Best Tools to Create Online Courses

Before I created my first-ever online video course, I spent hours and days researching the different cameras, microphones and software I needed. Eventually, I invested in my “starter kit,” which worked fine. But as I became more and more experienced with the course creation process, I realized that my initial set up wasn’t the best for me, so I changed and tweaked quite a few things. I put together this article to show you the current tools that I use to create my online courses, so you don’t have to spend as much time and money to compile yours as I did!

Photo Credit: Jeroen den Otter | Unsplash.com

Note: some of the links in the article are affiliate links. If you don’t want to use my links, you can just google the equipment I list here!

Microphones

One of my biggest recent findings is that the quality of the audio is much more important for students than the quality of the video. Thus getting the best microphone is a higher priority than getting the best camera. I’ll get back to this a bit later. But let’s see our options first!

Blue Yeti Microphone ($129)

It isn’t worth skimping on the microphone. Blue Yeti is the favorite pick for many Vloggers and Podcast-creators and it’s not a coincidence: it brings really good quality for a very reasonable price. Plus, it looks pretty cool.

LINK: Blue Yeti Mic

The Blue Yeti Mic (photo credit: Thierry | pexels.com)

As for me, Blue Yeti was my first mic, but I changed it out for two reasons:

a) It didn’t handle it well when I moved my head while I was speaking. In the recordings my voice was sometimes quieter, sometimes louder, just because I accidentally turned my head.

b) USB-microphones have a technical limitation in sound quality, so they will never be as good as XLR-microphones. (It’s another question whether your students will actually notice the difference…) Anyway, the point is that after a while I upgraded to:

Audio-Technica BPHS1 Headset ($199) + Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface ($149)

This set is used by many online video course creators and also by semi-professional musicians who want to have a portable set for their recordings. It produces 100% professional quality and thus it is a great investment. What I love most is that it filters the background noise very efficiently, so if you travel a lot and you end up in a noisier accommodation, you can still record your online course materials. The only drawback is that since it’s a headset, you have to put it on your head. It doesn’t matter when you are recording a screencast video but it might look goofy when you are talking to the camera. Well, it’s just a question of taste. Personally, I don’t really care about it and I wear it during my face videos, too.

Me, wearing the headset in the intro video of my new course (