How can I build an online course on data science?

Hi! As you want to build an online course on data science, I would assume while answering, that you are familiar with the basics of Software Engineering. Why?

Software Engineering includes the development and building of software and applications. It tells about the SDLC that is the Software Development Life Cycle, which includes all the steps of developing software from scratch until that software remains in the market. These steps outline the answer to your question:

1: Planning: Brainstorm what specifically you want to teach, and to what degree. A lot of this is deciding on a very specific audience. Beginners to data science, experts in a certain segment of the field, etc. Then consider your overall project goals. Do you want to create a consistent source of income? Launch briefly at a high price to an exclusive, high-paying student base? You decide all of this beforehand.

2:  Analysis: What is your competition? More importantly, what is your competition missing or how are they underperforming? Where do they fall short, in ways that your course won’t?

3:  Design: The most fun part, usually. Recording videos, writing chapters, creating the content of your course, and refining it.

4: Implementation: Just a fancy word for launching your course. I recommend pre-launching to a small group of loyal, interested customers if possible, to get feedback because then you move on to…

5: Testing and Integration: Even after a pre-launch, you may discover little things that need to be changed, either in the course itself or the marketing strategy. Figure these things out once you launch, make changes quickly, and keep going to capitalize on the initial excitement.

6: Maintenance: Like most digital products, courses can stay relevant for years after their release with updates and revisions.

The more literal information, like what sites to use to build and host a course, is easy enough to look up. You must have heard that good software is the result of the best software engineering practices. Well, the intent of telling you this is that similar steps apply to build a digital product like an online course. A course, at its heart, does not really have different launching or building rules compared to other digital products.

For building digital products, people usually ignore the inspiration from SDLC, and the result could be a drastic failure, even if the products have valuable content.

Honestly speaking, when I was into building my first digital product ever,  I had put the best of information I had into it, after doing heavy research and also considering the guidance of experts. That product failed.

I got introspective, trying to find out what went wrong. Concluding that I had been too shy with the marketing, I relaunched that product while spending a considerable amount of time and money on marketing strategies. For its content, I was sure I had something good enough, so I didn’t work on that aspect. Well, after marketing that product again, no doubt there had been initial sales, but overall results were mediocre.

It was then, an acquaintance of mine who happens to be a digital product designer with a reputed IT company suggested me to use SDLC. Since he was expecting me to teach myself, so he didn’t tell me what exactly to change. After that, my curiosity of finding a method for digital product design and development, and only then executing on a plan I knew would work, increased drastically.

Around the same time, I was lucky enough to also find Perfect Product Creation(PPC), as I had been already using some other products from the same developers. The reason I count myself lucky is, had I not found that I would have certainly dropped the idea of building any digital product in the future. The reason for that is: even though I followed the SDLC to the letter, I was working in a high-competition niche where everyone else was doing that as well. PPC was the secret weapon that turned my product from a break-even project to a money earner.

If you are seeking a method to build an online course on Data Science, and get the maximum return on your invested time and marketing spend, PPC can do that. Or, it would be better to say, you would be doing that almost effortlessly after learning from PPC. To be clear, it would teach the ways of building digital products in any niche. It goes very deep into what makes a digital product, including courses, stand out and sell again and again.

PPC is only an hour-long, but I was very impressed with the concise and insightful knowledge within. You can implement its teachings on any topic of an online course in the future, not just Data Science. I believe that learning something that stays with you for the future is an intelligent investment of time and money, especially if you’re going to be teaching others as a business venture. It’s just like building a bridge so that you need not swim, again and again, to cross a river.

Anyways, keeping in mind the length of this answer, which is already a bit long, I would recommend you read my honest review post on Perfect Product Creation. That post would give you more information.

Before I conclude, I would recommend you to follow any systematic method that you find appropriate for designing and building your online course, but please don’t proceed without planning.

I look forward to checking out your online course. Feel free to share that with me once it’s ready.

Send me a reply if you need more information on that post or any of the points discussed above.

Good Luck!

Thanks,

Cleo