How I prepared my first online course

Since long I didn't publish anything here. It's because I was busy with some other topics, but now it's time to share the results with you.

 In the previous years I published several articles about different aspects of software development on different platforms. From all of them that ones were the most popular which were about version control with git, so at one point I decided to write a book, about this topic (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095QK1MTN,

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099C3GKL1).

Once the book was done I started to thing about how bring this topic on a higher level and I decided prepare some tutorial videos and upload them to youtube.

This was an activity which pointed out of my comfort zone. I'm feeling comfortable with doing the technical work and to write about it. I have also nothing against talking about it face to face. But to record it and publish it, so that people can replay it any time, so that people can find all mistakes I made later. They realize my English mistakes, my wrong pronunciation and my voice. And then they can leave feedbacks and comments. That was more than uncomfortable for me.

Finally somehow I managed to get over all these fears and I prepared my first tutorial video about "How can git support you in debugging your code" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNlnUaEcoLQ). I was really afraid when I first published it. And surprisingly I got really good feedbacks, both from friends and from people, who I don't know. One friend proposed me to prepare a whole online course. I still didn't feel comfortable with that, but after considering it two months long I started to prepare it.

I had to learn a lot: I read a lot and watched some online tutorial about how to build up an online course, what's to be taken care while working on the videos. I learned for example that the first 10 minutes are the most important, because after that time to listener decides if they want to continue the course or not. I also had to make sure if the sound quality is good enough. And I had to decide what I want to share in the videos: do I want to video myself, show some pre-prepared slides or my share my desktop while working on different scenarios? Finally I decided to do a mixture of slides and screen records, while solving real scenarios. I wanted to do my courses in a really practice-based manner.

And finally, despite all my personal fears I decided to add a short introduction video, where I record myself in my personal room. This was really something out of my comfort zone, but I managed to do it.

I learned how to record the screen and edit the video properly. I set up the environment and tried to configure it in a way, that it's well-readable in the videos. I created the skeleton of the course, collected the topics I want to share and figured out the best way to present them. I was thinking about the examples long hours long and I prepared some practical exercises. Then I recorded all the videos, which was pretty time consuming, but it also made fun. Finally I had to find a platform, where I can share the course and finally I decided to use Udemy for this purpose.

So I uploaded and filled everything on Udemy and finally I managed to publish my course.

It has two parts. The first part of for free for everyone and it's called "GIT for beginners" course (https://www.udemy.com/course/git-for-beginners1/?referralCode=2661870CB856A3BDB49C).

The second part (the follow-up of this course) is called "Advanced GIT course - Become a GIT expert" and it presents advanced tricks of GIT. Normally it's not for free, but in the next day by using this link you can get it for free:

https://www.udemy.com/course/advanced-git-course/?couponCode=7402FFF253AB9D0D86F5

I hope you will enjoy it, the only request is that please give me some valuable feedback, so that I can improve the course further.

Creating my first only course made me a lot of fun, I learned a lot, both technically and personally. In the meanwhile I received the first feedbacks and fortunately they are also mostly positive. I hope I managed to create a valuable content which will help a lot of developers.