A Platform for Creating Online Courses: How to Choose

By TalkEn.Cloud Author Team

Today, every other expert wants to create their own courses to share knowledge and earn good money. Most often they use social media pages and targeted ads for this, because it keeps costs down. But this way of creating and selling courses is unlikely to suit an English teacher who has developed and wants to run a full language course consisting of, say, 60 lessons over about 4 months, with one-to-one and group lessons, homework and progress tests. So if you tutor, have your own school or need something more than a social media page for your teaching, we recommend getting to know platforms for creating online courses.

In this article we explain what they are, how they help teachers and how to find the best option that will save you money and time and improve your reputation.

Contents

1. What a course creation platform is
1.1. An LMS: a bit more than just developing and sharing courses
1.2. What a cloud-based learning management system is
1.3. Why a platform for hosting online courses is better than your own website
2. Who can benefit from a platform for creating online courses
3. Criteria for choosing the best platform for courses

What a course creation platform is

It is software hosted in the cloud. You open the program through a link and use the control panel to set it up as you want and need, for example adding your original learning materials, creating lesson schedules and so on. As a teacher, you will have your own workspace in this program, from which you can send tasks to students, check their work and run video lessons, both one-to-one and in groups. You can also give your students access to the course platform: through your link they will get to their own workspace, where they will see the tests, textbooks and schedule available only to them and can join online lessons.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? But there is even better news: some platforms let you not only create your own courses but also use ready-made, proven materials. This is very convenient for teachers and tutors who are just starting their teaching career and do not know how to prepare full courses for students of different ages.

Here are a few more important advantages of using a platform for creating online courses:

• all materials in one place: as an administrator, you can upload textbooks, audio recordings, videos and even dictionaries to the platform, while programs for video calls, messaging students, setting schedules and creating automatic tests are already built in;
• no need for a methodologist: not every teacher can write a full course, so they often have to work with methodologists, whereas course development and promotion platforms already have ready-made materials and curricula;
• automation of all processes: the platform notifies students about upcoming lessons, can check tests and monitor attendance, so you do not have to keep extra registers, enter information in Google Calendar or send students reminders every time;
• versatility: you can manage the platform and study from any device, because it adapts perfectly both to a small phone screen and to a large computer monitor;

A teacher’s work becomes much easier with a platform for creating online courses

• saving time: as a teacher, you only need to create a course and then give your students access to it, while the era of emailing learning materials is long gone;
• interactive learning: start a video lesson with your students and then, thanks to the platform’s versatility, share your screen and play various videos or graphics that make learning more effective;
• a convenient lesson calendar: you enter the date of the next lesson, tag a student or a whole group, and they automatically see when to join the lesson.

In other words, a course creation platform is also a venue for running and managing lessons. Here you will find everything a modern, successful teacher needs. On top of that, you will earn a good reputation among students, who will also appreciate how convenient your chosen platform is.

An LMS: a bit more than just developing and sharing courses

Modern platforms for creating online courses are full learning management systems (LMSs). Yes, first of all they let you develop and host your courses online. But just as important are the ability to share materials only with selected people, run lessons and monitor each student’s progress.

We mentioned above that a platform for hosting online courses can check tests automatically. This lets a teacher cut the time spent checking homework considerably, because both the teacher and the student can see the result immediately. What is more, the teacher can record exactly which questions the student got wrong, so they can fill the gaps in knowledge later.

What a cloud-based learning management system is

We all used to use software installed on a specific computer, and only the administrator of that device could see the changes made to it. Later such programs got features for sharing information between users, but these were not perfect either. Today programs can be hosted in the cloud, and users access them through an ordinary link, just like any website.

That is why modern platforms are cloud-based: a tutor can go to the site at any time, open their personal account and start a video lesson with their students. And since all the information is in the cloud, using it requires less traffic. Thanks to this, lessons will not be interrupted even with a weak internet signal.

Why a platform for hosting online courses is better than your own website

How do you imagine creating your own website? You order its development, the job is done quickly and you happily use the site’s features? In reality it is not that simple or quick. First you need to define the future site’s functionality yourself and describe it in detail, then think through the design and page structure, and then monitor and adjust the development of every detail and check every word and punctuation mark. Also remember that building a full website for hosting and running courses is not a cheap order. And after the site is created, you will probably have to keep turning to specialists to make changes or add new features.

So creating your own website takes a lot of money and time. A platform for creating online courses, on the other hand, lets you start teaching the very next day. You can also be sure that such a program has all the necessary features, because the developers have already tested it and made it as good as possible.

A platform for creating online courses is software that will simplify your work and let you work from anywhere in the world

Who can benefit from a platform for creating online courses

If you have a passion and talk about it on social media, at some point you may get the idea of sharing your knowledge with your followers. The best way to do this is to create a course that is easy to monetize. That is exactly what popular bloggers who do something professionally, including teaching foreign languages, do. An online course can be recorded for self-study or run live by video call, where students and the teacher can interact with each other. In any case, a platform for creating online courses will come in handy, and it will also be useful for:

• Schools and universities. In times of distance learning, every educational institution needs resources that let it organize and manage remote learning effectively. Importantly, new education platforms let you monitor not only pupils and students but also teachers.
• Tutors. They need not only a platform for creating online courses where they can quickly post learning materials, but also features for staying in constant contact with lots of students. Specialists who teach groups will most appreciate being able to give the whole group access to textbooks at once and automatic homework checking.
• Private online schools. To control the whole learning process and protect unique learning materials from copying, online schools also need a convenient and effective platform.

Criteria for choosing the best platform for courses

We have figured out what platforms for organizing courses and individual lessons are, so it only remains to define the criteria for choosing the best virtual assistant for a teacher or tutor. We recommend paying attention to these points:

• A variety of learning materials. Check whether you can upload to the platform all the types of materials you are used to working with or may need because of the specifics of your field. These can be books, tests, videos, audio files, archives of pictures or photos and so on. It is also worth finding out whether the program lets you send students homework, how exactly you can check tasks on it, and how you can monitor and adjust performance.
• Ready-made learning materials. If you are just starting your career as a tutor, choose a platform for creating online courses that already has textbooks for a language course from zero to Advanced, lesson plans and worksheets, as well as interactive language tests similar to the tasks on Quizlet. With them you can practice and gain experience so that you can create your own course in the future.
• Support for new teaching methods. For example, you can record lessons and upload them to the course platform so that students can work through the theory on their own. Then video lessons will be used only for practice and discussing points that were unclear, and so on. In modern teaching this method is called the “flipped classroom”, and it lets teachers reduce their own workload while keeping students’ learning intensive.
• Live online teaching. Sharing ready-made courses is convenient, but not as profitable as running live meetings online. So when choosing a course platform, be sure to check whether it has the necessary high-quality features for one-to-one and group lessons and webinars.
• Analytics. Every teacher needs automatic analytics to see their workload, each student’s activity and diligence, and their test results. That is why most modern LMSs let teachers see how many times a student signed in to their personal account, which materials they viewed and how long they stayed active.

When choosing a platform for creating online courses, consider your students’ age and abilities

• Internal chats on the course platform. In any study program, students need feedback from the teacher. It helps them understand how well or badly they are mastering different topics, what needs more attention and what they have missed. So when a teacher or tutor chooses a platform for organizing learning, they should consider only programs that offer internal chats or, at the very least, messages from teacher to student.
• Different plans. Every tutor or specialist has different requirements for a program for creating or sharing courses. So keep in mind that the platform you find may always have more features than you need. In that case it is important to be able to choose which features to pay for and which not. Otherwise you will spend too much money on the platform, which is not sensible at all.
• A clear interface and settings. Of course, as a client you will get training materials from the platform on setting up its features and using its capabilities, so you will be able to master everything quickly. But your students will also work on the platform you choose: children or adults of very different ages and abilities. So choose an offer with a good interface, with intuitive buttons and a clear layout of sections. You can even ask your current students for advice on this.
• Learning opportunities for the teacher. This is rare on our market, but together with a platform for creating online courses you may find a resource that helps you improve your own skills and gain extra experience. This is a clear advantage of the program. Training materials for specialists are also an advantage for online schools that hire outside teachers and want to raise their qualifications, so that they do not have problems with students and bad reviews later.
• Technical support and a teacher community. Any platform for hosting online courses can sometimes have technical difficulties that need to be solved quickly. So when looking for a platform for your course, be sure to ask how exactly you will be able to solve different problems. Even better if, in addition to technical support, you are offered access to social media groups or chats where you can communicate and share experience with colleagues.

Finally, all that is left is to test the platform you have chosen. Even if you cannot get a trial period, you can probably use a demo login and password to explore the platform’s specifics, features and advantages for you personally. We also recommend paying attention to online reviews, but always be as critical of them as possible. Keep in mind that some reviews may have been posted by competitors to lower the rating of the platform you liked so much.

Read also

• A Course Platform: How to Integrate It into Your Work
• How to Create Online English Courses: Step by Step
• How to Open an Online English School