Vickie Maris | Online Course Design, Digital Content Strategy and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Black Friday Deals on Courses in Udemy | Plus, Cyber Monday

2015-11-27 by Vickie Maris Leave a Comment

Update! For Cyber Monday, Udemy is offering $15 courses, sitewide, for 24 hours! Just click the link below to pop the deal:

Below info is now outdated as it was related to the Black Friday specials in Udemy:

This is my favorite time of year to enroll in courses in Udemy! You can get any course in the Udemy platform for $15 today! Simply click the Udemy graphic below and you can go course shopping.

I am an online course designer, but was new to the Udemy platform back in the spring of 2015. The requirements of this platform for becoming an approved premium instructor – one who can charge for course enrollments – are much different than requirements of learning management systems used by universities and other online course providers. Udemy maintains a standard of quality in its courses by having these requirements. In fact, my experience as a student in Udemy courses has been far better than many of the online courses I’ve taken through university offerings, where standards of quality are not always in place.

Learn From Successful Udemy Instructors

The techniques you will learn from instructors such as Miguel Hernandez, John Colley, Alun Hill and Jerry Banfield will help you create your own Udemy course that will have potential to sell well and help people learn your content with ease. I would be thrilled if you also consider my latest course, Time-Saving Tips for Easy Recording of Talking Head Videos, as one that you add to your list of Udemy courses. I have a Black Friday deal going for my course that is even better than the Udemy $15 deal. You can get the Time-Saving Tips course for just $9 when you follow this link (through Nov. 29, 2015).

Screenshot of courses in Udemy on course design — Several of the courses about course design for Udemy that have helped me improve my courses in Udemy. You can get any of these courses for $15 today when you use my **affiliate link**.

Vickie Maris is an online course designer, instructor and coach. She is also a university administrator and program designer. In her eclectic life, she plays acoustic guitar and piano accordion, is a singer/songwriter, and performs in the band Scott Greeson and Trouble With Monday. She and her hubby, Scott Greeson, live on a hobby farm in Indiana with llamas, rabbits, a Jack Russell Terrier, Connemara pony and one, in-charge, cat. Vickie also has an Etsy shop in which she sells llama roving, yarn and Angora rabbit fluff.

3 Ways to Find Tweets Containing a Certain Hashtag

2015-11-25 by Vickie Maris 8 Comments

As I prepare for the launch of the podcast, Online Course Connections, I have registered a hashtag in twubs.com that we can use to keep the conversations going. If you have a comment to share or a question to ask, you can include #VJCourses in your tweet on Twitter and I’ll be able to readily find your tweet.

The use of a hashtag in your tweet is the foundation for creating a Twitter chat, and it also simply let’s people easily search on the topic of your tweet.

Continue a Periscope or Podcast Conversation Around a Hashtag

Using a hashtag is a great way to keep a conversation going around a subject after the initial presentation, episode or broadcast has ended.

Participating in Twitter Chats

For Twitter chats, I’ll promote the event here in the website and on my social media channels, so that you can know when we’ll go live. To participate, all you have to do is include the hashtag, #VJCourses, within your tweet during the scheduled chat. My guests (select content experts I interview on the podcast) and I will do our best to address as many of the comments and questions that we can during the 30 minute Twitter chat.

3 Ways to Find Tweets That Contain a Certain Hashtag:

Do a search in Twitter for the hashtag, #VJCourses (or whatever hashtag you’d like to be following)
Open a web service such as twitterfall.com or twubs.com and enter the hashtag you’re interested in following. (I like to do this while attending a conference. You can watch all of the tweets going out that include the hashtag assigned to the conference. It’s a way of connecting with other people at the conference whom you might not meet otherwise.) Here’s one of my archived Periscope broadcasts where I demonstrate the use of Twitterfall. (If the embedded video isn’t showing for you, please click here.
Bookmark this page, so that you can find it easily when you want to use the Twubs widget below to follow a conversation we’re holding around the hashtag, #VJCourses.

I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming Twitter chat! Vickie

<a href="http://twubs.com/vjcourses">#vjcourses</a>

Setting Goals for Your Periscope Broadcasts

2015-11-03 by Vickie Maris 3 Comments

Photo of Vickie Maris — *In the short video below, learn a tip about looking into the smartphone lens, particularly if you’re shooting your Periscope broadcast in landscape mode.*

One of the things that has resulted from doing a Periscope broadcast on a daily basis is that it is nudging me to keep my other digital content fresh and very available for you! I’ve started setting goals for each Periscope broadcast as part of my overall Periscope strategy. Here is the list. I like to accomplish at least one of the following:

Provide a useful tip, recommendation of a tool, or news about an upcoming event or course that could help you advance your business
Learn from my own mistakes during a broadcast and then create a video to help you avoid making that same mistake (this is helping me expand the content in my newest online course in Udemy on Course Creation Basics, as well as allowing me to further develop the content on my YouTube channel, Instagram account and Facebook page.
Have fun while broadcasting and enjoy the time engaging with followers!

In the following short video, I provide a tip about looking into the lens of your smartphone and not the center of your screen while doing a Periscope broadcast. This holds true for recording videos with a smartphone for your online course or YouTube channel too.

Setting Goals for Periscope Broadcasts

I encourage you to write down your goals for your Periscope broadcasts, or your blog posts, or whatever type of content you are creating for your tribe. It will help you stay focused and your followers will benefit!

Since I have started working towards at least one of the above goals in each Periscope broadcast (and since I’ve started doing at least one if not more scope per day), I’ve seen the following results …

Increase in followers on Periscope
Increase in followers on Twitter and Instagram
More engagement with followers in Periscope and Twitter
Email list is growing
Followers are responding to my survey about my new podcast, Online Course Connections
And, I am having so much more fun because my followers now have faces and names rather than just email addresses! Periscope is so powerful for enriching your connections with your tribe!

Share Your Tips About Periscope

Please use the comments to share your tips about using Periscope for live streaming. I would love to know what you’re learning from your use of the platform.

You Can Help Define Content of New Podcast | Online Course Connections

2015-10-12 by Vickie Maris 21 Comments

iTunes cover art for Online Course Connections — Help shape the content and format of Online Course Connections when you respond to the short survey.

Online Course Connections is the new podcast I’m launching. UPDATE: Online Course Connections is up and running. You can check out the show in iTunes or visit the blog page for the show at Libsyn.

It would be my delight for you to take this short, six-question survey, to provide me with your input about the topics for the episodes, potential guests to interview and average length of the show. Your input will be so helpful to me as I shape the new podcast into something that speaks directly to the problems you would like to solve and the questions you would like to have answered.

Online Course Connections – For Reaching and Teaching Customers With a Course

Are you a business owner who uses courses to reach and teach customers? Or maybe you want to create a course for a worldwide platform like Udemy in order to better expose learners to your content? Perhaps you’re in a university setting and would like to move your department further along with its efforts in providing instruction via ecourses?

I’d also be thrilled to hear from online learners, so that I can incorporate your elearning experiences into the show.

The survey also provides you with opportunity to suggest guests I should interview. If you’d like to be considered for an interview on an upcoming episode, please include that information too (include your name in the text field if you’d like to be a guest on the podcast as the survey stats are anonymous and won’t link your name with your response)!

Provide Your Input About the Podcast or Request to Be a Guest on the Show

Thank you for your time and input by taking the survey (click the link to go to the survey). Together, we can develop Online Course Connections into a show that brings value every time you click the play button on your podcast player!

By the way, I’d love to know which podcasts are your current favorites. Please add a comment to this article so that we can glean ideas from each other on which shows to check out!

Vickie Maris
Elearning strategist, course designer, speaker, musician, and farm girl
MS ED – Learning Design and Technology; Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

PS – Remember to take the survey!

Free Course for Improving Your Course Videos and Periscope Broadcasts

2015-10-06 by Vickie Maris Leave a Comment

Would you like to start creating videos for your YouTube channel or an online course you’re planning to create? Or perhaps you’d like to improve the technical quality of your livestreaming broadcasts in the social media channels of Periscope, Meerkat or Blab.

This free course, Course Creation Basics: Tips to Improve Course Videos & Periscope Broadcasts, is designed for you. It is a series of five videos delivered via emails to your inbox. After you receive the link to the first video, you’ll receive additional emails every other day for the duration of the course.

What is stopping you from creating an online course?

I developed this course to encourage you to get rolling on your project — using the recording equipment you likely already have in your home or office. The videos you’ll watch in the course will provide:

Smartphone recording tips and tricks
Suggestions for the recording of videos on a tight budget
Examples of the tips and tools in action
A reminder to determine if a course is the right way to reach your customers or students with the content you have to share
And much more!

To enroll in the course, please use the form on this page, or click this link – http://vickiemaris_0.gr8.com – and enter your name and email. You’ll receive an email from me in reply that provides the link to the first video in the series.

These tips and trips for improving your course videos and Periscope broadcasts are the very ones I have used in the creation of my latest course in Udemy. I deliberately kept the video setup very simple for this latest Udemy course to demonstrate that you can create helpful content for your customers without a lot of hassle or expense.

I started out with a test video that I uploaded to Udemy for approval before I proceeded with creating the other lectures for the course. Approval came in less than 24 hours, so I was off and running!

Check out this sample course video!

Here is a video that demonstrates a very simple, outdoor setup. In this 3 1/2-minute lecture, I suggest a way to prepare for the creation of your first online course.

What are your roadblocks to creating a course, YouTube video or Periscope broadcast?

Please add a comment to this post and let me know what question you have about video recording. What problems have you run into while making a video? What roadblocks have stopped you from creating an online course for your customers or students? Or, what hurdles have you faced in your Periscope broadcasts?