Creating 5 Star Courses: 10 tips from MMC Instructor Nicole Land

From our very first phone call, I knew Nicole Land would be a Rockstar SAP instructor. She was instantly engaged, excited, and inspired to get her first SAP Instructor-Led Course published. Shortly after, Nicole published her first course, Review and Manage the SAP MRP List, and it was instantly well-received.

Since then, Nicole has published 3 MMC courses and has a 4th on the way! I have worked with over 100 instructors, and Nicole has consistently surprised and impressed me. Her attention to detail and passion for sharing her immense knowledge is commendable, and something that we all can learn from!

Meet Nicole

Nicole is passionate about creating within all realms of her life. In addition to creating courses and SAP training material, Nicole is also a talented woodworker and artist. She has a knack for building things from the bottom up and creating something noteworthy. This is evident in all her courses, which have an overwhelming number of 5-star reviews.

If you read through Nicole’s course reviews, you’ll see a pattern emerge: the words great demo, amazing examples, simply amazing, tend to come up more than once. Even though Nicole only has 5 SAP courses live at this point, she already has 29 reviews with a 4.8 overall rating. MMC students have spoken, and they love Nicole!

Video Interview with MMC Instructor Nicole Land

MMC’s Director of Training Development, Leslie Bass, noted that when Nicole submits her courses for a final review, they are virtually perfect and ready to go. I mentioned this to Nicole, and she laughed and said that tends to be a theme in her life—her wedding planner even said that Nicole’s wedding was the easiest wedding she’d ever planned because Nicole had already done all the work!

She is a powerhouse of knowledge and she delivers her content with unprecedented precision and detail. Watch our video interview to learn how she does it and hopefully, learn how to apply the same concepts to your future MMC SAP courses as well!

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10 Tips and Tricks for Creating Successful MMC Courses  

I highly recommend watching our entire interview, but for those who only have time for a summary, Nicole’s top 10 tips for creating successful MMC courses are listed below:

1.  The first course is the hardest, but your subsequent courses will be much easier and faster to publish. Whatever you have to do to motivate yourself, do it. Just get started!
    
2. It’s important to maintain consistency through your courses. Try to keep the look and the feel the same, so that the users don’t have to get used to a new style each time they enroll in one of your courses. Students already have to get used to so many new things in a course (content, concepts, etc.), so having your own ‘brand’ is really helpful. Since I use the same framework, style and lots of the same animations, my second and third courses were far easier to get started on.
    
3. To create your own ‘brand’ start by looking at the last course you published (strip it down to the studs), and then start rebuilding the framework slide by slide. It’s OK if it starts off messy, focus on getting some initial ideas down and see how you want to frame the STORY of your course content.
    
4. You have to tell a story, or your students won’t pay attention/ care, and most importantly, they won’t retain the information you’re sharing. If your story is engaging enough, they will WANT to turn the page.
    
5. Editing is the most time-consuming part. It’s not necessarily difficult but can be tedious. I use an application called Camtasia for editing which makes things a bit easier. It’s both user-friendly and affordable.
    
6. It will be worth it once your stats and revenue start to go up and will help motivate you to create more courses.
    
7. A good microphone helps! I have a Blue Snowball, and it’s been the best equipment investment I’ve made so far.  The microphone I have comes with a filter, which helps with background noise. Camtasia also has a good video editing application that helps with leveling out the audio and diminishing background noise.
    
8. We all have very little free time, and it’s often hard to get over the thought of, ‘will I make any money’? I can confidently say that you will make something from your courses, but you need to trust in the content, trust in the process, trust in yourself. So again, just get going. It’s a challenge to get started, but it’s easy from there.
    
9. Don’t create courses JUST for the money. You have to love creating meaningful and helpful content as well.
    
10. In my opinion, if you get repeat customers, that's an indication of your course’s success.

Share your SAP Knowledge

Above all else, Nicole says that she publishes courses simply because she loves to create. She knows that she’s creating something meaningful and beautiful that will help thousands of students. As Nicole said, she will live on forever through her videos!

Nicole stated that in her 16 years of work with SAP, she has consistently heard people say, 'SAP is just too confusing to use'. She acknowledged that while this can be the case, and it is an intimidating system at times, with more meaningful training and resources, it will continue to become less cryptic. Nicole loves contributing to that shift in knowledge, and her MMC courses are a great addition to SAP education as a whole.

If you’re an SAP expert, and this strikes a chord with you, apply to become an MMC instructor, and share your knowledge with our 30,000+ students. You worked hard to gain all of your SAP knowledge, and we think you should share it.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.