When creating an online course, it is essential to pay attention to its promotion and ensure that many users know about it.
Promotion Tips
1. The announcement of the upcoming lecture should be published 7-10 days before its start. First, the speaker should write a free-form preview of no more than a couple of paragraphs for the lecture, a capacious description. Then you publish the announcement of the lecture on your project page.
2. Promote your announcement on social media. Ask the speaker to also post the lecture announcement in their accounts and engage their audience. Speakers should also actively promote themselves apart from joint efforts. You need to write a preview for the course, reach out to your audience, and start a discussion. It often happens that the content of a lecture or course is wonderful, it is advertised, but the author refuses to promote himself.
3. Make personal mailings. For example, within 3-5 days, send a mailing list to the audience of online and offline lectures at your university. If this is another lecture in the cycle, you should link to the previous lectures. You can write the text for the mailing yourself or contact the writing center for help. For more information, check BestCustomWriting.com.
4. One day before the start of the lecture, it is worth sending a reminder to registered users.
5. After the end of the lecture, send another mailing request to view the recording and give feedback. You can use google questionnaires to ask what is exciting and what is not and what is worth focusing on in the following lecture.
6. The speaker should start a discussion with the course participants. Often, the shell interface can ask the speaker questions before the lecture and post answers.
Before moving on to work on promotion, it is worth analyzing the target audience. Ask yourself: who will be interested in your course? Who are these people, and where do they spend their time online? Based on this analysis, you can decide exactly how and where to promote your course.
If the budget is small, but there is personal time, the author of the course can spend it on free promotion. This is posting information about your course on thematic resources, social networks, articles on relevant and related topics in the media, interviews, etc. The target audience of the site where you post information must coincide or overlap with yours.
It is recommended to run an ad campaign if the budget allows. There are many tools for segmenting your audience today. Decide which channel in your case will be successful, what costs for attracting one client will suit you, launch an advertising campaign, test, analyze, make changes, and the result will be great.
Some Tips for Making Cool Educational Videocast
On YouTube, you can find many screencasts and videocasts on a wide variety of topics, from cheese making to programming. YouTube has provided another significant opportunity to learn the best video creation techniques and apply them at home.
The instructional video should go beyond just providing instructions, such as how to create a test. Instead, the video should give the viewer confidence in their abilities and demonstrate specific examples of the application of the described actions. These tips will help you not only create great videos but encourage your audience to ask for more.
Let’s define many concepts
A podcast is a single file or series of audio or video format files.
Screencast – video recording of actions taking place on the screen; video screen capture is used as a synonym. Screencasts are often used to demonstrate work in a particular program.
Chromakey is a technology of combining several images in one video frame. It is a green screen, which, when edited, is removed, and another footage is superimposed instead.
The footage is a ready-made small video fragment containing animation or video sequence. Often, the footage contains a green or transparent background, which will allow you to embed your video frames into the finished video fragment.
1. Always create a script
It is unnecessary to draw up a script on paper with an accurate and consistent recording of each action. However, it will not be superfluous to think over the plan in advance. First of all, formulate a goal and clearly define the audience for which the video is intended. If you are reviewing a program, carefully study the purpose of each option and button using a specific example that you understand. If you are filming a training lecture, make sure it does not exceed the recommended length.
2. Be brief
Avoid repeating the same steps or explanations over and over in the instructional video. On the one hand, the viewer can always rewind the video and examine the element again. On the other hand, the pace of learning new things is different for everyone, and multiple duplications of information can annoy some advanced users.
The brevity also applies to the length of the video. Don’t make videos longer than 12 minutes. The optimal video cassette time is 5-8 minutes. If you are creating an educational video lecture, remember that one text page takes about 2 minutes to read. Therefore, a video lecture should not exceed 3-4 pages.
3. Work on diction
An unprofessional video allows some errors, including in the voice acting. Therefore, it is not necessary to use the services of a professional announcer. This is mainly justified when filming a commercial. However, you should pay close attention to your voice and especially diction. Of course, many educators on duty have a well-trained voice. But everyday speech is one thing, and audio sound is quite another. Therefore, use simple exercises to develop diction, enroll in public speaking courses, or study-related literature.
4. Attach speakers
The dynamics will make the video more concise and help keep the audience’s attention. Dynamics can be achieved in different ways:
- use emotional speech in voice acting;
- add energetic (but neutral) background music;
- increase video speed on separate fragments, etc.
Compare the two video clips with the normal and the overspeed clip. Which fragment looks more dynamic? Also, use subtitles. Practice dictates that subtitles are rarely used. However, this does not mean that they should be ignored. Don’t be afraid to experiment!
