Short 20 hour Courses
ACS Distance Education offers a wide range of tutor supported courses from 100 hours to 2500 hour qualifications. But not everyone wants to study for long periods of time at first.
That is why we developed our 20 hour short courses.
The courses are –
- Self study – The student works through the course at their own pace. They can contact a tutor if they have a question, but the courses are developed in a way that ensures that the student can work through them with no or minimal tutor support.
- Short – The courses require only 20 hours of study. This is something that a student could realistically complete in a relatively short period of time.
- Flexible –
- Students can also work at their own pace when suits
- They can also work where suits them – their home, on the bus, on the train, a coffee shop.
- Also, they can study on their phone, their computer or their tablet.
The courses are designed to be convenient and flexible for students to study.
As well as being flexible and designed to fit in with when and how the student can study. They are also very focussed.
The courses are great for a student’s personal development –
- They can be used to demonstrate personal development.
- They can enhance a student’s CV/resume.
- They can improve and update a student’s knowledge of a particular topic. Or start them on the track to learning more about this topic.
- They can also help businesses to train their staff in a flexible and relatively short period of time.
The courses are designed to help a student learn more about one specific topic, such as Online and Telephone Counselling, Drainage, Pruning etc.
You can view more of our short courses here.
How Do We Develop 20 Hour Short Courses
There are two main first steps –
- A student or affiliate or tutor tells us that there is potential for a new course in a particular topic.
- Through research, we find out there is a gap in the market for a particular topic. For example, looking at google trends.
More research is carried out to determine if this is a viable course.
For example –
- Looking at whether competitors are offering similar courses.
- Is there a demand for the course?
We find out by –
- Researching online
- Asking affiliates, tutors and students for their opinion
- Posting polls and questions on social media
- Contacting industry professionals and organisations for their opinion
A course might stop there. It might not be viable or relevant. We do not simply leave it there though. In the future, we may go back to a course and see if it would be useful again. Things change all the time, so what isn’t relevant today might be relevant in a month’s or a year’s time or even five year’s time, so nothing is ever lost and forgotten.
If the course does seem currently viable, we will begin to develop it.
- An experienced course writer will be asked to draw up a plan on what the course might cover.
- This is then passed on to other experienced course writers for their input.
- Our writers are industry specialists as well as course writers.
- Once an overall framework for the course is developed. The course will be given to a course writer to begin developing the course itself.
- It will then be passed to another writer for more input. Then perhaps another. Why get more than one writer? The aim is to get the experience and knowledge of more than one writer.
- When the writing is complete, it is passed to an editor to review the course. Then when that is done, our graphic designers will prepare the course ready to present online.
- When everything is ready, it will be posted online and the enrolments begin.
We don’t stop there though.
We continue to improve our courses all of the time.
- Say we receive feedback from a student saying that they want more information on a particular topic or that something doesn’t make sense, we jump on it and get it amended and updated immediately.
- We keep ahead of new developments, theories and knowledge in different industries through our network of writers and tutors. We update the courses regularly to ensure that they are up to date and relevant to their industry.
Why Students Benefit From Short Courses?
The short courses are designed to educate and train students in a relatively short period of time – 20 hours.
They are useful for individuals and organisations. For example –
- Professional Development for individuals
- Train and developing staff in organisations
- Improve a student’s resume/CV
- Focusing on a particular topic for a quick, intense increase in knowledge on a topic
- Help students to make a decision. For example, a student might take a short course on Consumer Behaviour, for example, and decide that marketing and business psychology is something they want to go into and receive further training on.
Who are Short Courses For?
Basically, anyone. This is what makes these 20 hour courses so lucrative for many colleges / businesses to sell. With little to no tutor or staff involvement due to the interactive self paced nature of the courses - this is a highly profitable and low risk asset to sell on your website and learning management system .
These courses can be marketed towards so many groups of individuals such as :
- Someone leaving college or university or school and wanting to start a new career.
- People in an existing career, but wanting to start a new one.
- People wanting to develop skills in a particular area.
- People wanting to improve and update their existing skills.
- Students wanting to show that they are keen to develop professionally through taking courses.
- People who want a new hobby.
- People who have retired and want to try something new.
- Someone who wants to start a new business and wants to gain knowledge in a particular area first.
- Students already studying a course but find that they are particularly interested in a niche area and want to learn more. For example, a horticulture or agriculture student might want to learn more about keeping bees.
The list is potentially endless.
Why Sell Short Courses?
There is a wide potential market for these type of very short (micro credential style) courses. As a college or business selling these courses you can easily expand your sales funnels and target areas such as :
- Businesses who want to train their staff
- Those wanting to study for professional development
- People wanting to start a new career
- People wanting promotion
- Those wanting to start a new hobby or interest
- Or simply because they like studying
The courses are short, focused, engaging and flexible, appealing to people who may not want to/be ready to take on a longer period of study.
ACS Distance Education are developing short courses all of the time.
This allows our affiliates to continually update their stable of courses.
We also update our courses regularly, which means that affiliates know that our courses are up to date and relevant to their students.
We operate on a turnkey system, so setting up your business to sell our short courses is convenient and easy to organise.
Do you want to -
- To expand the stable of courses you already offer?
- To set up a new business selling courses?
- Be sure that you have up-to-date course materials for your students?
- Have course materials that are written by industry experts?
- Then why not have a look at our 20 hour courses?