Almost everyone has nightmares, but for most college students, essay writing is the bane of their existence. This explains why a lot of students often hire professional essay writers to help them out.
As a teacher, you’ve probably seen your fair share of badly written essays and excuses from students who just couldn’t be bothered to write their essays. Thus, in-depth courses for essay writing are a real necessity that any student or budding essay writer will appreciate.
But how do you create a course and start dishing out essay writing lessons? Well, this article will show you everything you need to know about starting a course for essay writing in seven steps.
Pick a Platform
In today’s world, there are tons of free and paid platforms where teachers can host their courses. For starters, you could choose a popular platform that already has an in-built audience such as Udemy or Coursera. You could also create an online course and host it on your very own website.
Alternatively, you could create an online chat room using apps like Zoom where you’d meet students online at specific times, teach them in real time, and answer any questions they may have.
Write Your Course
Now that you’ve chosen a platform, it’s time to write the course. You should note that your selected platform determines the format you’ll create the course in. For instance, if you select a platform like Coursera, you’ll need to create video scripts and record essay writing practice lessons.
When writing the course, it’s important to take a number of factors into consideration and follow these steps:
- Start at the very beginning: When writing your course, bear in mind that your audience is made up of beginners who don’t know the intricacies of essay writing. Don’t jump to complicated concepts or practices immediately. Instead, ease them into the process and gradually introduce them to the complicated aspects of essay writing.
- Break down content: Whether you’re creating a video or written course, it’s important to break it down into smaller clumps. This way, your students will find it easier to absorb and assimilate new knowledge.
- Make a glossary of new terms: If there are any new terms your students haven’t heard of before, make a glossary at the beginning or middle of the lesson.
Edit
After writing the course, you will need to edit it and ensure that it’s easy for your audience to grasp. If it’s a written course, try to look out for grammatical errors and readability problems. You can read it out loud to help you spot errors faster.
Alternatively, you could get a group of colleagues to read or view your course or writings and let you know what they think about it.
Add Extra Resources
It’s not enough to create an essay writing course and just dish it out. After all, there are tons of other courses available online, so why should students choose yours?
To make your essay writing course stand out from the crowd, you’d need to add a few extra elements, such as:
- Bonus materials on related topics like creative writing or research
- Frequently asked questions and answers
- Worksheets
- Assignments (For instance, you could ask students to write an opinion essay about learning models in the 21st century)
- Links to external resources that your students will find helpful.
When adding extra elements to your course, ensure that they are relevant and useful to the readers.
Market Your Course Online and Offline
So you’ve created a magnificent course. How do you get people to actually take the course? Well, it’s simple. Market it as aggressively as the evil queen marketed her poisoned products to Snow White.
You could start by promoting and advertising the course across all social media platforms. In the same vein, try to network with your target audience – students – and then market the course to them.
Interact with Students
After setting up the course, ensure that you interact with your students every step of the way. This way, you can make a lasting impression on them even after they have completed the course.
A large number of students often get distracted and then completely forget about their online courses. As such, you could start by setting up alerts to remind the students about the course or milestones they’re yet to complete.
You could also get them to sign up to your mailing list in order to get further notifications or helpful resources in the future.
Ask for Feedback
It’s important to find out what your students think about your course or teaching methods. Ask them to fill out a survey about the essay writing course.
It’s okay to soak in whatever positive comments they may have about the course. However, pay close attention to complaints and identify areas that need improvement.
Bottom Line
Starting an essay writing course is actually easier than most people think. All you need to do is choose the perfect platform, create and polish your course, and then go on to market it.
We hope this step-by-step guide was helpful for you. Good luck!
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