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Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Chatbots are great assistants and can help you create an online course from scratch in record time!
By using an A.I. such as ChatGPT to create an online course, you can get past limitations, creative blocks, and develop your course material faster. For example, you can:
In this article, you will learn how to use this powerful technology in a step-by-step guide to create your course from scratch with A.I.
And, you can also join our FREE course on how to Master ChatGPT for Course Creation:
💡 Interested in learning more about artificial intelligence in eLearning? Click here to read how A.I. is going to impact education.
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ChatGPT is OpenAI’s LLM (Large Language Model) that is capable of Natural Language Processing. It is essentially a very smart ChatBot (conversational A.I.) that can generate text as if it was a human writer.
While it was not built to be an AI course creator, if used properly, it can assume the role of a course creator and help you create content.
💡 Tip
Currently, most users use ChatGPT 3.5 but paying users get access to the more refined version of GPT4. The older version is faster, but GPT 4 is more accurate, generates better content, and is “smarter” in some ways.
Prompt engineering is the process of carefully crafting prompts to guide ChatGPT in generating the best possible responses. A prompt can be a question, statement, or partial sentence. It provides context for ChatGPT to understand the user’s intent and generate a response accordingly.
By mastering prompt engineering, you can get better results from your AI assistant.
But, wait, we did the work for you!
Download our ebook with more than 150 prompts for ChatGPT for Course Creators
Course Creation with ChatGPT Step-by-Step
Now that you know what prompt engineering is, it’s time to turn ChatGPT into an AI course builder and take course creation to the next level 🚀
1. Brainstorm course topics
The first step is deciding what you are going to teach. Imagine if you had the whole knowledge of the world at your fingertips, all you are missing now is the right questions to ask!
You can use a simple brainstorming prompt like:
Generate a list of topic ideas for a new online course about advanced [subject]
You can also specify whether you want 5,10, or 20 ideas on the topic.
Unfortunately, ChatGPT cannot do real research on the topics, so, you need to evaluate the ideas on whether they work.
You can also get a list of popular course topic ideas from our article and feed a few of them to ChatGPT to generate titles directly.
So, if you have a good idea already, just ask it to write titles for the ideas. Here is another example prompt for that:
Write 10 catchy titles for an online course on [topic] addressing [audience] as your audience.
2. Define your target audience
When you are creating online courses, it’s a good idea to prepare ChatGPT by giving it more information about your audience, for example:
The more specific you are, the better the results can be. If you are developing the course for classroom or online learning, you can also incorporate this detail.
3. Prompts to create a course outline or curriculum
Now, you have a subject, let’s create the outline of the course. Again, be precise and add as many details to your prompt.
You can use the following prompt to create an outline:
Develop an e-learning course on [topic] for [target audience] that meets [learning objectives].
Or, you can ask ChatGPT to use specific techniques to help you like a mind map or the PAS system, both work well for instructional design:
Develop a mind map for a [type of training] program on [subject].
My course topic is [add the course topic title]. Outline a course for me using the PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution) framework, using bullet points
4. Course content creation with ChatGPT
The next step is to create the content of the online course using AI.
ChatGPT has a limited length in its replies, so creating large chunks of content is not recommended. The solution is to break down the requests into smaller parts like learning activities.
When you need to create longer content, you can “command” it to “continue” and will continue where it stopped. Subsequent replies tend to go a bit out of topic, as it forgets parts of the previous prompts. Be mindful of inconsistencies or repetitions on longer course content pieces.
Create learning activities
It takes some time to create the right ChatGPT prompts for learning activities. Expect to get a few bad responses where you will need to refine your prompts a few times to get the right answer.
Give details about your students, learning goals, and the topic at the beginning of the chat to improve the generated content.
You can also add instructional strategies or appropriate learning materials to guide ChatGPT.
Here are some ChatGPT prompts to start generating learning activities:
I want you to act as a content development expert and recommend the best [type of content] for delivering instruction on [instructional topic] to [target audience].
Give simple explanations to advanced topics with an “explain like I am a 7-year-old” prompt:
Generate an age-appropriate explanation: “Explain a [subject] for a [Age] user.” Create custom instructional materials
Or, add some interactivity to your learning modules with this one:
Suggest [number] of engaging ways to present complex information in a [type of learning material] for [audience].
You can even ask ChatGPT to create flashcard material, tables, stories, examples, and much more!
Write content for presentations
Whether you are a PowerPoint instructor or use Canva and Google Presentations, you can ask ChatGPT to rework the learning material into a presentation.
Presentations are great learning tools whether you are recording or teaching live.
After copying and pasting the content on the presentation, you can use the recording features of PowerPoint or a tool for video creation to create video content.
Presentations can also be exported into a PDF to upload later to your LMS.
You can use a prompt like:
Format this text for a presentation of an online course. Write a title and a few bullet points for each topic: [content]
Generate instructional video scripts
One of the most common challenges of course creators is generative scripts for videos. Not everyone is a skilled script writer … but, what about an AI script-writer?
You can ask ChatGPT to re-work your learning material into video scripts. Just remember to add small sections every time.
Here is an example of a video script prompt to use:
Create a video script for a how-to video that demonstrates a skill related to [name your target industry (e.g., life coaching)] for [name your target segment (e.g., parents with teens)] based on the following material: [paste your content here]
You can also use it to create content from scratch:
Create video scripts for a series of how-to videos that demonstrate a skill or process related to [name your target industry (e.g., life coaching)] for [name your target segment (e.g., parents with teens)].
Use a teleprompter app and record your video course like a boss! 💪
Revise instructional materials
You can also AI to improve your writing or add a flair to it. You can prompt it to:
Or any other style or revision you might need.
Use prompts like the following:
Rewrite the following sentence to make it easier to understand: [paste your content here]
Rewrite this text to make it more engaging: [paste your content here]
5. Enhancing the learning experience
Are you ready for some advanced prompting for creating courses?
Using simple prompts will give you average or bad results. But, adding some advanced parameters can upgrade your course into a great learning experience.
Apply models and frameworks
When creating content, especially on learning activities, you can prompt ChatGPT to use a specific instructional design model like:
You can also use other models and frameworks. The world is your oyster 🦪
Other prompts to improve your course content may include commands to:
Add some spice and flair to your courses
Some of my favorite uses are also adding spice & flair to a course to make it more interesting. For example:
Use an author’s style
Write an essay like Shakespeare or Hemingway:
Rewrite the following text in the style of [author]: [paste your text]
Adding some emotion
You can ask ChatGPT to add excitement, love, professionalism, fun, emojis etc.
Add some [emotion] to the following sentence: [paste your text]
Change the style or format
Would you like to rewrite your text as a rhyme, haiku, essay, or something else?
Rewrite the following in the style of [style]
6. Generate assessments: quizzes, exams, and use cases
Assessments and knowledge checks are an integral part of learning.
Whether you are evaluating the knowledge of the participants or helping them practice their skills, your AI course creation assistant is here to help!
You can either create general quizzes for a course:
Act as a music instructor and help me create 4 open-ended questions for my guitar tutoring course. I want the tone to be friendly and relaxed. My audience are beginner guitarists and the course will be teaching the basics on how to start playing the guitar.
Or, give your learning material and ask ChatGPT to create an exam based on what you have been teaching:
Act as a music instructor and create 20 multiple-choice questions for a [subject] course. The questions have to be based on [material of learning] and the below text which is part of the course [past course content here].
7. Review for accuracy
However, Artificial Intelligence LLMs are prone to “hallucinate”, which means either to create information or give imaginary numbers, statistics, and sources.
Be sure to review very carefully your course content. You have the ethical responsibility to provide correct, factual, and true information to your learners.
The biggest mistake many creators do is straight away publishing content from AI without checking.
A thorough review and fact-checking of the content developed or re-written by AI is very important and will help you develop higher-quality content.
Higher quality, accurate content is also important for your brand and trustworthiness. Letting misinformation slip from AI writers can damage your credibility!
8. Publish the course
With the course content ready, all you need is to publish your course.
While there are marketplaces like Udemy or Skillshare, the best option to monetize your course is by self-publishing on your own website using a course platform or LMS.
The best course platform to host your courses and build an elearning business is LearnWorlds. You can get a 30-day free trial of LearnWorlds today and give it a try:
That doesn’t end here! ChatGPT can also help you create the marketing copy and promotion material for your online course, and even brainstorm ideas for how to promote your course.
Here are a few things that ChatGPT can help you with:
Download our ebook and get a full list of prompts.
Here are some prompts to use ChatGPT for marketing an online course:
Email announcement
Write an email announcement for my new online course [write the title of your online course] that highlights the benefits of the course [list the benefits of your online course] and encourages people to enroll.
Social Media Post
Write a social media post [or you can ask for a series of social media posts] for [name the social media channel, e.g., Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, etc.] that will grab people’s attention, build buzz and excitement, and make them want to learn more about my course titled [write the
title of your online course].
Email Sequence
Write an email sequence for my online course [write the title of your online course] that will nurture potential students and encourage them to enroll in my course.
Landing Page Copy
Write a persuasive sales page that will convince potential students to enroll in my course [write the title of your online course & list the course’s key takeaways.]
Using ChatGPT to create your course is the ultimate productivity hack and can speed up the process while assuming expert roles you might not have the expertise.
The trick however is keeping the quality high, by reworking the prompts until you get the right output and then reviewing & editing the result.
💡 NEVER publish unedited ChatGPT content, especially in online courses where your students are paying for YOUR expertise.
Also, avoid falling victim to the myth of passive income from ChatGPT automated businesses. As in every business, ChatGPT will increase your productivity, but it’s not going to build the business and run the business for you.
To make money with online courses you have to be present in your business at every step of the way, care about your students’ results, and use your expertise to differentiate from others.
The future of eLearning will have A.I. at the forefront, utilizing the new technologies will give you a competitive advantage over those who do not, but use it with care and thoughtfulness.
Use artificial intelligence as your assistant and free up time to focus on how to bring value to your learners! That’s the secret to success 🎯
Nick Malekos is a Senior Digital Marketer in LearnWorlds. He is a results based and well-rounded Digital Marketer with years of experience in the education industry, writer and digital literacy trainer.
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