Checklist for vetting ideas
The following guidelines will help you vet ideas for courses. Each guideline is followed by a series of questions to help you as you design your course.
- Send the learner home with something practical
- What does the learner get to show off after the course? Examples: a game, a portfolio, templates they can use for future projects, a resume, an Electron app, a working slide deck, an app deployment, a GitHub pages site.
- Is the course project realistic?
- Will the learner be proud to show off their work?
- Build towards specific skills
- What should a learner be able to do by the end of the course?
- Design realistic interactions
- Are you teaching something the student would realistically do on GitHub - in the way they would do it on GitHub? Or, is the content better suited for a static medium, like a guide or tutorial?
- Do the interactions feel natural? If you were teaching your friend, how would you interact with them in the repository?
- Avoid generic responses like closing an issue for each step to indicate they're done reading?
- Is the learner going through a realistic workflow? Does this experience mimic what they'll do in the real world?
- Does each interaction build towards the skills you've identified?
- Keep it simple and tightly scoped
- Can the skills be taught with 8-15 tasks? If not, consider breaking it up into multiple courses.
- Could a learner do this in one sitting?
- Can a learner easily re-enter the course after some time away?
