📚 Why You Should Provide Additional Resources With Your Course
It might be extra work, but it adds value and pays off!
With teaching moving online, course creators have the freedom to use more mediums to teach. Talking head videos, animation, Powerpoint decks, screen recordings… all appropriate for different kinds of courses. But some things are common to all these mediums, like additional resources in the form of articles, textbooks, and external links.
But why prepare additional reading material and share resources at all?
10% of students in an online course will read the minimum amount required to complete assignments.
80% will read what is assigned
6% will look for extra resources for help
4% will go through all the material you post
For the students in those last 2 groups, you’ll need extra resources they can work with.
But can’t students do their own research?
Right after they finish your course, students will still feel a bit lost and perhaps overwhelmed. In such time, it’s best if you provide them with the right information for further research, rather than them still being new to the subject and finding wrong information online.
And we all know the internet is not to be trusted all the time!
External links to helpful videos and tutorials, journal articles, etc., are easy to add and make a huge difference to students who might need a little extra help.
A variety in learning resources also helps students with different styles of learning absorb information. Some may require visuals while others are happy reading.
✍️ How do I do it?
Chances are, you already have a library of information on your laptop, sitting in excel sheets or folders. Take a day out to organize everything and share the lists and files as relevant to your course.
For example, I am currently making a course on Film Theory. Now I have a ton of material pertaining to story and character arcs, linear and paradigmatic time, genres, narrative styles, the list goes on. This content was all jumbled up in one folder titled “Theory”.
There were some extremely important articles in this folder, and some very outdated at students didn’t need to know. So I took some time out to organize all the readings and color code them by relevance. The most relevant ones have made it to the final course!
Let me know if you’d like an in-depth look at how I structured and wrote for the Film Theory course!
You can also build your resource list as you research and write your course. You might not use all the information in the textbook you pull content from, but it might make an interesting read for the more curious students.
Plus, you can add to your library of resources for the students as newer information comes out! For example, if you are teaching a course on how to get started on investing in cryptocurrency, the subject will always have new information to discuss. And while you can’t keep going back to update your actual course videos, you can always add new articles and studies to the shared resource library so your students stay up-to-date on the market.
Once the students have an understanding of what to look for and how to filter out the false information, they are better prepared to apply the teachings of your course in real life. Until then, a little help goes a long way!
You can provide all the relevant links and materials in the concluding chapter of your online course. To learn other important things to include when wrapping up your course, check out this article!
If you’re thinking of creating a course and need some guidance on structuring and scriptwriting, you can contact me through my website! I offer additional services like branding, animation, voice-over, and promotional content creation.