What Should You Put in Your Course?

One of the most common questions I get as a course creator and learning specialist is, “What should I put in my course?” Most of the time, they’re stuck between what they think is valuable and what their students need to grasp the concept and put it into practice.

And, more often than not, you end up wanting to put everything you’ve ever known into an online course curriculum… resulting in overwhelm for you as the course creator since you’ve created a massive amount of information with few practical applications.

The answer really depends on the course you’re creating and what you hope your students will achieve after completion — which is why there’s no exact list or ‘easy’ solution; it’s more about doing a little bit of extra work to understand what you want for your students and what they need.

Although I might not be able to tell you exactly what you need to put in your course (which we can definitely do working one-on-one), I can break down the steps you need to take to find the answer yourself!

What Your Course Needs (and What it Doesn’t)

Before adding anything to your course or curriculum, you need to take a step back and remember that YOU are the expert — your students are not. I’m not saying that you are miles above them, but I am saying they do not need to know everything you do (or everything you’ve learned) to get where you are today.

Instead, you need to focus on the actionable steps — and the information required to help take those steps — to find what you should put in your course. 

This also leads to the first question you’ll ask yourself when creating your course curriculum, so let’s get right into it:

#1. Does the Content Align With Your Course Purpose?

The first step in determining whether or not a piece of information or content should be added to your course is asking yourself, “Does this content align with my course purpose?” 

Everything in your course should tie back to the main purpose of your course — whatever that happens to be. For example, if I’m creating a course that teaches my students how to create a successful masterclass, I probably won’t spend an entire module on course creation.

#2. Does Your Audience Need This Information to Get Results?

It’s so tempting to share everything you know that helped you get to where you are today — but your audience really doesn’t need to know everything you do. Think, your students don’t need to learn the Krebs Cycle to successfully lose weight.

Your students want results; they need information to take action (not teach others), and you have to make sure that everything you add to your course does that. 

For example, if you’re creating a mini-course about building an Instagram Reels strategy, you wouldn’t want to include Instagram’s history or a full list of features that no longer exist.

#3. How Does This Information Interact With What You’ve Already Added?

Are you adding this information to activate your learners’ prior knowledge before introducing new concepts? Is this a new concept to explain that helps your student take action? How does the information you want to include fit in with the information you have to include?

How the information in your course flows guides your learners. It’s what leads your learning experience and produces those student transformations.

Creating a Course Your Students Love

The goal of asking these questions while determining what you should put in your course is to prevent a bad learning experience — and potentially bad results. And when courses get created that suck, they give ALL courses a bad rep.

Your curriculum is the most important thing to consider when creating a course and can be complicated, to say the least.

But, it’s okay to have a little (or even a lot) of help. I recommend taking my free masterclass, 3 Ways to Create More Impact & Income with an Online Course, before moving forward to anything else.And if you need a more personal approach, let’s work together 1:1 to create a course you’ll feel confident in.