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Short courses - staff resources

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Overview

The steps involved in planning and designing a short course or CPD.

UCL offers a wide range of short courses for continuing professional development (CPD) and executive education purposes. Learners take these courses for any number of reasons: professional, personal or both. This type of learning does not typically lead to a degree, but some degree programme modules can be taken as standalone short courses.

The Short Course Catalogue lists all short courses currently available at UCL.

The short course development process

Although it might only feature a few weeks’ worth of learning, creating a short course is a considerable commitment and the amount of work required can often be underestimated by course creators.

The process is made up of several distinct phases, which can be separated as follows.

Decorative image © UCL

Research

It is worth doing as much research as possible before submitting a short course proposal, exploring:

  • Who your course is for
  • Who else might already be teaching a course like yours
  • How much it might cost to produce your course
  • What you want to your course to achieve
  • How you would price and market your course.

Conducting thorough competitor and market analyses will enable you to evaluate the demand for your course and the likelihood of it making a profit or achieving specific outcomes. 

Advice and planning

Having carried out preliminary research, you will then need to consider all the practical details that will enable you to create your course, such as:

  • What the timelines and deadlines for course creation are
  • Who is writing the course and their availability
  • How the course will be delivered (i.e. face to face, blended or online)
  • Whether the course will be accredited
  • What the intended learning outcomes are
  • What the fees of the course are.

With this information, you will then be ready to go through the short course approval process.

Marketing

Once you have started designing your course, you will also want to consider your marketing strategy, specifically:

  • How you will market your course (e.g. via social media, search engines, partner organisations, etc.)
  • How the marketing material will be formatted (e.g. video, infographic, poster-style advert, etc.)
  • What key information you will include in marketing material (e.g. price, course duration, USPs, etc.)
  • The timelines of your marketing campaign.

Legal

See the legal section

Design and development

Once your short course has been approved, the next step is to plan the design of your course. You will need to consider:

  • What the course aims and learning outcomes are
  • What content is essential to the course and its subtopics
  • How to create engaging learning activities which help learners progress towards the aims and outcomes
  • How to create meaningful formative and summative assessment which aligns with the aims and outcomes.
  • When these elements are planned, you can go ahead and develop the course assets. 

Review 

When development of your course is complete you should review its design against your course aims and learning outcomes, perhaps with an academic critical friend.

If you are producing an online or blended short course, your course is also subject to a quality assurance review from the Online Learning team, comprising basic standards of structure, orientation, and functionality.

Launch

When the review is complete you will be ready to launch and/or begin teaching your course. Before you are able to do this you will need to: