What would you like to know?

Have you met Marisa? She is the super-talented artist behind Creative Thursday and the Life in the Fishbowl ecourse, and is undoubtedly one of the most genuine people i have ever met. After a few Skype dates we finally met in person at Squam last September, and as time has gone on we've discovered we were born 24 hours apart in February 1973 - how nuts is that?

What we also share is a crazy passion for our online classes and a commitment to making them the best they can possibly be. Marisa and I both get a lot of email queries from peeps asking our advice about e-courses, so we've decided to work together and create something we hope will be really useful: a downloadable podcast on how to create and run an online class with integrity & passion. There will also be a full transcript of the podcast to print out and keep and the whole thing will be available for purchase later this year.

Marisa and her partner Sean are about to spend a month in Paris, but before they get there she'll be swinging by my place to get to work on our project - and this is why i'm typing these words: if you've been thinking about creating your own course, what would you like us to cover in the podcast? What would be most useful to you? What do you want to know about running an online course?

We'll be putting everything we know into this package and we want to make sure we're addressing the questions you'd like answered, so please send 'em over! Drop me a line, including the subject header 'aquarian questions' :)

Thanks so much!

Comments

[Peggy]

Great idea ! I would specially like to know everything about the technical side of running e-courses.
Peggy from Paris

[Catherine Just]

wow
that is so generous of you both.
Thank you!
I've been thinking about it
just haven't figured out the technical stuff yet.
ie:: where to teach it : ning website? yahoo group? password protected website? flickr? And once I choose a destination - how to organize the class so everyone feels like they have a community and people get daily e-mails from me.
basically - managing it all!?
how do you have people register for the class. And how to decide on how many people will be in the class? how to make the registration easy

xo

[Zarina]

I will be very careful to this downloadable for learn everything about e-course!!! Tnahk you !!! Great Idea!!!

[furiousball]

awesome, love the pic of you in this

[Christianne]

I love that you are doing this! Especially since I've been one to send you emails full of questions on this subject before. :)

I'm with the commenters above that the technical side of putting together an online course has always puzzled me. What do you use for your platform? How did you design the visual aspect? Was it simply a password-protected blog on a free blogging platform, or something more ornate than that?

How frequently did you assign homework? How did you decide the balance between incubation time for your students and interaction time for them?

Honestly, it would just be super-incredibly-awesome if you could walk us through the step-by-step process of putting together a class, from the inspiration to the preparation of sequencing to the technical know-how to what you learned from your students along the way about how to make it better.

Thanks so much!

[ROBIN]

thank you for introdcing your counter part in this post-sounds like a good match up for this endeavor

[Mel]

wow, that is very kind of you.

I very much doubt that I will ever run an e-course (especially one with videos...) as I wouldn't have the faintest idea about what...

Sounds like a great project though. Nothing better then a collaboration with someone you like and admire:)

[kat]

wow...excited to see what you two creatives come up with!it's very generous of you both!! my question would be, once you decide what you want to teach how do you come up with the curriculum? and feel like you have the ability to teach it.

[Juliette Crane]

fabulous! thank you so much for being so generous and sharing what you know. and for being an incredible inspiration... i've admired you both for so long and it will be wonderful to learn from you. i'm not quite ready to run my own e-course, but have many questions i will want to know when i do. i'll email you :) thank you! best wishes! juliette

[DanielleLY]

I agree, what an amazing idea! I have the same questions as the other posts, plus the following: When do you know that you have a big enough following to start an online course? Faith? :) How do you decide on what to charge or the length of the course? And for the sanity of the instructor, how do you create balance between teaching and your personal life? Thank you!

[the delicious home]

I just posted my questions on Creative Thursday's site, but here they are too, thanks!

I love this idea! I'd like to know everything about building an e-course:) Setting up, how you outline the 'syllabus' connect to paypal, set up a secure site for your students, include flickr, pricing, the best place to set up an e-book/workbook, yup, all of it;) Also, how to get readers interested in joining/trusting that you have a legitimate class and great information to share. Thank YOU for sharing your genuine knowledge! I'm sure I have more questions, but I'm still kind of waking up.