How to Build a Course in Canva: A Step-by-Step Guide

Over 170 million people around the world use Canva for a number of cases, from social media graphics to invitations and even business cards. But did you know that Canva can also be used to create online courses?

While there isn't a specialized course creation feature within the platform, it has all the tools that you need to create online learning materials. The trick is to get creative with it.

However, if you're new to Canva or haven't used it extensively, you might not be familiar with its amazing features. Not to mention, Canva now has AI integrated into its system, making designing even easier and more efficient. The guide below takes you through the step-by-step process of creating a Canva course.

How to Build a Course in Canva?

Canva is a one-stop for your design needs, which means that it has pretty much any feature a course designer would want. Be it presentations, slide decks, banners, marketing materials, or templates for worksheets, Canva has it all.

Plus, you can also publish your course on Canva for people to buy. You'll see a course report tab in your profile where you can see every learner's progress.

So, how to build a course in Canva with all these features? Let's discuss.

Step 1: Plan the Course Outline

First, decide what your course will look like. You should have some learning paths in mind and a solid plan on how you want to structure your course. It's also the perfect time to brainstorm and come up with ideas for visuals and design elements to make your course more engaging.

While you're at it, think of the sections, lessons, modules, key points, and the sequence of information you want to deliver. Keep your target audience in mind when deciding on these things.

Let's say you're creating a YouTube 101 course. Your target audience is beginners who have no prior knowledge of video marketing. So, you need to include modules that cover the basics of video marketing, setting up a YouTube channel, creating videos, optimizing them, etc.

Step 2: Select a Template

Next, choose the template you want to use for your course. Before this, you should have in mind what format your course will follow.

Will it be a presentation or a video-based course? The latter is a great choice for courses that require demonstrations, while the former can be perfect for theory-based lessons or introductory classes.

Canva has a ton of presentation templates from which you can choose. There are specialized education-specific presentation templates, too. Filter them by subject to get your desired options. Many of them are free, while others require a small fee or Canva Pro membership. Similarly, you can select a video template to get started.

Your course doesn't necessarily have to be video-only or text-only. You may use a blend of both, depending on your content and target audience.

For example, you can use a presentation template to create an introductory video for each module and then include text-based lessons in between. Most universities, such as Yale and Stanford, use this approach for their online courses on sites like Coursera. They also add quizzes in between lessons so that learners can revise what they've learned before going into the next module.

Step 3: Create Course Lessons

You can now start filling the lesson sections with content. Canva's lesson templates are handy in this regard since they come with a deck of cards that help you organize your lesson into different topics.

Each card can have a title, subtitle, and body text. You can also add images, videos, audio clips, or links to external resources in the body of the card.

Step 4: Add Engaging Elements to Your Course

Creating a course doesn't simply mean adding text and theory. You also have to make the learning material engaging enough for learners to stay invested.

There are many ways to do this with Canva.

• Storyboards: If you're creating a course, such as a language course, that requires storytelling, you can use Canva's storyboard templates to create interactive stories. Since Canva also has a massive graphics library, you can add relevant images and illustrations to your storyboard.
• Daily Agendas: For courses that are spread over multiple days, you can add daily agendas to make it easy for learners to keep a certain pace. Canva has daily agenda templates that make this step a breeze.
• Lesson Plans: Learners are more likely to stay focused if they know what to expect in a lesson. You can use the lesson plan templates to create a visual outline of your lesson, including learning objectives, activities, assessments, and so on.

You can also add several interactive elements into your course to keep learners on their toes. For example, Canva lets you add interactive charts that show correlations, comparisons, outliers, or trends between data points.

Similarly, you can use templates for questionnaires and quizzes to test learners on their knowledge. In addition to a quiz, you can also add an infographic at the end of every lesson to act as a summary and reinforce key concepts. Canva's infographic templates help you get started here.

Step 5: Create Course Certification

Humans have a natural inclination towards receiving recognition, and a course certification is an excellent way to provide that. Use Canva's course certification templates to create certificates that learners get after completing the learning material.

If you're an educational institute, you can also add branding elements, such as your logo and colors, to make the certificate more professional. It helps add credibility to the course.

Step 6: Promote Your Course

Even the most exceptional course won't be useful if you don't market it correctly. The good news is that Canva also has marketing resources that you can use to get as many eyes on your course as possible.

If you already have an email list, use Canva's newsletter templates to create an email that entices people to enroll in your course. Similarly, you can use website templates to create landing pages that provide visitors with information about the course. Then, direct people to your website through social media marketing, Google Ads, organic search, and other methods.

Speaking of social media marketing, Canva has an AI-powered suite of tools to create everything from Stories to videos and feed posts. If you're short on ideas, use Canva's AI text-to-video tool that can create social media videos based on your text prompts in mere seconds.

Canva also has a free online AI image generator that only requires a short text input to create professional-looking graphics. Besides using it to create social media posts, you can also develop course visuals without spending too much time or effort.

Alternative Ways to Create a Course

While Canva definitely offers a streamlined route to course creation, you may find it to be too overwhelming. The learning curve may also be steep for some people. Check out these alternatives instead.

DIY Course Creation

For people who might find Canva too much to handle, a DIY approach to course creation might be more suitable. However, this usually only works for simpler courses where the content is already well-established and easily transferable to online platforms.

You'll have to create each lesson manually, but there are plenty of tools and resources available to help you. For example, you can use Google Slides or PowerPoint to create your course slides. Then, use screencasting tools like Loom to record your screen and voiceover as you present the material.

For text material, you can use a word processor like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Then, convert it into a PDF using an online converter tool before uploading it to your chosen learning platform.

Using Coursebox

If you don't want to go through the hassle of DIY course creation or using templates, go for Coursebox. It's an AI-powered course creator that creates learning materials based on your text input. You can also use existing websites and docs to generate a course in minutes.

That's not it, though. Coursebox also has an AI video generator to create training videos in minutes. Similarly, the AI quiz generator creates assessments while the AI grader checks and grades them based on the rubric or marking criteria you've selected.

You can add a ton of interactive elements like tabs, social discussions, videos, and flashcards. Or, you may create interactive content in Canva and embed it in your Coursebox course.

Most importantly, Coursebox facilitates the selling of your courses by letting you white-label them. You can then set a price or create a subscription-based model to capitalize on your expertise.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to build a course in Canva, you can select your desired templates and get started right now. Or, you could take the alternative route to create an AI-assisted course.

Either way, the success of your course will ultimately depend on how well the material is structured, how engaging and interactive it is, and the level of value it provides to the learners. So, put sufficient thought into these aspects. Plus, update your course if it's on a topic where new developments are frequent or if you get feedback from learners.