3 Details to Check Before Publishing Your Course (+ how to fix them)
If you’re working on or have published an online course, chances are you’ve been working on it for a while! When you work on something for a while, it can be easy to overlook small details that might make a big difference to your audience. After years in the industry and lots of courses made, here are a few details that I’ve learned can make a huge difference in the overall professionalism of your course. I’d recommend reading through each detail, and then checking your own course to see if you’ve missed anything!
Detail 1: Check for inconsistent capitalization in lesson/module/content titles
Consistent casing throughout lesson/module/content titles can make a HUGE difference in how professional your course looks (and tbh I’ve struggled with it in the past!) It’s usually not something most people think about as they write/publish their courses. Capitalization in titles seems like such a small detail that people won’t notice. But they will! Let’s take a look at an example course outline that uses inconsistent capitalization in the lesson titles. Then, let’s see how to fix it!
Example course outline:
Lesson 1: Get started with Google sheets
Lesson 2: Build Out Your First Spreadsheet
Lesson 3: Add a formula to your New sheet
What’s wrong here?
Take a second to think about what’s wrong with these three lesson titles. Notice that in each of the lessons, the capitalization is inconsistent. Lesson 1 uses sentence case (first letter is uppercase), Lesson 2 uses title case (all words capitalized), and Lesson 3 randomly capitalizes the word ‘New’.
How do we fix it?
Option #1 with sentence case:
Lesson 1: Get started with Google Sheets
Lesson 2: Build out your first spreadsheet
Lesson 3: Add a formula to your new sheet
Option #2 with title case:
Lesson 1: Get Started With Google Sheets
Lesson 2: Build Out Your First spreadsheet
Lesson 3: Add a Formula to Your New Sheet
Bonus: I recently learned about this tool, Capitalize My Title, where you can just paste your title, pick the casing you want, and VIOLA! It shows you the proper capitalizations for it.
Detail 2: Check for inconsistent word choice
As you edit your course, make sure to check for consistent word choice. Using synonyms, or words/phrases that mean exactly the same as another word/phrase you’ve used can be confusing for your audience. Mostly because they may not know the context in which you are using that synonym. I know this may seem counterintuitive, but different words mean different things to different people, so I recommend staying consistent. Let’s look at an example:
Example:
“As you build out your website, keep your end-user in mind. Customers prefer clean, easy-to-use interfaces as they browse. Visitors should be able to navigate through your site easily and intuitively.”
What’s wrong here?
Notice that we are using ‘end-user’, ‘visitor’, and ‘customer’ interchangeably. This can be confusing for someone reading this because they may not know if the end-user, visitor, and customer are all referring to the same concept or if they mean different things entirely.
How do we fix it?
“As you build out your website, keep your customer in mind. Customers prefer clean, easy-to-use interfaces as they browse, and should be able to navigate through your site easily and intuitively.”
Note: If you want to include similar words within your course, (e.g. end-user, visitor, and customer), make sure you let your audience know by saying something along the lines of “In this course, I will be using end-user, visitor, and customer interchangeably.”
Detail 3: Check for inconsistent punctuation
The final thing to check for is consistent punctuation - more specifically, periods. I know it seems like a small detail, but it can make it seem like your course wasn’t thoroughly edited! The most common place I see inconsistent punctuation is within:
Bulleted lists
Lists of steps
Lesson/module/course titles
Image captions
Let’s take a look at an example.
Example:
Step 1: Navigate to your Account page.
Step 2: Click on “Add Photo” to set your profile picture
Step 3: Click “Save” to save your changes.
What’s wrong here?
Notice that Step 1 and Step 3 end with a period ‘.’ - but if you look at Step 2, it doesn’t. This is a small detail but it can make a big difference in how edited your course looks.
How do we fix it?
You should pick either periods or no periods at the end of your steps, and then stay consistent.
Example:
Step 1: Navigate to your Account page.
Step 2: Click on “Add Photo” to set your profile picture.
Step 3: Click “Save” to save your changes.
or
Example:
Step 1: Navigate to your Account page
Step 2: Click on “Add Photo” to set your profile picture
Step 3: Click “Save” to save your changes
Conclusion
As you prepare to publish your course, make sure to check for three things - that you have consistent capitalization in lesson/module/section titles, that there is a consistent use of word choice, and finally, that you use punctuation consistently. Checking for these three things will ensure that your course looks polished and professional!
