Student needs

Understanding who your potential students are and what they need is a vital first step to preparing a robust business case to model cost, revenue and the sustainability of a course

Student needs guide and downloadable resources

At the end of this student needs phase, you will have:  

  • A clear understanding of who your students are and the needs they have  
  • Defined why those students would benefit from taking your course 
  • A plan for marketing your course to generate leads and applications  
  • Documented budget requirements for developing your course. 

Reflect on each of the following questions with your team and use the downloadable resources to aid your planning.

As you set out to create an online course, start by trying to express the unique benefits your course will offer, including why a student should choose it over those offered by other educational providers.  

Consider what prompted you to consider creating the course. Perhaps it was suggested by existing students to solve a problem for them, or perhaps it was proposed to solve a departmental problem, e.g. revenue generation or research dissemination. Whatever the reasons, capturing this information in a value proposition will enable your course design to solve those original problems and meet your students’ needs effectively.  

Download template: Value proposition (Word) 

Download template: Value proposition (PDF) 

Once you have a course outline and an initial idea of your value proposition, you will likely have an idea of the target market for your course. Do they work in a specific field? Are they looking to gain CPD hours or a promotion, or perhaps work towards a Masters level to develop a specialism? 

Student demographics and needs  

Before you develop your course, you will need a clear understanding of who your potential students are, so that the course is designed for their success and to meet their needs. For example, if you are targeting global working professionals for an online short course, you might want to limit live elements and consider the best timing for availability for both teaching staff and students.  

This pains and gains activity will help you to begin to identify this student information, and the personas activity will help to bring your insights to life.   

Download template: Pains and gains (Word)

Download template: Pains and gains (PDF) 

Download template: Student personas (Word) 

Download template: Student personas (PDF) 

Marketing for in-person, award-bearing courses at Oxford do not need the same kind of marketing strategy as when recruiting for an online and/or non-award bearing course. One of the benefits of an online course, and why many students choose to learn this way, is no matter where you are in the world, you can access the learning. This means there’s a global market of potential students to reach to generate awareness and applications for your course. It’s worthwhile considering the following to help you assess how best to market your course: 

  • Where are your key audience located? 
  • Who do you already have on mailing lists who you can reach out to to help? understand learner needs as well as to market the course? 
  • How will you promote the course to them? 

If you have a local marketing team, you could arrange an initial conversation to discuss the above together.  

Resourcing for online teaching requires a different approach to in-person teaching. Whereas resourcing for in-person teaching is often a matter of prioritising existing staff time to work on initial course design and teaching, online courses typically require new resources and an up-front budget to invest in specialist areas like marketing, media production and supporting students at a distance.  

It can be helpful to secure departmental budget very early in the online courses journey, especially where budgets are only set annually. To aid in that process, the following interactive financial model should provide some initial data to help create a business case for your department to consider. 

Interactive financial model coming soon