To teach someone effectively with digital courses I believe they MUST be blazingly fast, each segment targets one specific detail, gets straight to the point, delivers what they need to know to do the thing, and move on immediately.

I’m currently making courses on what I know well to teach others, both beginner and experienced, what I enjoy and what I will be using in the future. I will update the courses when new content is added since I will be using these things personally.

I will make them to my specifications of 1 topic, fast paced and showing exactly what you need to do. I think this will work for many people because after researching the state of courses, there are countless reviews that simply go by “get to the point omg” or “2 minutes for an intro, give me my time back”.

Everyone has seen those courses/tutorials where the intro is absurdly long. Where a tutor will read documentation at you in the video (and you realize it is the equivalent of a lecturer reading off of a presentation they prepared 30 minutes earlier).

Here’s what I mean

This is a 24 hour course on learning Svelte. Now I understand Svelte. I use it frequently, and I can tell you that a 24 hour course is nonsensical. It’s as if you want to bore people or you’re droning on for watchtime purposes.

The coach is nice, clear and approachable for beginners, he has gone to a great effort with the narration, but the pacing, reiteration of subject matter and lack of highlighting with editing makes it a laborious course to watch. Very few will watch the entire 24 hours, you’re better off slogging through the documentation.

I believe the entire course could be 2 hours maximum given the appropriate editing.

What I am going to do is remove as much baloney out of the sandwich. Give you exactly what it does, what it is, how it works, and why it is this way in under 2 minutes or less.

The rules for my upcoming courses

  • Short intros, jump into the how/why instantly, they do not want a title card explanation for 2 minutes
  • Zoom in, doesn't matter if it's coding, spreadsheets or editing, zoom in so your students don't have to go full screen
  • Show them and edit each bit with a method of explanation, show and tell, not tell, wait, and then show
  • Make each topic a maximum of 2 minutes, blazingly fast tutorials
  • Do not reiterate known subject matter unless necessary to connect to relevant knowledge
  • Use Adobe Premiere Pro for the bulk of footage and narration
  • Use Adobe After Effects to highlight areas, and use custom zoom transitions to guide your students
  • Use Adobe Audition to clear your audio, people want nice instructions not a buzzing sound in their headphones
  • Keep people active with gifs, mini stories, quick references and jokes (it will help those with ADHD stay on track)

The benefit of making a course 1-3 hours maximum is that with the highlighted topics which are directly spoken about and taught, a student can go back to that exact video and jump in again.

The bottleneck to compress courses is of course a high amount of editing. I understand many people dislike editing, however, you have to eat your vegetables before getting to the meat on your plate.

It’s worth it for your students for you to edit and compress all the information into a neatly compiled product ready for people to learn fast with because again, these lengthy courses, despite being well approached by teachers, are laborious, and learning should be fun and challenging, you want them to keep on watching and making progress with the fundamentals. At least, this is what I want, and it’s what I like watching, thus it’s what I’m going to make.