There has never been a better time to build online courses. But you may be saying to yourself, "I don't have the content, the skills, or the software to do something like that." Well, I think you're wrong. And if you just know some basic PowerPoint skills, you can create professional looking courses and start selling them online.
Use your PowerPoint presentations
But first, a quick warning. Don't take the easy way out and do what others are doing. Earlier this year, I purchased an online course. And you know what I got? A collection of Loom videos,kind of like what you see here with the presenter's face here in the lower left-hand corner as they just went through their slides, one slide at a time.
In fact, these videos were recorded live, so I could actually hear them advancing on their keyboard as they went from slide to slide.
This is the fastest way to present yourself as unprofessional and someone who is not as knowledgeable in your particular field of teaching.
Instead, you can take your existing PowerPoint slides, the presentations that you probably already have or perhaps that you're putting together and add something to it. And what we're going to add is iSpring Suite.
iSpring Suite is an add-on to your PowerPoint slides so you can add interactive quizzes, role plays, screen recordings. You can even let AI do voice narration for you if you don't want to be on camera or if you don't want to be reading the script.
So let me show you five of my favorite features and why you should consider using iSpring Suite. Number one, do it in an application that you already know.
You already know how to add content and create new slides here within PowerPoint, so why waste your time learning a completely new piece of software? You can create your course here and add all of these additional add-ons, interactions, and produce the course at the end within a software that you already know.
Not only is this going to save you a lot of time, but it's going to save you a lot of effort because you don't have to convert your slides to some format that you're not familiar with. You don't have to worry if your font types or your layout is going to carry over into the new software.
Everything that you build here within PowerPoint is going to look exactly the same way to those who take your course.
Add user interaction
Number two is adding interaction. Why narrate over a boring slide when you can get your users to click on particular elements within your course. Get them to interact with what's going on so they can really absorb your material and make it that much more engaging for the learner.
This way, you can get them to interact with your content rather than just listen to you speak over a number of boring slides.
Include quizzes and surveys
Number three, adding quizzes or surveys directly to your content. Here with iSpring Suite installed, we have a new ribbon where we can add all of our learning features directly to any of our existing slide decks.
All I need to do is come up here and select quiz and I can go ahead and start adding a quiz to this slide. And best of all, we're not limited to just some boring form where everything is text-based.
You can make your quizzes as colorful or as interactive as you like. In this example, not only can I ask the question here, but I can have a nice bright visual related to it here as well.
I'm going to select true and then select Submit. And I can even give the learner a reason for their correct or their incorrect answer in this case. And what about interactivity? How about this? Sorting your food in terms of what is healthy and what is not.
Think of the possibilities that you could create. How much more fun, engaging, and how much more real learning will take place when your users get to interact at this level? And best of all, you get to create it all within the comfort of Microsoft PowerPoint.
Record narration or use text-to-speech
Number four, recording your own audio or using text to speech. Now, iSpring Suite makes it super easy for us to record audio over any of our slides. So for example, maybe I want to give a brief introduction to this slide.
All I need to do is select Start Record, and I can do as many takes as I'd like, making sure I get the perfect one to put together as a part of my course.
But instead, if I don't like the sound of my own voice, or maybe I want to save some time and have some professional narration, I can come up here and select Manage Narration.
This time, instead of recording my own audio, I'm going to select text to speech. And then all I need to do is either type in or maybe paste what I would like to be said here within this slide. I have a wide variety of languages, which I can choose from, and also a large variety of voices, which I can try.
And before I insert this narration, I can always come down here and preview it just to make sure I've got everything right. Not only newbies need a mentor, but also employees who are moving to a new position within the company.
And now this crisp and clear narration will be played when this slide is presented during the course.
Add characters and royalty-free backgrounds
And number five, adding high-resolution characters and backgrounds so that your slides pop and look more professional. Here within our iSpring Suite ribbon, you can see that we have access to icons, objects, backgrounds, and characters.
Characters can bring your courses to life and make things so much more interactive. If I click on characters here, I have a massive library of different characters which I can use, and I can search and sort by different age groups if I want, if I'm looking at more of a casual audience or maybe a business audience, and let's say I want to choose Carmen here.
I have Carmen in literally hundreds of different poses, different positions. So no matter what type of training, no matter what type of course that I'm using, I can add it directly to my training.
In addition, I don't have to come up with my own scenarios or physical spaces for my training. Let's say that I'm delivering some specific leadership training for those who work in restaurants. Now I have access to a full library of different areas of kitchens, restaurants, bars, and setups, which I can use as a part of my course development.
So stop just thinking about creating that course. Make it look professional with iSpring Suite. To get started with your free trial, click the link in the description down below.
Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
