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How long should my Course be?
How long should my Course be?

Explore our cheat sheet that walks you through what to think about when structuring your Courses.

Bridie avatar
Written by Bridie
Updated over a week ago

To create one giant Course? Or many small, bite-sized Courses? That is the question!

Coassemble's Course creation is flexible - there’s no right or wrong way as to how you choose to set up and structure your Course, it all comes down to personal preference and the experience you’re looking to provide for your learners.

Bite-Sized Courses

What it is: Short and sweet courses on a specific topic that may be part of an overarching subject or pathway. Courses can be completed in under 30 minutes and might only contain 1-2 modules.

If you were creating training on pizza, you’d have many courses - one for ingredients, one for cooking, and one for why you should share it with me.

Good for: Breaking content into digestible chunks or chapters, quick wins, mobile, and on-the-go learning, eCommerce subscription models, social sharing, updates, creating course catalogs, covering specific topics and processes that need to be referenced or reviewed frequently.

What it’s like for learners: They may be enrolled in multiple courses at one time and will see everything they are enrolled in on their learner dashboard or they will require multiple enrollment links to access each course. They will be able to master bite-sized topics in a short amount of time.

Pros: Shorter courses help keep learners' attention, and allow for more instant gratification and a sense of progress. They are easy to go back and reference to find a particular topic and can be drip-fed to learners.

Cons: You will need to communicate with your learners about which course to take first if they need to be completed in order. It also may be overwhelming to hit them with 100 courses at once.

Long-Form Courses

What it is: Big juicy Courses full of multiple Lessons, Quizzes, or Assignments (similar to that above). The Course can be broken up into chapters or chunks but everything is housed under the same roof in one single Course which might take days, weeks, months, to complete. For example, if you were creating training on pizza, your Course would encompass every subject under the moon about this tasty treat. Each topic can be a Lesson module within the one Course.

Good for: Accreditations or programs you want to provide a single certification for, training that requires multiple due dates or that should be chipped away at over time.

What it's like for learners: Learners will have a single Course on their learner dashboard or will only require one enrollment link to access the training. They will be able to work through and view their Course and their progress using the Course menu as a table of contents. They will likely need to log back in multiple times to work through all content so you should ensure they are aware of how to get back to their training

Pros: Everything is in one place, and it is easy to set up certification once the entire Course has been passed.

Cons: Long-form Courses can be overwhelming to learners if they can’t easily see progress. It can also be challenging to go back to find specific topics or areas to review.

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