Share your ideas through an online course, teach valuable skills and create an income stream. There are free and open source tools for every stage of making and releasing a course, and you can create it all with free community software.
With a combination of lectures and demonstrations you will go through the steps of designing, producing, and distributing a course. With the tools covered in the course all parts of an online course can be made. Use the learning exercises to build your course and get feedback.
Beyond the tools needed, strategies to efficiently produce courses and make sales will be covered.
To create a course we will cover structuring information into classes and split recordings into scenes. Mind-mapping software will help us organize the knowledge. An office suite to make word documents and presentations is freely available. Sources and references will be saved in Zotero which can link to a browser to easily save a source and a word document to insert a citation. Images can be drawn or made from public domain vector files.
Recording of screen captures and physical videos are combined to make interesting content. Vokoscreen or OBS are demonstrated for video capture. Courses are edited with KdenLive with transitions, audio adjustments, and effects.
To gather an audience a marketing plan and sales funnel is needed. Ideas are first validated for market demand and positioning. Sales funnels that get attention, make sales, and create advocates turn a digital product into a revenue stream. The course will be a digital asset that we will try to turn into passive income.
Tools covered include:
Designing
Mind-mapping - FreeMind
Zotero - Source/citation manager
LibreOffice - Office suite
Inkscape - vector image software
Production:
GIMP - image manipulation software
VokoScreen - screen and camera capture
Open Broadcasting Service - audiovisual recording, streaming, and production studio
KdenLive - video editing
Distribution:
Udemy - Third-party hosted platform LIMS
Moodle - Open source self-hosted LIMS
