Give me your feedback please on my proposed course

[Mrstutor]

I am an author/teacher in the throes of planning an e-course in writing non fiction books.

I am deliberating between having the course run over 4, 6 or even 8 weeks.
I'm trying to balance the modules so they are all of equal content, but this is quite tricky. There could be 4 modules or at a pinch 6, but a couple of them would be shorter than the others - a bit concerned students may feel the shorter modules don't give value for money.

If you were taking such a course, would you prefer:

(1) An intensive 4-week course where you had to work on it roughly one hour a day.
(2) An 8 week course where there was 2 weeks between modules.
(3) A 6-week course where a couple of modules were for 2 weeks and the other two for one week.

My reservations about (3) are that people can forget deadlines if they change from module to module. Ideally, I wanted all assignments returned exactly 7 days after the module is emailed out, so a routine is established.

It will not be possible to enrol once the course has begun- there's a start and end date. There are deadlines for submission of work in order to keep students focused. The course will run several times a year, so the more intensive and shorter it is, the more times I can offer it.

Any comments?

[MattSmithIsMine]

I do lots of estudy. No 2 sounds best to me.

[Mrstutor]

Thanks. I wonder why you think that is best?

Is this because you are busy and would find the pressure of a 4- week course too intensive?

I'm not sure whether putting students under tighter deadlines makes them get on with things, rather than putting off, or if an intensive course creates too much pressure.

Anyone else?

[PetiteRaleuse]

The idea of having deadlines on an e-learning course is good, as some courses are just so open on that I one may not ever finish them. But if I were signing up to another ecourse I would want reasonable rather than strict deadlines, so wouldl probably go for eight weeks.

You could sell the short modules you aren't sure about as half modules, so that price-wise it looks more transparent. There's nothing worse than paying for a course and feeling fobbed off with some parts of it (though better than all of it I suppose).

[mrstutor]

Thank you!

There will defintely be deadlines; 2 reasons- 1) I am still a busy writer so need to plan the marking of assignments into my work. 2) having done distance learning before as a student but also a tutor, I know that success is linked to having a deadline.

I may in fact devise it as a 6-week course, with 2 modules being shorter, but with a week's deadline rather than 2 weeks.

But happy to listen to any more comments as they come!