Writing an Effective Course Description
An effective course description is essential to attracting people’s interest in your course. The best course description is the one that reflects your unique style. However, it can be useful to keep the following points in mind.
A good course description should:
- Set up clear and concise expectations of what the course will cover/achieve.
- Have a clear focus, whether that is fiction writing, non-fiction, genre, poetry, etc.
- Clearly communicate the intended audience.
- Be engaging and enticing.
It should be obvious what the course is, who it’s for and why they would want to do it. In particular, pay attention to these areas:
Title
If the title doesn’t catch interest, no one will read the description. We prefer catchy, unique titles, but the most important factor is to clearly show what the course is about. For example, if you are teaching a poetry course, use the word ‘poetry’ somewhere in your title.
Introductory paragraph
This might be catchy or use rhetorical questions. It should lay the foundation for the what, who and why that the rest of the description expands on. For inspiration, have a look at these course descriptions: