I recently came across dishonesty in labeling an information product, which made me wonder about the motives and experience of the writers/sellers.

Here’s the situation: I am writing a course about writing nonfiction books, based on a workshop I developed and e-books I wrote but never published; I realized the material was really a course before I had time to publish the e-books. So it’s a course. As a professional educator with many years of classroom experience at the university level, I have designed, developed, written, and taught courses on a variety of topics, mostly about writing and publishing. So I know the requirements for calling something a course.

Anyway, in researching other “courses,” I came across one person (I wondered at the last time this person was actually in a classroom) who was selling “a 7-page course.” Give me a break. Unless you’re teaching people how to boil water, you can’t teach much in 7 pages. In addition, one of the components of any course, at least in my experience, is feedback from a qualified expert. No mention of feedback was on her short sales page. In my view, she was offering an e-book but had heard that a course could sell for more money, so she simply changed “chapter” to “lesson” and called it a course. And she’s not the only culprit on the Internet today.

That’s dishonest, in my view

So I sat down and defined, for myself and in my own terms (with a little, somewhat unsuccessful research), the meaning of these terms. Here are my definitions:

E-BOOK
This is a short piece of writing. It is like a printed book, but e-books are usually much shorter than printed books. They also have the advantage of including live links to other sites and information. They can range in length from a few pages to well over 200. For my writing, I’m defining an e-book as something fewer than 20 pages (I may adjust that as I go along), dealing with a small piece of a much larger topic. These e-books will be sold for prices typical of a printed book, from $7.95 to $15.95 or so. That seemed reasonable to me.

MANUAL
A manual often describes the step-by-step procedures or instructions about operating a piece of machinery, or conducting some task, as in a procedure manual. You can also create policy manuals, which lay out the policies of an enterprise, as a manual for operating that business. They often have many illustrations to help the reader accomplish the task.

REFERENCE GUIDE
A reference guide is a book with lots of lists and information, to be used as a reference. I’m familiar with writer’s reference guides, which contain lists of plot points for fiction writers or words to be used in a certain situation. Typical reference guides for writers include all kinds of dictionaries, a thesaurus, a word guide, and so on. They aren’t really good for reading from cover to cover, as an e-book would be. The reader goes to the section or page needed, finds the information sought, and uses that information for their purposes.

COURSE
They used to be called correspondence courses; now they are called home-study or self-paced courses, or if offered exclusively on the Internet, as a download, they are called e-courses. Whatever they are called, a course refers to an educational experience that offers the reader/student five types of information:

a. Detailed information about the topic. In a classroom, this information comes in the form of textbooks, handouts from the instructor, lectures, and possibly discussion with the students. In a course offered over the Internet, this information often comes as downloadable or printed materials, and maybe cds of the instructor talking the student through the materials, dvds or slide presentations on the web, or many other ways the information can be displayed. The point is that the information is covered in depth and is highly useful to the student.

b. Exercises. Exercises are crucial because they break the topic down into manageable chunks and allow the students to practice the points taught. With some exercises, with a right and wrong answer, an answer key is provided or tests are graded by the instructor and returned. Exercises with no right answers can include samples.

c. Assignments and exams. Students create these pieces during and at the end of the course to demonstrate their understanding of the material. The final grade is based on these assignments. In some courses, certification is issued upon successfully completing the course. Or in my case, a final manuscript is the end result – pretty nifty, huh?

d. Feedback from lessons sent to the instructor. This is the most important type of information. For me as a teacher, this is my opportunity to do one-on-one teaching with the student. Any “course” that does not offer feedback isn’t a course, in my humble view. Look for it, folks. If it’s not there, it’s not a course. For the student, this feedback tells the student if he is on right track, has a good understanding of the material, and can continue with the course in relative safety; that is, the student understands the beginning and can continue with the rest. Of course, this feedback is time intensive for the instructor, which is why courses cost much more than simple e-books. And the instructor providing the feedback must be qualified to give that feedback. Again, the integrity of the writer comes into play; is the writer qualified to be an instructor on the material? That’s up to you to decide — if not, don’t buy.

e. The course objective must offer significant benefit to the student. Using the example above, learning to boil water really isn’t much of a benefit to any student. But learning how to create a teleclass that will help students market their businesses better is a good objective. In my case, WRITE THAT NONFICTION BOOK, the course I mentioned earlier, not only walks the student through the book writing process, but the student should produce a final manuscript of their book by the end of the course. Now that’s a great objective. That’s a course.
In my information empire, I’m going to offer three forms of written information. I’ll offer other types, such as cds and dvds of presentations, as I go along. The three forms are:

1. E-books will be small slivers of information, usually fewer than 20 pages. They will be priced less than $20 and often will be offered free (as bonuses, free reports, or whatever). The free part is key. They will contain the beginning piece of a much larger puzzle, which interested people will want to acquire (I hope).

2. Reference Guides will offer information that does not include practice exercises or feedback to the readers.

3. Courses will offer extensive, detailed information, practice exercises, feedback, among others. Since I’m a teacher by profession and at heart, my materials will usually be presented as courses. I naturally include exercises and want to give feedback to my readers. That’s just who I am.

For now, that’s the plan. But as you know, plans change. And as the Internet grows in capabilities and services, my range of offerings will also grow.

What do you think about “courses” you’ve received? Did they meet your expectations? Did you actually finish the course? If not, why not? (to both questions) I really want to know so I can serve my students better.

Writing is a complicated process, and having someone hold your hand while creating something big, like a nonfiction book, can make the entire task that much easier. My course (coming soon) WRITE THAT NONFICTION BOOK by Katherine Ploeger does just that. Check out ploegersservices.com for information.

Do you want to use this post in your ezine or on your blog? You have my permission, as long as you send notice of publication with a link to katie@ploegersservices.com, and include the following paragraph with links intact in your post:
Katherine Ploeger, MA, MFA, is a writer, editor, teacher, and consultant. She publishes practical, process-oriented information for nonfiction writers and screenwriters on her blog, Katie’s Writing Notes (katieploeger.wordpress.com).