In this article, I have answered “How Long Should An Online Course Be?”. Considering creating your own online course, but worried about how long or short it will be?
How long should an online course last? Online courses can be as short or as long as necessary to accomplish the desired learning outcomes..
It is possible to create a course that comprises short 5-minute videos explaining a single idea in depth in practice. For a more in-depth flagship course, you can build 25-50 video courses, each five to twenty minutes long.
Choosing the right course length can be a challenge. To avoid boredom, you don’t want it to be too long, but you don’t want it to be too short either.
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How Long Should An Online Course Be?
It all comes down to what your class’s goal is. What’s most important is that your course gives you the learning results it said it would, no matter how long it takes you to finish it.
There might be just two or three videos in a small course that you use to get people to sign up for your email list.
For $100, you’ll need to make the course longer and spend a lot more time on it. If you want to know how long a course should be, you can’t always just look at the price. However, the main goal of your course should always be to help students learn.
If your course is too long, people will get bored and not finish it. They won’t finish it.
if it is too short, people may not feel like they are getting their money’s worth.
I’ll show you two examples from two different online courses I’ve made:
- How to grow mushrooms at home: 10 things to know in this class (1 hour, 22 mins)
- A detailed course that teaches people how to start a small mushroom farm: Lessons: There are 57 of them (7 hours, 8 minutes)
This is just an example. There is no one-size-fits-all way to figure out how long a course should be.
The best thing to do is to make it as short as possible while still teaching your students everything they need to know to reach their goals.
How Long Should Individual Sections Of A Course Be?
You can have a longer overall course as long as it’s broken down into sections, chapters, or modules that you can read at your own pace (these all mean the same thing).
Three to ten separate lessons may be in each module. Each of these lessons is linked to the bigger goal and serves as a step in the learning process.
To keep each module’s lesson short, it should be no more than 5 to 20 minutes in length.
The best way to design your courses is to think about how much time you have. There’s a good chance that a lot of your students will have full-time jobs and families to support. To make things even worse, many people find it hard to sit down and watch a 30-minute movie every day.
Furthermore, research shows that people remember more information when it is broken down into small chunks with a break in between (source).
This method is very good for remembering things. It’s much easier to remember a series of numbers that are broken down, like 654 987 321, than to think of them all together as one long string, like 654987321.
Making smaller parts of content is better for you as a creator and for the people who use it. If you need to change or update a single lesson in your course, a 5-minute video is much easier to fix than a 25-minute film.
If one lesson is getting a little too long, think about splitting it into two separate lessons and find a good place to do this in the middle of it.
Create A Good Structure
Spaced out learning events have been found to help people learn and remember more when they do it.
Most courses start with the basics and then build on them. If you do this, your students will feel like they are gradually understanding the bigger idea you are teaching them.
Check out this post on how to write a course outline for more information. It’s important for students and you to have a strong course structure.
You might want to give your students a general overview with specific instructions, like telling them to only do one section of the course a day or to finish certain parts or activities before moving on.
You can make certain course systems allow you to make the content of the course unlock one piece at a time, which is called “dripping.” This is to keep people from skipping ahead.
Between each presentation, you can add a task. This makes your course more interesting. As an example, one part of your course might have a video that lasts for five minutes.
Take a break and do some work before you watch the last five minutes of the movie.
In what ways does the length of time a student stays focused
The subject makes you want to learn more. There is a big difference between someone who is interested in a subject and someone who isn’t.
In an online motorcycle riding course, you might be able to get away with longer class periods than in a class like biology.
As a teacher, it will be easier to keep your audience’s attention if your course is relevant and interesting to them.
Interactivity. When students are involved in their education, they are much more excited about it. Is it more fun to play a game, or to watch someone else play one?
Intersperse your teachings with moments of reflection, and invite your students to think of and write down their own solutions. This keeps kids engaged and gives them a sense of control over their own learning.
To keep students engaged, include quizzes, question and answer periods, feedback forms, surveys, and other interactive elements.
The worth of the product. A video with a resolution of 1080p is more enjoyable to view than one with a resolution of 360p.
It’s also easier on the ears to listen to a good microphone with noise cancellation rather than one with poorly tuned settings that frequently pop. Cheap images or a lack of rationally structured material can also detract from the learning experience.
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