How do you know when you have enough content?
I know, I know, you want to share everything you’ve ever learnt in your course. You want to provide them with all the answers and give massive value.
The problem is, you’ve learnt everything you know over a period of months, years and even decades. You’ve got a wealth of knowledge and experience that built up over a long time.
You can’t share all of that in one course. It’s just not possible, and if you try, you’ll just end up overwhelming your students.
So the question is, how do you know when you have enough content? When should you stop adding more?
There are 2 really important things to think about here.
1. How much does your student know already?
If your student is new to the subject and doesn’t know anything yet, then you need to focus on provide less content, and spending more time making sure that they have understood key concepts and are implementing as they go. You see, this stuff is completely new to them, so it will take them a while to get their head around some of the concepts involved.
If your student is more advanced and has been doing this for a while, then you can add more content, go into more detail and give more depth. They already have the underpinning knowledge to support it.
So, how much does your student know already?
2. How long does it take to work through your content.
As a general rule, cover no more than 1 module or topic a week. So if you have 6 topics, then you have at least a 6 week course.
In each week, you may include a couple of chunks of information.
It’s important to get someone (preferably someone with the same amount of knowledge as your students would have) to go through this content and test it (we spoke more about beta testing last week).
Get them to go through all of the chunk. Watch the video, read the PDF, DO the activity, and time themselves. How long did it take them?
Now, how much time will your students be setting aside each week to work through your course? Honestly?
If it took your tester 30 min to work through your chunk, and you know your students will set aside at least 1 1/2 hours a week for you course, then you’ve got quite a nice amount of content to fit in 3 chunks a week.
If it took your tester 3 hours to go through your chunk… and you don’t think your students will be dedicating that much time, then you might have more of an issue.
It’s important to be really realistic about how much time your students will spend on your course, and this will help you to work out if you have enough content.
I’d love to hear from you. How do you know when you have enough content?