Welcome! If you're creating a course for Upcase, this guide is here to help you craft useful, ethical, and engaging developer education content. Think of this not as a checklist, but as a compass for structuring your lessons, meant to be used for inspiration.
- A typical structure for educational modules
- Tips for creating engaging and ethical content
- Guidance on writing and recording lessons
- Briefly state what the learner will walk away with
- Set context: Where does this fit in their journey?
- Mention any prerequisites or key values (accessibility, AI ethics, etc.)
- Define the main idea
- Show why it matters with examples or analogies
- Explain any key terms or assumptions
- Show how the concept is applied in real life
- Be clear about where you're starting from (e.g., a scaffolded Rails app, a design sketch, etc.)
- Narrate why you're doing things, not just how
Try to highlight both the “happy path” and potential tricky edge cases.
- Include a mini recap
- Ask reflection questions or small exercises:
- What would you try differently?
- Can you explain this to a coworker?
- Where could this go wrong?
- Recap the key takeaways
- Suggest one or two next steps (deeper learning, building a feature)
- Link to any resources
- Speak like you're mentoring, not lecturing
- Keep videos or walkthroughs short
- Avoid hardcoding API keys, secrets, or vendor-specific details
- Include captions or transcripts