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Creating your Online Course Content: The Key to your Personal Instructor Brand


The title of this blog post may strike you as odd. Especially as an academic, should one really have to think of personal branding when creating course resources such as videos? The short answer is "yes". Think about the scenarios in which personal branding already makes sense: the job interview, introducing yourself to a face to face class, and selling a class from your own website. In each of these cases, you are aiming to both inspire confidence in your abilities as well as engage your hiring committee, clients, and students to want to work with you again and again. Here is where creating your online course content can do double-duty and go to bat for you as the key to your personal instructor brand. There are a few items to keep in mind to keep your content as consistent, efficient, and engaging as possible:

1. Inject your Personality into It - Your voice, your sense of humour, your insights, and your photography hobby can all be engaged to bring together videos and resources that come from the same angle, let the students know what to expect each time, and create a cohesive experience as they move along your course.

2. Keep a Professional Tone - While I mention using humour in point one; of course, always keep it in the realm of workplace/professional humour even if the course is online. You don't want your professionalism to come into question and detract from your student's confidence in you.

3. Limit Distractions - Also important to remember in the professional approach is a clean uncluttered background in videos, polished presentation of content, and staying with one topic at a time. It will inspire confidence as well as promote a better learning experience.

4. Wrap up by Reminding your Audience Who You are - The conclusion is the perfect time to restate the main points, offer additional resources, and remind students of your availability. Knowing that you are there for them makes them more likely to engage in their learning and feel less overwhelmed by what is expected of them. This makes for the likelihood they will look for you as an instructor in the future because they enjoyed their time with you and already know what to expect from one of your classes.

If you are looking for a resource to use when creating course content, you could consider using video scribe as this example did from instructor Uwe Helm who created this video entitled Engagement Techniques – Jigsaw

My notes on Helm's video: CC was clearly displayed and I liked the sharpie and sketch graphic approach. The music was a little distracting, but that could be a personal preference. Step by Steps were valuable. I got lost a little at the screen of all the dots accompanied by music. I may not have retained enough from the previous slides to follow along. It ended strong on the references page.

Blog post image is from my own instagram account. The original image can be found here.

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