
The real difference between an online and a traditional course
Learning theories, and how adults actually learn
The principles that decide whether learning happens
What building an online course involves end to end
The basic principles of working with the technology
The toolkit you genuinely need
Choosing between the options
What helps and what just adds cost
Choosing a topic and building the programme
Where the material comes from
Questions and assignments
Designing an intensive, and developing your own expertise as you go
How to behave on camera
Working with an audience you cannot see
The stages of a learner's life cycle
Preparing and running a launch session
Tracking whether anything is being learned
Training people to apply it, not just recall it
Giving feedback at scale
Using cases, reflection and a proper debrief
Managing the course as it runs
Monitoring progress
Challenging students who coast
Checking work, and judging whether the course was useful
The competency model for someone who owns learning
How adults actually learn, and what follows from it
The training plan and the ADDIE model
Assessing need, and the six disciplines of breakthrough learning
Defining the end result before choosing a format
Linking learning objectives to the outcome someone is paying for
Defining the business result you promise
Mapping the learning journey, and the diagnostic checklist
What a programme is actually made of
What determines the outcome
Preparation, delivery and transfer as three separate problems
The design checklist
The key steps of learning, and the nine-step sequence
The bottlenecks that stop it
Why repetition is not optional
Motivation, and the learning value chain
Transfer as the real measure of a course's value
The main obstacles to it
Sixteen factors that decide whether knowledge is applied
The power of reminders, and the checklist
Why performance support matters more than the course
How it works in practice
The purpose of a coach at this stage
The role of feedback, and the support checklist
Why evaluation decides whether anyone buys the next one
Types of evidence of benefit
The problems with evaluation nobody mentions
The six-step process, and how to report the result
The difference between training and development
Techniques that work outside a classroom
Career development
Working with high-potential learners
What human resource development covers
The nature of organisational development
Change management and the learning organisation model
Knowledge management and succession planning
Connecting learning to strategy
Connecting it to the other systems around it
Automation and online delivery
Gamification, and where it helps rather than decorates
Structure, content, style, support and the difficulties
What separates a trainer from a presenter
Dale's cone and the learning pyramid
The formats on the market, and how effectiveness is judged
The first stage of the cycle: making the problem real
Preparation before anyone arrives
The optimal group size
The room, the breaks and the small things that decide the day
Why visual material carries more than you think
The timetable, and what it does to attention
Working styles a trainer can use
Reflection, conceptualisation and practice as three separate stages
Resistance, group dynamics and the complications you will meet
Introducing group norms
Warming up a group and getting engagement
The phases a group moves through, and handling objections
The structure of a session
Introducing yourself in a way that earns attention
Metaphor and story as teaching instruments
Setting individual goals, teaching theory, and ending properly
What changes when the group is on a screen
Running a webinar that people stay in
The technical setup that stops being a problem
Maintaining contact with a group you cannot read
Managing acquisition as a function rather than a launch
Launching a site that converts
Gamification in attracting an audience
Building a community around the product, with the Wargaming case
Platforms and channels for reaching an existing audience
Building a referral programme
The systems that track who came from where
Chatbots, and the Google case
Email as a channel rather than an announcement
Content and video marketing
SEO for a course landing page
Writing text and choosing images, with the iDeals case
Search advertising for a course launch
Analytics, and what to actually look at
Remarketing and its formats
Launching a first campaign, with cases
Paid advertising across the major platforms
What works on each one
Video platforms as an acquisition channel
Setting up your pages properly, with cases
The analytics behind acquisition
Cost of attraction, and time to conversion
Source quality rather than source volume
Building the report that tells you where to spend next
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
The hard part of an online course business is not recording the course. It is that nobody knows it exists, and the people who buy it stop watching in week two.
The order most people do this in
Record forty hours first. Worry about an audience afterwards. By then the money and the enthusiasm are gone, the launch consists of one post, and the conclusion is that the market is saturated. I have watched genuinely excellent experts do this, and the content was never the problem. Two things were missing: a design that made people finish, and any channel through which a stranger could find them.
What this course actually covers
Six blocks. First, how online learning actually works: the difference from in-person, choosing a platform, building the programme, running it live, engagement and evaluation. Second, the design discipline that decides completion — diagnosis, structure, transfer into practice, support afterwards, and proving the result. Third, you in front of a group: preparation, group dynamics, resistance, the toolkit, and delivering online. Fourth, acquisition channels — site, community, referrals, email, content, SEO, paid advertising, social platforms and the cost of attraction. Fifth, the sale itself: AIDA, SPIN, FAB, BANT, objection handling and closing. Sixth, positioning, because on a crowded marketplace people choose the course they understand, not the best one.
A note on the marketing block
Those six lessons were recorded using hiring examples — attracting candidates rather than buyers. The mechanics are identical: a landing page is a landing page, a referral programme is a referral programme, and search advertising, remarketing, analytics and social promotion do not care what you are selling. Only the offer and the audience change. I would rather tell you that than have you notice it in lesson twenty-three.
Who is teaching this
I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my own courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes — so the material here is what I actually do, not a theory about it. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.
What is included
Lifetime access to all 40 lessons
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
A Udemy Certificate of Completion
Working material: the design and diagnostic checklists, the transfer factors, the session structure, acquisition channel breakdown, AIDA, SPIN, FAB, BANT, the positioning formula
Real cases from Wargaming, Google and iDeals
Where to start
Before recording anything, write the one sentence a buyer would use to describe your course to a colleague. If you cannot, that is the first thing to fix, and it costs nothing to fix now rather than after forty hours of video. Enrol now and start today.