What Kind of Course Creator Are You?

Gwen: 00:00

Hey course creators, it's time to amplify your genius. Welcome to Course Creation Station where we talk about creatively sharing your expertise and designing the most awesome learning experiences. I'm Gwen Tanner, Career Course Creator, and in this episode, we're going to do a little goddess quiz. You know those quizzes you take in a magazine or on the internet to have your inner goddess revealed to you. Well today, we're not looking for your inner goddess, we're gonna find your inner course creator. So stay tuned for more.

Course creation is a creative skill. There are technical parts to creating courses. You have to use tech tools sometimes, and there are many technical details to work out to pull your course together. But overall, when you create a course, you're digging into your creative brain for ideas.

I've been lucky to work with so many creative people, like course creators or designers, or even engineers. And yeah, engineering is a creative role. They aren't using paints and brushes like artists, but they're using their creative brains to come up with some of the innovative stuff that we all love to use every day. Working with creative people and managing creative teams and projects, it became very clear to me that creative brains have a unique way of tackling their work and getting inspired and motivated to continue.

And because you're a course creator, I thought it would be fun to talk about your inner course creator to understand how your creative brain tackles and remains motivated to complete your course projects. So here's some questions to think about.

First, how many courses or projects do you prefer to work on at once? Is it one, maybe two, or is it always as many as possible? And two, where do you spend most of your course creation effort? Is it researching and perfecting your course, or maybe coming up with as many ideas as possible for your course, like worksheets and activities and discussions, or maybe do you spend all of your effort searching for your next favorite course topic? And finally, how confident are you that you can actually finish creating a course by the deadline you set for yourself? Would you say, I can definitely finish this course, no problem, or I struggle with creating all the ideas I come up with, I'd blow right through any deadline? Or do you think, I'll never finish any tasks related to my course? I just kind of move on.

How would you answer those questions? And I want you to keep these questions and your responses in mind as I describe for you three types of course creators. And as I describe them, consider if any of this sounds familiar to you.

First up, we have our laser-focused course creator. The course creator with laser focus is pretty darn amazing. She focuses on only one course project at a time and bowls through her long list of tasks to get that project complete. She loves checking off the boxes of her completed course creation tasks, like writing scripts and recording videos and making workbooks, and just having all those check marks next to a long list of to-do items is very motivating and very satisfying for her. Now, once her mind has been set to complete her course, you better believe it will get done in the most efficient way. She's got those super distraction blockers and they work so well.

But she does have a struggle. Let me explain. Although once she gets started, you can't stop her, she will often need help pulling things together. Things need to be perfectly in place, all ducks in a row before she can even get started. She gets caught up in over-researching and over-planning and over-thinking in order to make her well-oiled machine perfect so that she can start. She always needs more information because how can she know exactly what needs to be done if she doesn't know what she doesn't know? She might have her distraction blockers on, but she can definitely fall into what we call analysis paralysis, which is common among those of us who are perfectionists.

Next up, we have the no-focus course creator. I like to think of the course creator with no focus as an innovator. She can work on multiple courses at once, but she knows her limits on how many projects to take on at one time, and that may be one or two or even three, but she knows her limits and she can manage it appropriately. While she's working on the course, she gets so many ideas about how to make it bigger and better and prettier and faster. She's the go-to person when you wanna know how to enhance or embellish or spruce up an otherwise boring course.

But she also has a struggle. With so many innovations comes many more tasks. The no-focus course creator keeps coming up with so many new ideas for her course that the course gets larger and larger and larger and every new idea leads to a new video or a new module or a new worksheet and every new video or module or worksheet is bigger and better than the last. And as her course gets larger, it gets more overwhelming for her to manage all the pieces. She can get started on her course, but she won't know when or how to finish.

And then finally, we have the all-over-the-place course creator. This course creator is truly inspired by everything. With a wild imagination and curiosity, the all-over-the-place course creator is a project startup superstar. She has so many ideas for new courses that are useful, interesting, unique, and just plain fun. Her mind races daily about new ideas and how she can get them started. She enjoys having a variety of courses and tutorials and lessons on different topics to work on that support her many interests.

And yes, she definitely struggles too. She is such an idea machine that she really doesn't have time to procrastinate her plan. She's ready to start up the next project until another more important project gets her attention. She never spends time over researching or over planning. And in fact, she may not have a plan at all. The all-over-the-place course creator never needs to worry about her course projects getting larger and larger because she can never focus on one long enough. Whenever a new idea comes up, it must be started immediately, even if that means dropping all of her other projects.

So do you identify with one of the three types of course creators as your inner course creator? Let me summarize them for you again. We have the laser-focused course creator who is honed in to the one course. She's creating that she wants to make it the best it can be, which often leads her to struggle with analysis paralysis before she can even start. But once she gets started, that laser focus locks in and she will knock out her course creation tasks so efficiently. We have the no-focus course creator who is so innovative with ideas that she can't focus on finishing the course. Instead, she makes the course larger and larger with more features and more content until it's too overwhelming for her to complete. She's not focused on creating a course in the most efficient way, like our laser-focused course creator is. Then we have the all-over-the-place course creator who is inspired by everything. She can never truly get started on creating her dream course because as new ideas pop into her head, she's ready to chase a new dream.

So I'm sure you relate to one of these types of inner course creators the most, but you may also find that you have the tendencies of all of them. For example, my inner course creator is the all-over-the-place course creator. I currently have at least seven courses I'm working on at the moment. Most of them are in progress in some way or another, but it's sad to say that I don't have any that are complete. However, I do see characteristics of myself being laser-focused at times. Plowing through a list of tasks for a course is pretty easy for me if it's something that I have to do, like I'm working with a contractor on a tight deadline versus something I'm inspired to do or something I'm creating with no rules. Now, if it's a course I'm very passionate about, my inner no-focus course creator takes over. I get really into it, and I think of more and more ideas that can make the course even better, so it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, but recently I've learned to tame that beast slightly. I'm able to determine a scope for a project and stick with it. For example, I might say this course is five modules long and that's it, or this course is 90 minutes long and that's it, not adding any additional bells and whistles along the way.

Of course, it's not likely that any of us fit into one of these inner course creators perfectly. I just wanted to share with you a little insight on how different course creators tackle their projects and remain motivated.

Well, I hope you enjoy this version of a goddess quiz, and if you have any other inner course creators, please feel free to send them my way.

Thank you for joining me today for this episode of Course Creation Station. Be sure to visit CourseCreationStation.com to view today's show notes and subscribe.