The internet has changed the way the physical world functions. Nowadays, everyone who is connected to it is granted access to countless services and opportunities.

The educational sphere is the one that has undergone the most qualitative changes since any type of educational course, workshop, and schooling can be easily accessed through any type of connected device.

If you are willing to join the team of online educators and spread your knowledge worldwide, follow our guide to learn all the main steps to perform and understand how eLearning is tightened to E-commerce website design and development.

Why Create an Online Course?

There are several benefits to online education, including:

• It enlightens people regardless of age, location, and capabilities.
• Its efficiency is 60% higher than traditional approaches.
• Due to a more targeted approach, students learn the material faster by 30-40%.

The overall E-learning audience coverage is expected to reach 57 million by 2027, with the profitability reaching $370 billion by 2026. Therefore, while being the primary tool for education nowadays, eLearning is also a profitable venture for its creators.

How to Create an Online Course?

The success of the course depends on the level of its proficiency, the functionality of digital solutions, and marketing.

Choose the topic

Udemy, Coursera, Moodle, EdX, MasterClass – these are trailblazers of global educational content, which cover all the possible topics to learn. Therefore, when getting down to course creation, it is important to be ready for a high level of competition, and a rather tough way toward top searches and wide audience coverage.

When considering ideas for course creation, make sure they will have distinctive features compared to already existing ones, and meet the current demand of a certain industry.

Type of the course

Online courses are available in different forms and formats. The most typical division is a mini-course, a multi-day course, and a long-term course.

A mini-course targets one specific skill and can consist of up to 10 videos, lectures, or e-mails. The overall duration of the course shouldn’t exceed a few hours. Oftentimes, mini-courses serve as the introduction to the main course and a great tool to attract new learners. The price doesn’t go over $100, or it can be offered as a free course.

A multi-day course targets a bigger area of knowledge and requires up to seven days for completion. The materials include a video list, worksheets, checklists, quizzes, and any other type of supplementary tools. The price range gets higher, starting from $250.

A long-term course is a series of educational materials that can last more than a few months. It provides the students with extensive knowledge and expertise in certain areas. The pricing starts from $300. A long-term course requires decent skills in course creation to build a system of knowledge, break down the topics, categorize the knowledge, etc.

It is best to start with mini-courses and learn how everything works, and then gradually move on to more extensive forms. Besides, when starting with a mini-course, you have better chances to attract new learners and introduce them to your product.

Content creation

Educational content can be presented in the form of videos, lectures, presentations, photos, e-mails, quizzes, etc. While all the types possess different characteristics, there is one thing that should unite all of them – quality.

Considering the high level of expectations from users, the quality of all the materials should be beyond reproach.

Digital tools

Once the content is created it is time to share it online and organize the whole learning process.

The first step is to adopt a learning management system (LMS) – a type of software that helps with the administration, delivery, tracking, and reporting of educational materials. The most recognizable are LearnUpon, iSpring, Absorb, Talent LMS, etc. While sharing the same purpose – learning management – they offer different solutions to the way the course is presented to the customer.

The second step is the integration of your course and LMS with leading eCommerce platforms, like Shopify, to make the product accessible for purchasing. The integration can be performed with the help Shopify web development services, which will ensure the seamless performance of your eLearning store.

Marketing

After mastering the course, and all the supporting materials, it is time to start a promotional campaign, which will make your product visible to the target audience. Social media posts, guest posts, advertisements, influencer marketing, word of the month – everything will work perfectly to establish the online visibility of the course.

You can also target Internet resources like Quora and Reddit, as Internet users often use them to search for proper courses.

When just starting the eLearning business, it’s important to offer free courses and discounts for the customers, to let them see the value of the product, and thus, proceed with full-payment courses.

The Bottom Line

eLearning is one of the most developing industries nowadays. While offering tremendous benefits to our society, and bringing knowledge to all people regardless of distance and age, it also is a source of profit for its creators.

The course creation consists of a few major steps:

• Outlining the idea of the course for a specific target group.
• Choice of course type and content creation.
• Selection of the Learning Management System, to host your materials, and its further integration with the E-commerce platform, like Shopify, to sell the courses.
• Marketing.

When following these basic steps, you are sure to create an eLearning course that will meet a specific demand of the customers, reach a wide audience of users, and improve the financial benefits.

If you found this helpful, try out Online Math and English Games to Help Kindergarten Students. 

Featured image credit: Muhamad Chabib alwi, iStock. 

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There’s a myth that pervades online college programs. Many believe that it’s cheaper to deliver, and that cost saving is passed down to students in a reduced online tuition. A professor, for example, might record lectures for a given class once and reuse them for several years, saving time that would have been spent preparing and teaching. An online course can also host many more learners than can fit in the biggest lecture hall in the world.

This myth is perpetuated by many online degrees that are cheaper than their on-campus analogs. On Tuesday, Champlain College Online reduced its online undergraduate tuition by 50 percent to $318 per credit, effective Fall 2018. Pennsylvania residents attending Penn State pay $18,346 per year, while online students play just $13,484. Examples of online tuition costing less than an on-campus equivalent are myriad, but it does not necessarily reflect on the quality of education.

Online Tuition Often Costs the Same as On-Campus. Often, Online Students Pay More.

A study published last year by the WICHE Cooperative for Education Technologies (WCET) surveyed nearly 200 educators and administrators who “are on the front lines of offering distance courses.” They found that, “more than half (54.2%) of our respondents report[ed] that distance students pay more than on-campus students when tuition and fees are added. About three-quarters (75.1%) of institutions who completed the study indicated that tuition was the same, but the added fees continue to result in the price to students of distance courses being more.”

The survey also looked deeper into the issue of the various costs associated with distance programs. Researchers identified 21 different factors in four general categories: preparing, teaching, assessing students, and supporting faculty and students. When asked about how these match up with the costs of on-campus courses, the results were again counterintuitive:

“The results reveal that for twelve (57.1%) of the components the respondents thought there was no difference in the costs. For nine (42.9%), of the components respondents thought that distance courses cost more and, in some cases, much more. Respondents did not identify a single component of a distance course at their institution that costs less.”

True, WCET’s sample of respondents isn’t huge or necessarily representative, but their results are surprising nonetheless.

Getting Into the OPM Market Is Risky Business

Last week, we reported on the current state of the online program management (OPM) sector. Many colleges bringing their courses online will typically hire a third party to perform various tasks such as building their digital infrastructure, taking care of IT support, marketing their courses, and, in some cases, even designing their curricula.

But what’s most surprising about OPMs is that their field, compared with others in education and tech, is incredibly difficult and risky. OPMs—and by association, universities—face such a high upfront cost that the typical OPM contract involves a revenue-sharing agreement that usually ranges between 40% to 60% of what a university makes on their online course. What’s more, it often takes years before universities begin to break even with their online courses. A typical OPM contract will last 10 years.

Despite these high costs, online programs still vary just as widely in tuition and fees as on-campus programs. In a university climate where tuition has doubled or even tripled in the past thirty years, there’s no shortage of pressure to offer tuition at a lower cost. The colleges that lower the cost of their online programs need to make up for that reduction in price somewhere. Still, while some cut corners to deliver a cheaper education, others don’t. Champlain College did not hire an OPM to create their online classes. They don’t offer white-labeled curricula. Their online class sizes are often smaller than on-campus, and they seek to give each of their students – regardless of their medium of study – the same attention and effort.

There’s another myth about online education: it’s lower in quality. Many hardworking educators actively debunk this myth on a daily basis. But considering the high costs of both bringing a course online and the feverish rise in tuition, these educators and administrators face serious headwinds. It’s easy to look to other, cheaper online programs and draw conclusions.

The post The Cost of Online Tuition: It’s Complicated appeared first on eLearningInside News.

Online courses, with their lower costs and availability, typically attract a more diverse crowd than brick-and-mortar four year institutions. Among online course participants in a 2017 Georgia Tech Computer Science course, for example, the percentage of women and ethnic minorities enrolled was double the national average. But a new study conducted by Stanford researchers suggests that the issues of diversity, discrimination, and equity in online courses go far beyond mere enrollment.

In the new report, “Bias in Online Classes: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” researchers looked into whether or not students and instructors displayed racial or gender biases in online courses. In 124 different MOOCs, the authors “tested for the presence of racial and gender biases in these settings by creating fictional student identities with racial- and gender-connotative names, having these fictional students place randomly assigned comments in the discussion forums, and observing the engagement of other students and instructors with these comments.”

Diversity Doesn’t Always Mean Inclusion

One might expect in-person prejudice to translate equally into an online setting, but that is not the case. When it came to students answering students, there were no major statistical anomalies. Students were slightly more likely to answer others of the same demographic. (Of all backgrounds, white women were the most likely to do so.)

But when it comes to the instructors answering students, a clear anomaly came to light. Instructors were 94% more likely to respond to comments made by white male students.

Significant evidence supports the presence of such bias in brick-and-mortar education. According to the authors, “boys generally receive more attention and comments from instructors than girls in primary education … There is also evidence that teachers treat Black students more negatively than White students … and reinforce social aspects of behavior for Black girls while highlighting academic behaviors of White girls.” These biases have been documented in all levels of education.

Sources of Discrimination

The authors cite three potential sources for bias in education. The first is a more inherent sentiment that reflects throughout society and is difficult to consciously recognize. The second is “intentional, explicit discrimination.” The third could be described as racial profiling. In explanation, the authors cite another scholar, who writes, “skin color or sex is taken as a proxy for relevant data not sampled.”

This study is one of the first of its kind. The authors write, “Discussions of equity in online education tend to focus on either how their comparatively low cost and online delivery can broaden access or, conversely, on how the uneven distribution of computer hardware and broadband connections inhibits the realization of this promise (i.e., the digital divide). However, we know of little evidence that examines issues of equity within online classrooms. Our study is motivated by the view that this is an important omission in the literature on online learning environments.”

This study changes the narrative of online courses. True, there is no doubt that they expand access to education to marginalized communities. According to College Atlas, many ethnic and racial minorities in the U.S. are overrepresented in online courses. While black Americans makeup 12.7% of the U.S. population, they constitute 19% of learners studying online. What’s more, 70% of online learners are women.

The new Stanford report highlights the fact that the question of equality in higher education doesn’t stop with enrollment. While it manifests in different ways, remote students, too, experience bias just as their in-person peers do.

The post New Study Finds Discrimination and Bias in Online Course Forums appeared first on eLearningInside News.

With any frontier comes an environment of lawlessness. Whether it was the discovery of the New World in 1492 or the American West, extralegal practices gradually gave way to systems of law and order. Outer space, the final frontier, is no different. There hasn’t been a precedent for human activity in space until recently.

But as private companies join nations as space-going entities, Elon Musk foretells of a human colony on Mars, and David Cameron lays plans to mine asteroids, the need for space law has become more and more pressing.

That’s why this summer, Cleveland-Marshall School of Law (CMSL) will offer an online course all about legal matters in space. “Space Law: A Global View,” will go over the basics of human rules governing the astral plane, its history, and how it applies to private and government ventures in space.

Beyond the Basics of Space Law

According to CMSL’s site, “Students attending the course will receive a broad education in space law starting with the overarching international treaties that govern the activities of nations in space and ending with the domestic regulations of individual countries that play a major role in shaping the success of highly innovative new space companies. Other issues that will be covered include the use of force in space, liability for damage caused by space objects, questions of jurisdiction, the rescue and return of astronauts, remote sensing, property rights, asteroid mining, the allotment of orbital slots, export controls on space technology, financing space ventures, and contracting practices.”

Taught by Global Space Law Center Director Professor Mark Sundahl, it begins on the 21^st of May. Besides Sundahl’s instruction, the course will also include a variety of guest lectures. The final exam can be taken on the 11^th or 12^th of July.

The course will be taught purely online via Cleveland Marshall’s Blackboard learning management system.

This course is ‘open’: though it is designed for law students, anyone can enroll provided they pay the not-so-open price of admission ($3214.50 for Ohio residents, $4393.80 for everyone else).

The Unique Qualities of the Subject Matter

While countries have grappled with how to deal with newly traversed territory before, like bodies of water or Antarctica, space is different. There are no boundaries to define and numerous unique considerations to keep in mind.

Still, the legal matters of space date back to shortly after the first devices achieved lower earth orbit. According to Elizabeth Howell at Space.com, “In the year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the United Nations General Assembly created an ad hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOUS). In 1960, the International Institute of Space Law, a nongovernmental organization, was created to promote international cooperation in the space law-making process.”

Today COPOUS includes 77 different countries and has implemented five treaties and five principals that dictate space law. Of these, the aptly named “Outer Space Treaty” has the broadest scope. Ratified in 1967, the treaty mandates that outer space is an area in which all countries are free to explore and travel. In other words, no one can own the Moon. It also banned nuclear weapons in space and stipulated that any nation’s governing body is responsible for any damage their citizens cause in space, regardless of whether or not they’re a government space program.

Besides the burgeoning opportunities for lawyers to specialize in a new subject, the topic also has the undeniable ability to push the genre of television courtroom drama. One YouTuber has already imagined such a possibility.

The post This Summer, Take an Online Course in Space Law appeared first on eLearningInside News.

As countless online courses and programs prove, there is no typical form, method, or subject of eLearning. While MOOCs focusing on pragmatic lifestyles (like the Science of Happiness or Learning How to Learn) have grown in popularity, the online learning space has seen a surge in a different aspect of daily life: faith. Starting later this month, Chabad.org will offer ‘The Heart of Prayer,’ a short online course dedicated exclusively to Jewish prayer.

The four-part course will be led by Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan and go live starting Monday January 22 at 6:00 pm EST. New 30-minute classes will follow each week at the same time. The first lecture will answer “Why We Pray,” proceed to “The History of Jewish Prayer,” “A Tour of the Daily Prayers,” and conclude with “Guided Meditation.”

The topic of study should prove to be salient for practicing and non-practicing Jews along with interested members of the public. While a dedicated member of the Jewish faith might attend synagogue regularly, few know enough Hebrew to follow the service and understand exactly what and how they are praying. The practice of Jewish prayer stretches back thousands of years and it’s easy to misunderstand a given custom or take it out of context.

The Nuances of Jewish Prayer

“It’s a lost art,” Rabbi Kaplan says in the course’s introductory video. “In tefillah [Jewish prayer], you are the maestro,” he continues. “It’s not a passive experience where you sit back and watch the show. You are the director, and prayer is there to achieve what you want. Prayer is the service of the heart.”

Rabbi Kaplan is a lauded scholar of the siddur, the Jewish prayer book, and has published numerous books on the subject. He also lectures regularly at the University of Maryland and serves as the director of the state’s Chabad-Lubavitch. He is also the religious leader of the Shul at the Lubavitch Center in Baltimore and has appeared on numerous radio and television programs over the years. In other words, this is the Rabbi you want to learn prayer from.

The Digitzation of Faith

While an online setting will likely never replace physical institutions of faith, many leaders and believers have found digital technology to enhance their practice.

In the Christian faith, for example, many seminaries have begun to move their programs online and close their campuses. According to a recent report from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), which comprises 270 institutions in North America, online enrollment has doubled in recent years. The number of students attending brick and mortar seminaries, however, has fallen by 26%.

“The overall trends seem fairly clear,” said Tom Tanner, director for accreditation and institutional evaluation at ATS, according to Christianity Today. “[D]istance education enrollment is way up and extension education enrollment is way down.”

This summer, Fuller Theological Seminary, one of the country’s preeminent educators of future priests, shuttered three of its campuses.

“Because Fuller Online has prompted an expansion of our global footprint, these are exciting times for a seminary community … [T]he significant increase in online enrollment has been matched by a decrease in enrollment on our geophysical campuses,” stated Fuller provost Joel Green. “To offer one snapshot, while winter quarter online enrollment has increased by almost 50% from 2013-2017, enrollment on our regional campuses has decreased by about 30% during the same period.”

While new technologies impact just about every aspect of modern life, the institutions and entities that rely on tradition are often slower to change. But examples of eLearning like “The Heart of Prayer” from Chabad.org promises to supply hungry believers with the manna they seek.

The post Chabad.org Announces Online Course Dedicated to Jewish Prayer appeared first on eLearningInside News.

eLearning and online education at the university level has proven to be a solution to countless barriers separating willing students from much-needed knowledge. But while access grows, and education technology continues to develop at a rapid pace, there’s one issue that has yet to be solved: professors.

Instructors may be fond of reminding their students that the right attitude leads to success. But their attitudes towards eLearning has, by and large, remained downright icy.

This week, a study published by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup found that only 33% of professors believe that for-credit online courses could match an in-person learning environment. For every professor willing to bring their course online, there’s another who remains ambivalent and another who opposes doing so.

The good news, however, is that the tides are changing. Just one year ago, the number of teachers who disagreed that an online setting could ever match in-person tutelage sat at 55%. This year that number dropped to 35%, while the numbers of those who both agreed and remained neutral rose.

One thing that seems to have a big impact is whether or not a teacher has ever taught an online course. Between 2013 and 2017, the number of teachers who brought their class online rose from 30% to 42%. Tellingly, 7 in 10 of teachers who have taught online say that their remote class helped them develop new teaching strategies and skills.

Other metrics are more promising, such as teachers who support the inclusion of new technology in the classroom (62%), and the amount of instructors who believe that textbooks are too expensive and that more emphasis should be placed on open resources (90%).

But in general, professor ambivalence to eLearning remains strong

One big reason for this is that preparing an online course takes a lot of work. A recent study by an Australian team found that it takes teachers longer to prepare online classes compared to in-person lectures.

And yet, according to the authors, administrators believe online courses should take less work.

“In our experience,” writes Professor John Kenny of the University of Tasmania, “ the prevailing pressure from administrators is that online students take less staff time to teach, [but] staff indicate that the materials take longer to prepare.”

It is well-known that academic work is complex and difficult to quantify [but] with the lack of clear time-based standards to work with, we have noticed a managerial tendency to pile more duties, particularly compliance duties, on to the desks of academics without assessing the associated workload impact,” Kenny said.

The two studies cited above suggest that there may be some friction between teachers and administrators in general. Inside Higher Ed and Gallup found that two-thirds of professors believe that both administrators and vendors “exaggerate the potential financial benefits,” of education technology and “play down the risks to quality.”

What’s more, taking a course online has serious implications over ownership. As you might guess, it’s not favorable for teachers.

In 2014, Jeff Hoyt, assistant vice dean at Middle Tennessee State University, surveyed 110 higher education institutions about their policy regarding ownership of online courses. He found that 30% of those schools had no policy at all. Only 1 in 10 institutions let their professors maintain sole ownership over their online courses. 41% allowed for joint ownership and about a third of universities claimed outright possession.

Going above and beyond

This might explain why academics who eagerly offer their course in MOOC form are few and far between. Al Filreis, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, goes above and beyond to teach his Modern and Contemporary American Poetry MOOC. He re-films his lectures every semester and makes sure that every comment is answered within a few hours.

Professor Charles Severance from the University of Michigan was one of the first at his school to give MOOCs a try. Amazingly, he offers office hours to his remote students when he travels to new cities.

These are the efforts of academic rock stars, and it’s unreasonable to expect the average professor to voluntarily take on more work that won’t have much of a benefit for them, they may not own their online courses, and it will take more time away from their research.

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