outline guides, most recommend 2-3 activities over 24 lessons, or an activity every few lessons. Going back to what I learned with my most successful course, breaking up each video with an activity allows the learner to connect and solidy their knowledge of each topic. Take a skills-based course, like SEO. A mini-course on keyword research and placement may look something like this:
Lesson: Choose Keywords | Activity: Learner brainstorms keywords
Lesson: Evaluate Keywords with SEO tool | Activity: Plug the keywords you brainstormed into Moz to evaluate their performance
Lesson: Keyword Placement in Blog Posts | Activity: Learner applies keyword placement strategy in blog posts
And it continues. The point is that the learner is applying what they’ve just watched in a video, and each lesson and video is short enought to complete in one hour or less.
Backward Design
Backward design is a framework, which naturally elicits the lesson + acitivty model. Designing courses with backward design is skills based. You begin by asking.
What do I want my learners to be able to do after completing this course?
For this example, let’s say it’s write a resume. The end goal. What the learner will end with is a resume. But, in order to write a resume there a list of other skills the learner should have:
A summary or intro section
5-7 summary bullets for each job
Education, certificates, and training
List of skills
For certain resumes: a list of publications, awards, projects, or volunteer work
For each of these areas, you create an end goal or activity. For the first section, the first lesson may explain how to write a compelling 200-300 character entry that tells resume readers who you are and what you’re looking for. The activity would be writing this summary. By the time you finish these five lessons, you’ll have a resume. You may also dedicate a few lessons to logistics, such as choosing a resume template, or online resume-builder tools, such as Teal, which happens to be one of my favorites!
The most important thing to remember about Backward Design is that each course should have an end goal, and each lesson should you have a sub-goal that gets the learner closer to the end goal.
Bundles/Pathways for Your Courses
I recently stumbled upon an author who builds what she calls “tiny courses.” I loved all the topics, but I couldn’t figure out how they went together. What do I do first? In the end, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t buy a single course.
I think what led me to build these big courses was the idea that there was a clear pathway toward a goal. But, overtime I realize that learners don’t always need every item in that path. Sometimes they have all of the content, but need a good resource to help them curate the content or build an outline or vice versa. That said, it’s a good idea to buid suggested paths and bundles for your courses, so learners can build on their skills. Provide a starting point, and suggest where to go next. Learners should be able to see this before buying courses.
Thinkific, and many other platforms allow you to bundle your courses in this way.
Get Started With Your Mini Course
The Framework
As you build your mini course, here’s a few things to keep in mind:
One outcome, one audience. Focus on a single skill and one audience. Write a resume rather than master the job search.
Fewer concepts, demonstrated learning. Instead of sharing everything, focus on demonstrating how to do the skill.
Less Telling. More showing. Don’t talk at learners during your lessons. Share your screen. Focus on examples.
More Optional Resources. Offer links to optional templates, checklists, tools, and recommend reading for learners who want more.
How to Choose a Topic
If you don’t know where to start, consider the following ideas to build your first course.
It should solve a problem you have solved repeatedly
It should answer the most common question your clients ask
The learner should be able to finish in one sitting or one weekend
You should be able to provide a template and examples from experience
Ready to build your mini course?
I’d love to know your mini course idea! Send me a message with your course idea (audience + your ideal outcome) and I’ll reply with some feedback. Or you can request access to my free course to Build Your Mini Course Outline.