5 Tips to Improve Your Video Course

Creating a video course can be a profitable way to share your expertise with the world. However, crafting a valuable course for your audience requires more than just turning on the camera. Here are five essential tips to enhance your video course.

1. Use the Problem - Solution - Recap Framework to structure your Lesson

A good lesson structure is just as important as a good course structure. If you don’t present a topic in a well-structured order, you confuse your students, and they will value your video course less. You can quickly improve your video course using the Problem - Solution - Recap framework.

To use this framework, begin a lesson by explaining the problem you will solve. Don’t mention the solution, but focus on the problem and potential use cases in which the problem might occur. This allows the students to understand in which situations they can use the solution you present in the lesson. The big focus in this section is to explain the Why. Why do you need the solution that you present? Why is this problem important? Spend plenty of time in this section and make sure that you have explained the problem well before you move on to the solution.

When you present the solution, explain well how the solution solves the problem. Give the students a direct connection between the problem and the solution. If they wonder why the solution solves the problem, you have failed at creating the connection. Your students won’t be able to identify similar situations in which the solution might help them in the future.

After you explain the problem and present the solution, give a small recap. It can be as short as a sentence or two, but it helps the students to reflect on what they have just learned. Repeating the content of your lesson one last time before you move on gives the students an extra opportunity to memorize the problem and its solution.

2. Keep your Lessons short

One frequent mistake beginners make when recording a video course is to have very long lessons. Students quickly lose their focus and concentration when a video is too long. One quick way to improve your video course is to keep your lessons between 3 and 10 minutes. The sweet spot is usually around 5 to 7 minutes.

Anything shorter than that fragments the video course too much, and the students will become frustrated about the quick topic changes. Anything longer indicates that you haven’t compressed the topic of the lesson enough, and it will cause your students to lose focus. So, keep your lessons as short as possible but as long as necessary. Consider splitting long lessons into multiple shorter ones, even if they cover the same topic.

Another benefit of keeping your lessons short is that you can re-record and edit a lesson faster. Creators often re-record a lesson when they misspeak, realize that they are rambling, or if they encounter an error that they can’t fix within a few seconds. Re-recording is a common part of the course creation process, and your process becomes more efficient if you keep your lessons short.

3. Remove Rambling, Pauses, and Eeeehms

Presenting a video course is challenging. Many creators are not used to talking continuously for a whole lesson. Often, creators don’t use a script and free-style the entire presentation. If you record a video course, it is completely acceptable to pause and collect your thoughts, to say “eeehm”, or to ramble sometimes. Just be cautious not to overdo it.

If you feel like you’re adding too much nuisance to the course because you’re unsure what to say, stop and re-record. Try to get through an entire lesson without losing your train of thought and without thinking about what to say next. Shorter lessons help with this, so if you encounter this problem often, try to split your lessons into smaller chunks.

4. Remove Visual Clutter

When recording your screen, hide everything except the most critical information. Visual clutter can be very distracting, making it harder for your students to focus. You can quickly give your video course a premium feel by going minimalistic about what you show on your screen. It only takes a few clicks but significantly improves your video course.

5. Keep it on Point

When you record a video course, you will notice that it becomes long very fast. Introducing a video course’s topic often takes an hour already. So, there is no need to make a video course longer than it has to be. That’s why it’s essential as a creator to keep your lessons on point as much as possible. A lesson should cover no more than one or two topics.

If you catch yourself explaining another topic while recording a lesson, stop and consider whether that topic is worth mentioning. If yes, plan a separate lesson unless it’s small enough to cover it in 30 seconds or less. Introducing too many topics in a single lesson makes it harder for students to follow and understand a lesson’s original topic. Keeping it on point makes the course easier to follow and better to understand.