This course is designed for students who are thinking about creating online courses. In this course, you will learn about the 4 main styles you can put together in a course. You may use one of these for the entire course or you may decide to use more than one. The final choice is yours. This course will present 4 styles in a program’s design. This way you will discover the advantages and disadvantages of each technique. 

The four styles are as follows:

1) Bobbing Head Style – This is when you are speaking directly into the camera. This is very similar to teaching a class through Zoom. In this case, you will record yourself talking directly into your camcorder as if you were instructing from your desk.

2) Screen Share Style – This style is used when you are teaching a lesson by showing your student how to do something from your computer’s desktop. This is commonly seen when you are speaking while showing how to do something that involves visual learning from your screen. A common way to record yourself is through the use of a program called Zoom or some other screen share program. A PowerPoint presentation would fall here due to you sharing your slides on your screen as you are also giving your speech.

3) On-Stage Style – This is a very broad style that may incorporate a multitude of different ways of training. Typically you are more than a foot away from your camcorder and you are teaching your students how to do something. This could be like a Do It Yourself video where you are showing how to complete a task.  This also could be you in front of the camera where you are a couple of feet away. This may mean using a whiteboard or something similar to that. This may also mean a professional recording where you are on a stage in front of a room of people. This style just means you are further away from the camera than sitting at a desk. 

4) Slide Show Style – Unlike a PowerPoint presentation, here you are creating your slides and then you will record your audio separately. You will later combine your audio and your slides together with a video editor. This style is the one where you can fix errors and have the most control over the finished lesson. Because of this, the Slide Show Style will be the most time-intensive and will take considerably more time than the other three styles. 

Each style has its own advantages and disadvantages. Some will give you great control over the finished product while others will give you very little control. You will have to decide is which is best for you. This may include a combination of more than one. Giving up control over the final product is usually accomplished a lot more quickly but it does come with a cost of the loss of control over the final results. This course is very intense as we will go through the step-by-step logistics of each technique. We will cover the hardware and software you will need. The software is all free (at the time of this recording) and the hardware is strongly recommended but you may get away with not buying some of these items which will most likely make your job of recording, editing, and presenting a bit more cumbersome. Enjoy the show. I sincerely hope this helps you to make your online programs a lot more successful.