 My name is Kim Shibler. You can tweet me on the tweeters at Kim Shibler. Tweet to me, about me, or whatever. I will answer. I have been a tech teacher and writer for over 20 years, and I'm really excited to be here today. I will have some special goodies for you, and I'll be sharing those links with you today, because you know the hardest thing about these presentations is I have to give you 20 years of experience in 20 minutes. Ain't gonna happen. So let's get started. We're gonna talk today about online courses. I have a master's degree in education. I've been teaching for all this time, and I've been building online courses with WordPress for about three and a half years. As I said, I was late to the WordPress community. Been building HTML since 1995. Was a Drupal shop before now. And I found WordPress and loved it. So today we're gonna talk about why on earth would I want to build an online course? Why are these hot right now, and why are they just getting hotter? The really hard part, which is creating the content, the WordPress piece, I know it's WordCamp, we love WordPress, but that's my easiest piece. The creating content part is the really where you can make a difference for your customers. And then we will go over some how to build it with WordPress. And we'll see, I'm not sure how I'm doing with the internet, we've been having some internet connectivity issues. So I do have a little demo video, just in case we need to use that so we can still look at some screen grabs. And I do again have a little private online course just for you, so you can go through and see some different things. It'll actually be live tomorrow. So why build an online course? I wanna tell you a story as I go over these slides. I had my first web development company in 1995. Back then, Alta Vista was the search engine, right? And I could just take your basic printed brochure, map it out in HTML, stuff a few keywords, and get you on the front page. And everyone looked at it and went, ooh, ah, because nobody was online. But let's fast forward to now. We're almost 20 years later. And that printed brochure in HTML is not gonna fly, people. Forget getting to the front page of Google. It's about interaction, it's about engagement. We do real business online now. And that means people want to know, like, and trust you, which we can't know you unless we get to know you, unless we engage. And online courses are truly one of the best ways that you can engage with your audience. Because they give you that access to each other. Now the really cool thing is, it may even be competitive differentiation. They're hot, but look around at your competitors. They may not be there yet. You be the first ones to jump on it and make your site matter. They're awesome for tribe building. If you haven't read the blog post, A Thousand True Fans yet, please do. Oh, sure, absolutely. How's that? Thank you. Absolutely, Read A Thousand True Fans. We are looking to build our tribe. Those people who buy from us every time we put something out there. And they sell us and they share us on social media. Right? This is what people want now. We are looking for interaction and engagement and online courses can do it. And if you will take the time with your course to listen a little bit, it's the best market research you could ever have because your students will tell you what they want, what they need next, and guess what? What they're willing to pay for. So, you know, we're techies here, a lot of us, and we do things just because we can. And I love that about WordPress, that I can build it. But I'm also a business person and I want it to make a business effect to my bottom line. And that's what it can do when I listen to what my students want next. And then if you do happen to be maybe a little more introverted, not sure how much time you wanna put into this, an online course can give you the same bang for your buck with a less time commitment than building a membership site where you have to put new content up every week, every day, for years and years to come. So I'm hoping that's got in your mind, you know, I wanna build an online course. So how do I do it? The hard part and the first part is we want to create great content, right? The biggest mistakes I see with it is those of us particularly if we're in a technical topic or even someone like a great chef trying to teach someone to cook, we lose track of how much we know that other people don't. So we need to really break it down, right? There was an old joke about how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And it's same with courses. You wanna teach people everything and you should but break it down into small chunks of information where they can gather it and take it and use it. Also present in a variety of styles. I say frequently, this is not a YouTube channel. People learn best when they have a variety of inputs, audio, video, and text. Don't forget the text. We're moving beyond just a web of downloadable PDFs, but at the same time, if you're teaching someone to do something, they need those steps written out. They will learn better than just trying to go back and forward through your video to remember what you said five minutes ago. Instructional designers argue about whether or not there really are different learning styles. But we do know that if you touch people in multiple points, they learn better. And we definitely know no one learns anything if they don't do it. So make a big chunk of your class, exercises, some quizzes, but having that input with your audience, have them do it. If I'm teaching you to build a WordPress website, by the end of my class, you need to have a WordPress website up and running that you've built, because then you know how to do it. Really key, great content. So the biggest content mistakes before we move on into planning our WordPress website. Assumption of knowledge. Again, we've been doing this for 10 or 20 years. We forget what we didn't know at the beginning. Don't assume knowledge. If it's an advanced or an intermediate course and you have prerequisites, that's fine. Just be clear about them. So if you work with me on how to build an online course, I expect you to already have a WordPress website and know what a plugin is, know what a theme is, but I'm gonna tell you that up front. So make sure you do that. And one of the best things you can do when you're really launching your course, have some people that don't know what you know. Have those people that would be your students go through it. They'll tell you where you missed it because they're gonna get lost and then it's time to fix it. It's an awesome option. Engage. The biggest thing is I know we all hear about smart, you know, with these different passive income and you don't have to ever work again. Again, people want engagement. Engage with them. I just started an online course that I'm taking to learn better audio because I'm launching a podcast. Now it's all automated, it's done beautiful, it's on one of the SaaS services. Every week he has a Q and A at different times so that you're still engaged. I do it a lot of times with forums. Again, you know, I'm a WordPress geek. So I put the BBPress forums on and I have questions and answers there and also I give them homework assignments that get posted there. So we have a chance for engagement. Again, make it more than a video. Real learning is not just a YouTube video. I love YouTube. I'm a crazy cat woman. I can watch those cat videos all day long. Right? Get me started on Henry and the Le Noir cat and I just wasted my whole day. But it's not a training course. So let's really make sure we're touching people in every way we can to make sure that they're learning and getting the most out of it and don't overwhelm them. But wait, there's more. It's great and an infomercial. And I love infomercials. I'm like a Ron Popeal said it and forget it fan. Right? But that's not a training course. So let's make sure we don't overwhelm them. And here's the cool thing for you as a business owner. I do, when I work with people, we do a big brain dump. What we normally find is we have way more information than one course. Right? A course should be eight to 12 modules. Eight's better. But how cool is a business person? Cause now I've got course one, course two, course three, course four. I've got my whole product line laid out for me for the next year. So those are keys to making sure it's just really a great success for everybody. So let's move on into, all right, we wanna build it. We know we're gonna build. You guys are gonna do the best content in the world I can tell. Let's do it with WordPress. How do we do that? Well, at its base level, we could do it with just a membership site. My first two classes, I did. I used two different membership site plugins. I grabbed some other plugins that allowed for surveys and I clouched it all together. And quite frankly, it was a pain for me and probably more of a pain for my students because it just didn't flow very well. But in perfect WordPress form, we have plugins and we have courseware plugins that rock my world. So we're gonna talk about those in a minute. I also recommend and I teach people how to do multiple integrations. I love to integrate a shopping cart or a membership plugin with my courseware because it gives me more functionality. So say my course, particularly my course, I want it to be very specific, very set modules that are very doable by my students. But I might want three to five resource pages and add-ons that I still want to hide behind a membership. So it doesn't end up in that course. It's still segregated, but it helps them as they move into that next level or they want to kind of refer and build to the next level. So I love the membership sites with it. And then as we start building, I'm the crazy planner woman. I know it's tempting to just jump in sometimes and start building. But if we plan ahead, we're gonna have a better system and a better course. And some of that includes not just the plugin we're gonna use and the requirements around that, but the site structure. So the biggest question I have with that one, I was an English major, so we gotta bring a little bit of a Shakespeare in here to subdomain or not to subdomain. That is the question. So not assuming knowledge here, what's a subdomain? Well, I want you to think of it as another installation under your domain that in our case is going to be a second WordPress installation. So for my exact information, I have howtobuildanonlinecourse.com. That's my main site that's launching this weekend at WordCamp. And that will be my marketing information, my blog, et cetera. My students and my training are all under training. Howtobuildanonlinecourse.com, which is a subdomain. So you're thinking, and you're thinking, gosh, Kim, do I really want to deal with two WordPress installations and two upgrades and two updates and two securities? Yes, you would have to do all that, but here's why you might want to. One of the biggest, I would say mindset challenges I have sometimes working with students is when you become a student of one of my courses, of one of the courses, or you purchase, et cetera, you become a user within the WordPress installation and within the WordPress database. So I have to question, do I want to manage all these additional users on my main important business site? Personally, I like to keep that just me, my admins, maybe a few guest blog posts, guest bloggers, and have all my members and all my training on the subdomain. There's another benefit with that, too. You can switch out themes easier, right? So the theme that's on my marketing site may not be the best one for delivering content to people. So these are things, though, I think you can think a whole nother installation is something we want to plan ahead. I don't want to get halfway into my course and realize, dang, I need to do a subdomain. Let's back out and do that. That's gonna take some more time. So these are just big kind of questions. So we're gonna talk about three plugins. These are the three I have chosen and I have worked with for three reasons. Well, actually for two reasons and one's an add-on. They are proven. They've been out for several years. They are powerful. You could run whole universities. You could replicate Udemy Marketplace, if you know what that is, where you can actually let other instructors sell courses and you take money and pay them. And they do happen to be premium. So the prices range from $99 and up. I really say, don't make that your deciding factor. We're gonna go over the deciding factors in a minute. I will step back and say two freemium plugins have come on the market over the last year. I'm just now working with those. And I didn't include them because to me they're not proven yet. I wanna stick with proven, this is something I've been doing with these plugins for over three years. But I will be evaluating them on my website. So there's a blog post coming this weekend and a blog post coming next weekend. Let's talk about the features, which is the really important part. So let me explain this slide because I have the slides for everyone to download so you can go back to it and it's also in the planning guide. That if it's a check mark, it means it does it out of the box. If it's an E, it means it needs an extension or an add-on. And if it's a D, it means it's dependent on you selecting the right extension or add-on because that's what's going to manage it. So that could be very important as you're picking things out, right? So for example, learn dash. So I've got here WPCs, WPCourseWare, Sensei, Sensei, LD is learn dash. Learn dash is the only one that out of the box can manage the payments to access to everything. So if you're trying to limit your plugins and that's what you wanna do, you might wanna start looking at this one, right? Multiple instructors, Sensei and Learn Dash both do that. I love WPCourseWare, it's one that I use, I use all three. But if I need multiple instructors and I'm trying to build that, it's not gonna work for me. So these are things that again, pick the plugin based on your requirements, lay out your requirements first. All of them have dependencies if you wanna do affiliate tracking for sales. I do have an affiliate program with all of my classes. I use Pippin's affiliate WP and I love it. Woo-hoo! And there's a way to make it work with all of these, but it does have a dependency. So it's just something to know as you're planning. And they all three have some, each of them have some cool features. WPCourseWare has the easiest drag and drop ordering of modules, units, quizzes. You name it, you drag it, you drop it, you place it. It's there. It's why a lot of times when I interview people who've built courses, they're using it because it was a very easy way for them to get up and running. Learn Dash as I mentioned, it's the only one that within a single plugin you can sell, protect and run your courses. And we all know that sometimes we're trying to pare down our plugins. So that's super powerful. It's also, I would say, it's got a little bit of the bigger learning curve and that's cause it has the most options and the most power. So you gotta weigh what you need. Sensei has this really cool option where you can actually private message from the student to the teacher. Just right there, you're in your class, there's this little button, private message to the teacher. Remember we talked about engagement? How cool is that for engagement? When I'm working and maybe I have a question, I just click the button, it goes right to my teacher, she can answer me right back. So they all have, we've got great plugins and they've all got great features and we just have to kind of figure out which one's the best for us. And then they all do have a little bit of a learning curve, every piece of software does and every plugin does. And that is, WP course where I would say is the quick and easiest. Sensei's pretty easy. LearnDash a little bit more complex but it's really just because you have more options. So for example, everybody has the option to give certificates, right? I wanna get a little certificate when we're done that we passed. And they all have that option. LearnDash has the most flexibility. You can, you've got short codes, you can build out your certificates to look exactly like you want. You don't just have some preconfigured. You have the ability to add certificates to quizzes. So you don't have to wait till you get through the whole class. You can get those little, those guys, those little adoboes, they keep people motivated. I didn't used to think they did until I started adding the little achievements with the, you know, I got the little dog and the high cat going high five. You passed the quiz. People were like, that's great, I like that. Okay, so these options are there and those are just the things we need to consider. So let's see if we can do a demo. Well, I see my browser crashed while I was setting up. That's nice. It ain't connecting. I'll tell you what, it is still not connecting. And as I said, my browser crashed. So there's probably something to do with that. I'm gonna go right onto the video. Let's walk through it a little bit. And as I mentioned, at the end, I've got a link for you where you can walk through some courses on your own and I'm always here to answer questions. You can find me online. Let's see, let's get this guy up and running. All right, so just starting off, this is kind of a look at where you look at the courses and it's not sharing my screen. Do I need to do something audio-visual, guys, to share my screen? Where are you going back to your presentation? Nope, that's it, other than questions. All right, I'll tell you. Yeah, that's me. Do you want it full screen? Yeah, let's go full screen. All right, so let's back up just a little bit. All right, so just looking at the video. Always good to have a backup plan. This is WP Courseware and this is what you would see if you had a course listing. All of them handle courses fairly similar but they have their own terminology. So in WP Courseware, we have our training courses, our top level, then we have modules, then within our modules are our course units. In LearnDash, we have courses and lessons and topics and so each one's just a little different but the concepts are the same. So here's our listing of our modules and you can see here that I am actually using PaidMemberships Pro. I don't know if you can read that. It's telling me that new users are given access based on PaidMemberships Pro. That's what I've configured as a membership plugin to manage the connectivity. And then what I can see here if I move forward a little bit, when I go to, I just go to build and course, it's add new. You add a new module, it's just a key of the title and the associated course and a description and then everything else within it is a course unit. Now one thing I really do like about there is I'm not sure if I can see it here. The course units are just like creating a blog post and that's true of most of these guys but one thing I really love with this plugin is if you're in a blog post and you decide, man, this would be a good part of my course, all you have to do is click a box and save it and it goes over to a course unit instead of copying and pasting and moving things around. So I really, that's kind of one of my highlights there. And so let's move forward. We're running short on time and I wanna make sure you have some questions. You know, you have time for a few questions because this I can always walk you through online and you can see it there. You're not always here in the room with me. So here is the just dragging and dropping. Whoops, dragging and dropping the modules to give them the associations of where they fall. And I really love that because I don't have to plan ahead. I granted I have been a teacher for a long time but I still don't always like to plan my lesson plans ahead of time. So that's a real, a very nice option there. As we move forward from that into Learn Dash, here's where you start seeing that's a little more complex because there's just so many options. You've got course materials you can set up. You've got your different pricing options. You can sort by lessons. You've got prerequisites you can set up. And I love the ability even as you go into courses to force people to upload an assignment. And then you have the choice of whether or not that assignment is automatically approved or if you have to actually stop and grade it. And I think that there are applications for both depending on what your course entails. So those are just a few of the overviews there of the way the Learn Dash works. Move forward a few minutes. These are some of their options for quizzes. Again, all of them have the option for quizzes and quizzes are a really great way to do interaction because you can automate a lot of it. Like I can actually give you the question and when you answer the question I can tell you if it's right or wrong and why. So you get this immediate feedback which is really nice. This one, you see all the options. You have lots and lots more options than anybody else as far as the way they're numbered, the way your questions work. You can have leaderboards which is kind of, I think that's kind of cool. And so there's just some more options there. So it makes it a little more complex but it's still great. None of these, here's the way that one would work. This is the way Learn Dash would work if I came right out to the course. None of these that I'm showing in this or in the demo that you'll see, I have not tweaked the CSS at all because I wanted you to see what it looks like out of the box. But you can tweak it if you want different color buttons, you want different color text, et cetera. You've got those options throughout all of these courses. I just like to show it the way it would actually work. This one is kind of fun. So here I started my quiz. I'm in Learn Dash. I've started the quiz. You can see my class progress on the side. It just goes through. It shows me how a whole little quiz progress shows me my time that I answered the questions right. And then it gives me some points for it. And then that moves me into Sensei as we finalize before we start with our questions. So Sensei is by Woo themes. So when we get over to looking at that, you'll see that I'm using Canvas. It does work with other themes but they really like it if you use their themes. So I do. They have some of the best learner management options. I love their options here with the learner management where you could see the private messages, et cetera. And they do also have the drag and drop functionality which should show up here in a minute. This is just entering the course. Entering the course again is just like entering a post. And here you go. So you can order the modules and the lessons with the drag and drop. The one functionality they don't have with that and I've had the really nice chance to speak with Dan Johnson, the product manager. He's over in the UK. Dan, I don't know if you're watching. Their quizzes are actually attached to the lesson. So when you create the lesson and save it, if you want a quiz, you go ahead and add the questions at the bottom of that lesson. Which isn't bad but personally I like the functionality of being able to just on the fly drag and drop my quizzes because sometimes, particularly when we do what I talked about where I have other people go through them that don't know as much as I did. That's when they say this didn't make sense here. So any case that I have to change it easily is really, really helpful for me without too, too much extra work on either me or my administrative assistants. So anyway, that is all I have for the lesson and demo. I do have, before she takes questions, how to build an online course.com slash WCUS will be a private little area for you without giving me your name, your number, your email, anything, you'll be able to download the presentation as well as a planning guide to help you plan your own courses. And if you want a little bit more, there'll be a member log in where you would have to register and put your name and email address, but then you can actually walk through some sample courses yourself to see what some of the options are. The downloads are available today. The courses will be available tomorrow. That's it for me, other than questions. Thank you. So we're managing questions, I believe. I can't see, but I think there's a microphone over there in the aisle if someone has a question. Hi, I have a question. Yes. Yeah, so I haven't built an online course yet, but I do know WordPress and I have been a technical trainer. So if you were me and you were just starting out, which of these platforms would you start with? Which would you choose? And my second part of the question is, which emerging software would you look at? Would it be Zippy Courses or BrainMaker? Okay, those are good questions. All right, so the first one, being a tech trainer, what would you start with? The first thing I would do is go through the planning guide and see what your requirements were. Because for example, maybe you want some other trainers to be able to come online with you and have their own grade book. So that's gonna immediately knock out one person. So I would really, I hate to sound like a broken record, but I really would go through your requirements list. And if you go through your requirements list and email me, I will help you figure out which one is best, I'm happy to do that. But it really is, it's got to be based on yours. As far as the others, the BrainMaker platform, if anyone doesn't know is a, it's a fully hosted, fairly expensive platform that does a little bit of everything. My personal is, I'm a little bit of a control freak. So the fact that they limit what I can do when I'm on their platform is not my preference. But that does need to be a more of a personal choice and we will be doing a little more deep dive into it. Zippy courses I have taught in the past, I would say it is the most limited out of the ones that I've spoken about today. It's the most expensive, the most limited and it's not GPL licensed. So we don't actually usually recommend it from the WordPress stage. Thank you. One more question, sorry folks. Have you used Moodle and if so, can you give a brief comparison of the two? Sure, I used Moodle long before I used WordPress. And so Moodle is just 100% a online training platform. So it's not integrated the way we were talking about, I already have a WordPress website, I'm comfortable with WordPress. So you're gonna have a bigger learning curve because it's something completely new. And frankly, I think Moodle was awesome when it first started, but now I think our WordPress courseware plugins are dwarfing it as far as the functionality, et cetera, and still being easy for people, particularly teachers to learn. When I worked with other instructors, Moodle, if you were not really technical, just seemed to be, my people had problems with it. That's all I can say of my personal experience. Anything else? Thanks, I will be here all weekend, so grab me in the hall if you have other questions and see me online, thank you.