Improving Quality and Reducing Costs on with your Online Course
Dec 20, 2022
Value engineering is a systematic method for improving the value of a product or service by analyzing its functions and identifying ways to perform those functions in a more cost-effective manner. In other words, it's a way to make something better while also reducing costs. This is especially important for online course creators, who often face the challenge of creating high-quality content while also trying to keep costs low.
Here are the steps of value engineering:
- Analyze the functions of the product or service being evaluated.
- Identify ways to perform those functions in a more cost-effective manner.
- Consider the target audience and their needs.
- Streamline the content and delivery method as needed.
- Make the content more interactive and engaging for the target audience.
- Evaluate the success of the value engineering process and make any necessary adjustments.
One way to apply value engineering to an online course is to evaluate the different components of the course, such as videos, and figure out ways to make them more engaging and effective while also reducing production costs. This could involve using different equipment or finding more efficient methods of production, such as using a software like Canva or Descript to edit and enhance videos.
Another aspect of value engineering for online courses is the delivery method. While platforms like Teachable and Kajabi are popular options, they may not be the most cost-effective for every course creator. Alternatives like Convert Kit, which offers a drip campaign for sending course content via email, or self-hosting on a website, can be more cost-effective options depending on the needs of the course.
In addition to looking at the production and delivery of the course, value engineering can also be applied to the course content itself. This could involve finding ways to streamline the material, such as by eliminating unnecessary content or breaking up longer lessons into smaller, more manageable chunks. It could also involve finding ways to make the content more interactive and engaging for students, such as by including quizzes or group discussions.
Another important factor to consider when applying value engineering to an online course is the target audience. Understanding who the course is being created for and what they need can help inform decisions about the content, delivery method, and overall value of the course. By taking the time to research and understand the needs of the target audience, course creators can create more valuable and effective courses that meet the needs of their students.
Overall, value engineering can be a valuable tool for online course creators looking to improve their courses and reduce costs. By evaluating the different components of the course and finding ways to streamline and improve them, course creators can create high-quality content that provides value to their students while also being more cost-effective.
Transcription
Improving Your Course While Reducing Costs
Improving Your Course and Lower Your Costs. Pick two. James Marland: Hello friends. This is James Marlin from Course Creation Studio. Today we're going to talk about something that is important to me, which is value. I love adding value, but not just for the sake of making things cheaply, but I love adding value while improving the product. So we're gonna talk about something that I'm learning in my project management course on value engineering. So value engineering is all about improving service delivery and reducing costs, which value engineering. I've already introduced it. Okay, so next slide. Value engineering is a systematic method that improves the value of goods and services by analyzing the function. By analyzing the function. Of a product or service and identifying ways to perform the function in the most cost effective manner, or a simple way to say that is value engineering is a way to make something better while making it cost less. For an online course, it can be used to evaluate the course by looking at the different parts of the course, figuring out ways to make them better and more. all while saving you time or money. Now, where is a lot of the money coming from? Like, where does a lot of the cost come from? Well, it's your time. If you are bootstrapping a course, if you're making the course by yourself and you're doing the Canva, and you're doing the Teachable or the Cajabi, then, then this is where your time is going to be the biggest. So how do you look at what you're doing and provide the same benefit, the same benefit to your customers, as if with, with fewer steps, fewer costs more shortcuts how do you get the same benefit from your product without all the costs and hassle? For example, an online course has a lot of videos, most online courses has some sort of video component to it, and you might look at ways to make those videos more interesting, more engaging, all while reducing the costs of producing them. The lower costs. You the lower costs could come from using a different type of equipment or you're not, you don't pay somebody to film you, you use, you know, you buy a Logitech Brio or you buy a Logitech nine 20 and then record it in Windows movie maker or something. So you find a way to add more engagement while. Reducing costs. I love these videos. Most of these videos have me talking and you see my picture and you also see the, the screen content I use the Logitech it's called Logi Capture. It came with the camera. It has some neat features that I can use that changes resolution and changes size and aspect ratio and zoom in and out. I can choose my microphone. So it all works really well together and I don't. , somebody recording me, you know, paying somebody pro to produce it. And then I use a Canva to either chop it up into little chunks or descript, which is like a $20 program to, that's really fairly easy to use. That makes me sound good, and it also can help me edit out my ums and ahs, which I have more than I would like. But anyways, take those out. It's not that expensive. The, the, the camera was a hundred or something dollars and Descript is $20. Now Canva Pro is $20. So I'm, I have the cost for multiple programs are adding up. But if I just wanted to do it in Canva, I could record this in Canva, chop it up into little pieces and post on social media, or download the video, then upload it to YouTube. I think I can even upload it to YouTube right from Canva. So, The, you don't need a, a high production video company. Another way to, to do value engineering for the courses is by looking about how, how is the course delivered to students. So could you. Could you brainstorm and say, well, how could I deliver this? You don't necessarily need to deliver your course through Cajabi or Teachable. They, they do a lot of awesome things, and I do recommend doing that, but you could go through Convert Kit. Convert Kit has a drip campaign where if people sign up for the course, you can send them emails with your video content embedded in it, probably hosted on YouTube where you can only get to it through a link, but then you're delivering the same co content, the same course for less money. It does less things for it, but maybe, maybe you're looking at your course, you're value engineering it and saying, We don't need, we don't need a high a service that does a lot. I just need it to deliver the content and collect payments. So then you look for the options to make it easier. Another way to do value engineering is maybe by looking at the marketing, maybe you, you pay for ads and. Maybe there's a way to do it. Instead of paying for ads, you you sponsor podcasts in your niche. So if you, if you pay for ads on Facebook or I don't know, Facebook, Google, your keywords are competing with the other keywords of that audience. So if you were trying to sell Coca-Cola or something, Or cola or drink or soft drinks, and you were trying to buy the keyword soft drink, which sounds really difficult. You'd be competing against the big people who are spending lots of money, but maybe another way to do it is to look at. , you know, craft, I, I don't know, craft beer came to mind. Craft beer people, I don't even know what they're called. Brew masters or something, and there's podcasts for them and maybe you want to just Advertise with the people who brew craft beer. Maybe you have a kit or a, a class. Well, now you're not competing with the the, the Google keywords and the Google the Facebook keywords. You you have somebody that you can market to in a different way. So look at the different ways to do your marketing. It doesn't always have to cost money. It might just be a different way. Look at it, but overall, the, the goal of value engineering is to find the best balance between cost and value. So when you're looking at the online course, you are trying to give people the benefits of the course in the most effective and engaging way possible while also. Being affordable, like could you dump $20,000 into creating a course? Of course you can probably fairly easily with like video costs and graphics and you know, somebody to record it, somebody to edit it, sound engineering, all those types of things. But you can. You can value engineer it to deliver the benefit to the client, deliver the benefit to the customer, while also keeping the costs in line for your organization. So there's, there's six steps to value engineering. We're gonna briefly go through each step. So if you wanted to do this on your own, you would identify the problem or opportunity. Define the function, generate ideas, evaluate and choose an idea, implement and test the idea, and then evaluate the results. And it's like a cycle that you would do, and I would recommend. , your list might be 30 items, you know, oh, I gotta improve 30 things. I would just choose the top one to three items, maybe even just one, because the more things you change, you might break something that you didn't intend on breaking. Or you might, if you change five things all at once, you won't know what was actually effective. You won't know the answer. . So think about it like a scientist. If you're a scientist trying to value engineer your course, then you are going to choose one thing to change, evaluate it, tweak, take data, and then change again. It's like rapidly changing. One variable at a time. Like get enough data to know if it's working or not, and then move on. So, so identifying the problem, the, the first step in value engineering is just to identify the problem or the opportunity that needs to be addressed. This could be a cost issue, a performance issue, like something came back broken, or a combination of both. And then the next step is to define the function. Of the product or service. This involves identifying the specific tasks or activity of the product or service that must perform as well as the required inputs and outputs. So for my class, my core class, I'm trying to teach therapists how to build an online course, but not just build it, generate automatic income, generate automatic revenue so I could teach people how I. Take, take an outline, throw it into Microsoft Word, upload that outline to PowerPoint, which it creates slides for me. And then because I like graphics, I , I upload my things into Canvas. So that allows me to put in Movies and things, but, but it, it's because I like it. Now I understand I'm probably putting in more time than some of this actually needs for some things. I'm over-engineering it. So the function of the course is to teach them some marketing why they do things. So marketing principles. Different types of clients, how to build the course, how to launch the course, and then finally how to automate the course. I'm trying to teach all those things. So do I need, you know, what do I absolutely need to do that? Do I need motion videos on my course? Probably not unless I got feedback that said, oh, James, the best thing about your course was you chose the right video or the right picture, that clearly illustrated the function. Well, then I would have to reevaluate. But for the most part, people just want the promise. If you can teach them how to build a course and market a course, then that's what they're looking for. How do I build a course and market a course? How do I put it on automatic? to teach somebody how to put a course on automatic you, you actually do have to go through like, why are you doing this? Who are you marketing it to? How do you build it? How do you launch it, and how do you put it on automatic? You have to do all those things, but maybe they just wanna do, how do I build the course? Well, if I do how to build the course, that's like half of my material or less, it's like a third of the material. So maybe that's, that's all they want. How do I build this course? I don't need to know how to market it. I already have a marketing arm. So then I would just like, take the feedback and build just the marketing piece or build bolster the marketing piece saying, oh, they want this benefit, so I better design that function into it. So then you generate ideas once the function has been identified. The team or the person brainstorms and generates as many ideas as possible for improving the value of the product or service. This can be done through brainstorming, lateral thinking, creative problem solving. Also like mind maps, there's a lot of programs now that offer mind mapping. I think click up offers mind mapping, or you could just take a piece of paper and mind mapping, if you don't know, is you draw an idea in the center and then you draw branches off. Idea. So if I was doing a cooking course, course on cooking, I would want to, you know, have a, a branch that says equipment, then a branch that says dishes, and then a branch that says, you know, who's my audience. And then off the audience I might say, you know, business busy business owners, moms single dads, you know, and then that would give me the ideas for the mind map. So, Anyways, spend a lot of time talking about mind maps, but you generate ideas. Once you know the function, what are the ideas that you have to improve the value while reducing the cost? So then you evaluate your ideas after the list of ideas has been generated. Just look at each idea based on its potential impact, feasibility and cost. Then select the ideas that offer the most value and move forward with implementing them. So you might come up with 10 ideas, but most often. Only one to three of those ideas are going to be your big impact ideas. So based on the amount of time you have, the energy you have, the resources that you have, and if it's can give you the big wins, then you would implement those ideas. or you would select those ideas, then you implement them. Once you've selected it, you implement the idea and then test to ensure that they're effective, that it's doing the function that you're trying to do. It's meeting the performance standard. This might embr involve piloting, pilot prototyping and other forms of experimentation you might offer. Offer, offer. Let's say you have a new course, you might offer it to somebody who's already taken it or segment your course, like saying, I'm gonna run a new pilot group with the changes and get some feedback. Because remember, we're just, we're we're little course creation scientists, right? We're not gonna make the best thing. immediately. Without some experimentation, without some data. What's the best way to get data when you're teaching a course? Teach the course. , you know you're gonna teach a course to get the data. One of my personal problems I know is I will try to make things perfect before relaunching. And you do have to have some sort of standards, but that also prevents me from launching as often as I want. So how do I get the data if I'm not implementing and test? You can't. It's like all stuck in your head. It's all dreams. So get that out. Get . Create your worst course so you can make your best course, make a change, make two minor changes, release it, see what happens. Come back with the data, and then that goes to. Evaluate the results after the ideas have been implemented, implemented and tested. The team or the, the, the course creator should evaluate the results and then determine the overall impact on the value and product. If, if, if you want, what happens if the desired improvement have been achieved, then you move on to the next problem. So if you, if you solve the problem, you're getting the results, you're hitting the benchmarks, then move on to the next. Or opportunity. You know, you, you used idea one, it came back with great data. So go to your next idea for improvement and implement that. If it didn't or if it hurt your your program, your course, then take it back to baseline and try the next. Implementation, try the next idea or even come up with new ideas. If you're, if you're, the idea is totally off base, you might have to go back to a previous step and say, you know what? This didn't work. We need to go back and find a new way to do things. Examples of how to use value engineering when creating videos for your course. Excuse me. So we're gonna, we're just gonna do a mini Evaluation, you know, when you, when you're creating videos, what are, what are some of the problems? What are some of the functions? What are the ideas? And then select one, implement and test. So how, how, how, what are some ideas for what are some problems when you think of creating a video for an online course? What are some of the problems? Well, the problems might be, The problems might be audio, the problems might be cost like it costs cuz I hire somebody. The problems might be editing the problems might be what are some other problems? What's coming to my mind now is an opportunity, maybe you're speaking for at a conference. Maybe you're speaking at your local school, maybe you're speaking at your a local community or agency or advocacy group you're speaking. So an opportunity could be to record that, record yourself, or record other people with just a camera or something. Has good video, audio, and video. You, an opportunity could be to record that. So the function, it just depends. The function for video is to deliver engaging content and teach a subject. So what are some ideas for creating your online video? So an idea here are five ideas for making cost effective videos for your online course. Idea number one, use low-cost equipment instead of using expensive professional equipment or cameras and lighting. Consider low-cost options such as your smartphone or even an entry level dsl r camera. Those cameras can run you two to $500, but they do make nice nice images, so that could be one. Another way for value engineering your videos is film and natural light. Natural light is a free and widely available resource that can be used to light your videos. So this is one of the things I did. I used to work in my basement and I have some lighting for it, but it never, it never looked, it never looked as good as I. So I have a room upstairs in my house that was that was being used for storage and we cleaned it out, painted it up. I'm doing some decorations and it's gonna be my room, but it has a window off to the left for me that even though my lighting isn't perfect, it's probably twice as good as it was in the basement. And I didn't have to spend a ton of money for, for extra lights, cuz I was looking into like, well, how do I need to add more lights? Do I need to buy like, instead of my a hundred dollars light set, do I need to buy like a $300 light set or even more? It was getting, it was getting like out of hand. So one of the ways I value engineered mine was to go upstairs, paint, paint the, paint the storage room, and open the window. Use simple background. So instead of filming in expensive locations, consider just being a simple background, like a plain wall or a solid colored sheet. This can help reduce design issues. Another idea is just basic editing software. Instead of using the professional versions, you can use iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. I use a program called Script. It costs me $20 a month. Not, not super expensive. It cleans up my audio and it takes out the ums. It's great for me. So that's what I do. But it's not expensive and it can, it can. Edit the audio to make you sound better. it, it's a win-win for me, not super expensive. And finally reuse content. If you've already created your videos for other courses or projects, considering reusing some of that in, in, in your new courses, this can help reduce the time and cost of producing new videos. Another way to do this for reusing content is if you have slides, maybe just slides with no video image, you can reuse the slides. And then talk over them. . An easy way to do this is load your slides up. Microsoft even has a way to do this. Load your slides up and talk over your slides. Record the screen and click, click through it. So, then, then you just gotta choose one. You know, what's the function you're trying to, what's the function you're trying to do, and can you do it cheaper? Be better, faster, quicker. Without reducing the quality, that's value engineering for your course. So in conclusion, you can create great content for less money. Value engineering's a way to make something better. Also making it cost less while also making it cost less. It can be used to evaluate an online course by looking at the different parts of the course and figuring out ways to make them better and more efficient, while also saving money. I hope you found this useful. When you've created your course or as you're going through your course, it's always good at some point to do some sort of value engineering exercise where you evaluate either your marketing, your delivery, your creation process and say, is there a way to do this better? Is there a way to. Create things and maybe another way to do it better is to outsource some of this cuz maybe you don't like making graphics or maybe you don't like editing. Editing the video and your time is valuable. As a business owner, you know your time's worth in the hundreds of dollars an hour. cuz you, you can do a lot in your company. So, , maybe it would be beneficial to hire somebody for 30 to $50 an hour to engineer your audio or to engineer your video source. That could be actually a value your, your value engineering. One of your solutions is to outsource something that you don't like to do. So, . I hope this has been beneficial to you. I hope you think about not when you've, when you try to engineer something for value, you're not just trying to cheapen it, but you're finding ways to make it better while costing less for your organization. This is James with Course Creation Studio. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time.
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