How to make this course work for you

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

To do the work or not to do the work

Feeling tempted to skip the exercises? Sure, you could just think through your answers, but there’s solid cognitive rationale for writing them down—especially by hand. Research shows that handwriting engages the brain more deeply, boosting learning and retention compared to typing.

But guilt trips aside, here’s how to decide: If you’re looking for a broad overview of course creation using instructional design techniques, you can skip the exercises. However, if your goal is to develop a solid, well-structured course, you’ll need to put in the work. This course is designed to guide you step by step. The best part about being an adult learner? You get to decide what’s relevant and how to apply it to your own life.

Finish this course, then create your course

Go through the whole course before beginning your official course. You can practice concepts and use those ideas to build your course, but it will be most efficient for you to work through everything before you start creating your course.

Part of the rationale for this is based in learning science—you first need to understand ideas before you can apply them to create a product. It's an ascending order of cognitive development. The other reason is that you'll learn things at the end that you'll wish you'd applied to an earlier part of the process.