What I Learned from Publishing a Course Online
Author’s personal experience writing on Educative
Since the beginning of 2022, I have been writing a course on Educative platform during my free time. “Writing a course” has been on my to-do list since I embarked on my journey writing technical articles on Medium. I have written more than 150 articles to date.
It was challenging, but at the same time, a pleasant and fruitful experience for me. There were many learning curves along the way, but it made me a better writer. This article is a reflection of my experience and learning.
One Idea at a Time
Most of the time, either I have no idea or too many ideas to write about. Instead of trying to fit in all the ideas that I have, I have learned that it is better to be concise and highlight only those that are important or useful to the readers. On Educative platform, the guideline is to create an independent lesson for each idea. There should be no dependency on another lesson in order to complete a lesson.
Proofreader and Reviewer are my Friends
Similar to other publications on Medium, Educative has its own team of proofreaders and technical reviewers to verify the content of my course. During each submission, there are countless corrections required, ranging from simple grammatical mistakes to technical discussions on the content of the lessons.
Going back and forth to correct the content was both challenging and tiring. The experience is further amplified if there is more than one reviewer with conflicting views and comments. There will always be feedback that is both right and very difficult to incorporate into the existing content.
However, one must remember that they are here to help. Adhering to the guidelines ensures that the quality of my course is up to par with the rest. One lesson that I have learned is to keep an open mind and raise objections if a review is not in line with the content.
Learn from the Rest
As the saying goes, to be the best, learn from the rest. One of the best way to improve writing skills is by reading. During the initial phase of writing, I spent more time reading the free courses on Educative than writing.
I found it to be a good method for learning how other authors structure their outlines and write their content. This essentially helps to streamline the content, as the blueprint of my course is based on what has been approved, reviewed, and published.
Build a Consistent Writing Habit
Consistency is an important factor in writing. Being consistent ensures that my writing style and key elements of the content stay the same throughout the course. I have to emphasize the following whenever I take a short break from writing:
point of view: first person, second person, third persontense: past tense, present tensetone: formal, informal
Being consistent helped me write with clarity. I made sure that certain key elements of my content stayed the same throughout the entire writing.
Avoid Repetition and Redundancy
Personally, I don’t think repetition is bad at all, provided that it benefits the readers. A good way to avoid repetition and redundancy is to outline the content in bullet points and attempt to link them up as a whole.
One common mistake that I often make is trying to increase the word count of my lessons. I have learned that quality over quantity is what matters to readers.
Conclusion
All in all, it was an eye-opening experience for me. I am proud to say that I am a better writer now. Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin and Medium.
If you are interested, consider reading Getting Started with Image Classification with PyTorch, an introduction course to image classification using PyTorch’s computer vision models for training and tuning your own model.
Thanks for reading this piece. Have a great day ahead!
