Get paid for helping others learn new skills.
More than 100k professionals have used HeatSpring for career development.
2,206,976 lessons have been completed in HeatSpring courses.
Instructors earn 40–60% of course proceeds.
We are actively seeking instructors for these courses.
Your own topic ideas are also welcome!
Fill in the application form and we’ll help you get started. Alternatively you can create a HeatSpring account and start building a course on your own.
Build an original course following our standards. We recommend starting with a shorter free course to get a hang of things and then building a more comprehensive paid course.
We will evaluate your course and provide feedback. Once your course is approved, it will be published and can be discovered on the HeatSpring platform. Start promoting your own course and earn extra revenue from paid courses by joining our affiliate program.
Answer questions on the discussion board, review student assignments and follow reviews. Running a course requires a bit of your time, but is otherwise completely free. HeatSpring handles customer support, hosting fees and payment processing.
Building a course in HeatSpring is simple. The key is to have good quality audio and video production and the rest is easy. We can help you get started or you can try it out on your own.
Video lectures are the main content of any course.
Simplest way to communicate small details.
Upload your lecture PDF’s or any other files your students could use.
Build exams to help your student retain their learning.
Link to any external resource or public material on the internet.
Ask your students to upload a file as homework, which you can review.
Answer questions and have conversations with your students.
Get notifications and email reminders on things that need your attention.
Set your pricing and earn 40% and potentially 20% extra through the affiliate program.
Product | Price | Features | Demo video |
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Descript | Free (1 hr of video editing), $12 monthly (10 hrs of video editing), $24 monthly (30 hr of video editing) for Mac/PC | A new approach to video editing where you edit the transcript video. You can simply cut out sentences like your editing a text document. You can import videos you have created from PowerPoint or Snagit for editing. You can also screen record directly in Descript. There is a slight learning curve to the interface, but editing is much faster. It offers more advanced AI tools for voice overs and edit, but the out of the box editing features are very powerful. | |
SnagIt | $40 annual subscription for Mac/PC | Screen capture (stills) and screen recording (video) tool. It allows you the trim start and end point of videos and cut parts out of the middle of a video. It is not a fully featured video editor but is great at quick edits. It can also convert short clips into loop GIFs if need. The real super power of SnagIt is the markup tools for images. It has all the standard arrows and callouts with text, it also has a great stamping tool where you want to label an image with either numbers or letters. | |
Camtasia | $180 billed annually for Mac/PC | This is a fully featured video editor and screen capture tool combined into one. When recording your screen from inside Camtasia it will capture mouse clicks and keyboard interaction. When this recording is on the timeline in Camtasia you can automatically pan the video to the cursor to focus on a specfiic area or show the keys that are entered. Particularly helpful for creating tutorials on software. | |
Powerpoint
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~$10 monthly through Microsoft 360 | For those instructors who are building out lectures in PowerPoint you can narrate your instruction on each slide and capture any cursor highlights or animations you have during presentation mode. Then each of these audio tracks and animations are saved as timings for each slide. Then you can export the whole presentation as a video. How to export .mp4 from PPT for Mac PC | |
Google Slides | Free | For those instructors who are building out lectures in Google Slides you can record your presentation and even include a webcam of you presenting. At the time of writing, this feature was available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Essentials Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus and Education Plus. | |
OBS (Open Broadcaster Studio) | Free. for Mac/PC | Primarily used for streamers, this is a powerful open source tool that has a fully featured screen recording function built it. The learning curve on the UI is steeper and little less user friendly, however their online community is very robust. Any questions you have would be answered on Youtube. |
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Different modalities of video content can be tailored to specific learning objectives, audience needs, and subject matter. Understanding these modalities is crucial for instructors aiming to maximize the effectiveness of their online courses. This article briefly explores five different modalities of educational video content: video lecture, video podcasts, whiteboard, screen recordings, field videos, and 3D models. Each modality serves a unique purpose and can be strategically used to enhance the learning experience.
This modality typically involves slides created using software like PowerPoint or Google Slides, which are narrated by the instructor. The content is organized in a linear, sequential format, making it easy for students to follow.
Key Features:
This modality involves a discussion between two or more individuals with similar domain expertise. It can also take the form of a mentor-apprentice dialogue, where one person with extensive knowledge in a particular area guides another.
Key Features:
This modality focuses on explaining complex concepts and ideas through visual aids and informal instruction. It involves an expert guiding learners through a progressive disclosure of a diagram or visual, drawing and explaining each component over time. Typically they are on camera off to the side.
Key Features:
This modality focuses on transferring knowledge about how to use specific software tools. It involves an expert guiding learners through a sequence of steps to complete a task within the software.
Key Features:
This modality captures learning experiences from job sites, particularly relevant in fields like renewable energy. It can be filmed using smartphones, drones, 360-degree cameras, or VR setups.
Key Features:
This modality involves an expert explaining and narrating over a 3D model of a component or system. It allows for manipulation of the object, such as panning, zooming, and turning on data labels.
Choosing the right modality for educational video content depends on the learning objectives, the nature of the subject matter, and the audience's prior knowledge. Video presentations are ideal for foundational knowledge and linear learning paths. Video podcasts are best suited for discussions that require near-peer expertise and ad-libbing, offering a relaxed yet informative approach. Screen recordings are perfect for teaching software skills and step-by-step processes. Field videos are invaluable for practical, on-site learning experiences, especially in fields like renewable energy. 3D models are excellent for explaining complex systems and components in a controlled and interactive environment. By understanding and strategically employing these modalities, instructors can create an engaging learning environment that leverages each of their respective strengths to create a unique mix to enhance learning.
In order to ensure that our students have a great learning experience, we have a created a quality review process for all new courses. When you start building your course we will create a course roadmap for you that will detail the specific standards. Once your course is ready to be published, you can submit your course for review.
There are 3 important standards to keep in mind:
After you submit your course for review, HeatSpring will evaluate your course and provide feedback. Once your course is approved, it will be published and can be discovered on the HeatSpring platform.
Content
Assignments
Presentation
Video Quality
Audio Quality
Content (top)
Assignments (top)
Presentation (top)
Video Quality (top)
Audio Quality (top)
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We have two primary types of courses on HeatSpring.com:
The types of assignments available to instructors are the same for all courses. These include streaming videos, PDF or other file downloads, quizzes, and URL links to publicly-available online resources.
Instructor Responsibilities for All Courses:
Free courses typically consist of 1-2 short videos plus a handful of simple supporting resources. Short courses are typically free. Related Article: How should I price my course?
Other Recommendations:
We recommend new instructors start with a free course or webinar to test interest in their subject and interact with students. Once interest in a course topic is established, most of our instructors build out a multi-module course offering on that topic.
Paid courses typically average 8 modules in length. Students are expected to complete approximately 5-10 hours of work per module. The primary content of the each module should be video with anywhere from 5-10 additional supporting assignments.
Additional Instructor Requirements for Premium Courses:
Other Recommendations:
Our marketing system consists of:
All courses act as marketing lead generation for all other courses. Free courses are the easiest entry point for potential students. For instructors who have already developed a paid course on HeatSpring, creating a free course can be an extremely valuable marketing tool.
For new instructors, we strongly recommend starting with free courses for several reasons:
After launching a free course, we can take the information we learn and help tweak the offering to get more sales, and/or build additional courses based on real market feedback. This helps increase the chances your courses will be successful and minimize wasted time.
Here is a real example: Marc Rosenbaum teaches Deep Energy Retrofits, an intensive 10-module paid course. For his free course, Marc created a 30-minute recorded presentation on Selecting Cold Climate Heat Pumps. This free course helps drive more sales to Marc's paid course.
The free course provides sales leads in our marketplace who have a high likelihood of being interested in buying the full course. The course also provides us with lots of real student interaction on the topic so we can help shape Marc's course and help him build more full courses based on market demand.
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Knowledge checks are really good for learning, but until recently they have been really labor intensive to create, so most instructors don’t add them to their courses. That hurdle just went away.
Now you can generate an editable three-question knowledge check for any video assignment in your course. With three clicks you can publish a knowledge check.
Please go add knowledge checks to your course. Here are some guidelines to help you do it thoughtfully:
Creating a course is entirely free for our instructors and as long as the course is open to the public there are never any maintenance fees. If you'd prefer not to have the course available publicly, we do offer the option of private courses for your team or organization, which does require a small monthly maintenance fee.
For paid courses, you keep 50% of the revenue (minus payment fees) for every student who takes your course. On top of that, you can earn an extra 20% of the revenue when you refer students to the course through our affilaite program.
HeatSpring handles all customer service, payment processing and hosting fees, and gives you access to the full platform to build and run your courses.
Our paid instructor-led online courses are typically priced between $995-$2,495 per student for an average 8-module course. Typically pricing is determined by multiplying the number of module by $100-$300 per module of content.
If you need help setting your course price just ask us and we can help recommend a good pricing strategy.
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Yes, you can!
We love high quality product, software or web-based training videos. However, the content you provide must be helpful to students, related to energy, sustainability, green/clean technology and/or renewable energy, and cannot simply be a sales pitch.
There must be some valuable information presented that students will learn and does not exclusively require your product to utilize. All course material must meet our rigorous quality standards and maintain high student ratings. If your course is too focused on a sales pitch it will ultimately result in low student ratings and any course rated lower than a 7/10 is removed from the system for review.
All courses must follow our standards and review process.
Here are some general tips on what makes a good video:
Although it may seem counter-intuitive, more specific topics are always better than general ones. For example, solar design expert Ryan Mayfield created an excellent free short course Arc Flash Calculations and Insulation Resistance Testing. The topic is extremely specific, which narrows the audience, but the people who sign up know exactly what they're looking for and what they'll be learning about.
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In our definition, every item in a course is labeled an "assignment." A supporting assignment can be very simple. It should function as a complement to the lecture video. Many instructors simply create a PDF version of their presentation slides and upload that as an assignment. Students like being able to download the full slides, and some print them to take notes.
Other ideas for supporting assignments include a spreadsheet calculator, white paper, related article from the Internet, or automated quiz.
There are 6 types of assignments available on HeatSpring:
1) Video - If you choose this option, you’ll upload a video from your computer (ideally in .mp4 format). Video segments should be no longer than 20 minutes long; 10-15 minutes is ideal. These are creating using a screen capture program like Camtasia.
2) Text - If you choose this option, whatever you type into the Description field will be the assignment. This is meant for assignments like a prompt for students to post on the discussion board or instructions for a homework project.
3) Download - If you choose this option, you’ll upload a file from your computer (like an Excel spreadsheet or a PDF) that students will download and read or use. You can add instructions or explanation in the Description field.
4) Resource - If you choose this option, you simply paste a URL (i.e. link to a website) into the box that is provided. Students will see the link and also a preview of the page that is linked to (if the site allows this).
5) Quiz - If you choose this option, you’ll create a quiz and then select it from the list that appears. Students will click the assignment and automatically be taken to the quiz, which will be graded by the system.
5) Student Upload - This option lets you collect student files. You can use it to collect a homework assignment, a final project, or anything else. Each student file upload will have a private discussion thread where the student and instructor can discuss the file privately. Uploaded files are only accessible to the instructor, and not visible to other students in the class.
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The course discussion board is a great tool for interacting with your students and checking in on progress within the course. Your first step should be to a look at this support article on the basics of using the course discussion board.
One thing to keep in mind is that as an instructor, anytime you create a post on the discussion board, a notification will be generated for all students in the course. So you can use the discussion board as an announcement system for students. This is only true when you post a message, not when you reply to an existing message. When you reply to an existing message, only the author of that message is notified.
For more advanced topics on the discussion board, please see these related support articles:
This is a resource to help our instructors understand copyright boundaries on materials used when building a course. As an instructor, you're responsible for understanding copyright on assignments you create and making sure you are in compliance with copyright laws.
We encourage instructors to curate lots of great content in their courses, whether they have authored that content or not. We recommend including lots of links to external resources (websites), PDF documents and other helpful resources for students.
When using external materials, not created by or owned by the instructor, instructors must consider copyright restrictions around those materials.
The main takeaway is, if you are unsure about copyright restrictions for materials you are using in your course, create them as a 'resource' type assignment. This will link directly to the external website where that material lives and will also give credit to that website for the content.
Here are some other good rules of thumb:
We know this can be confusing, so please contact us if you have any questions about specific content you'd like to use in your course and we can help you figure out how to correctly use it.
To upload a video assignment follow these steps, as always you can reach out if you need any help with any of these steps:
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HeatSpring Membership is an offering that has evolved over the past few years. Customers pay a monthly fee ($19) for a basket of benefits, including:
We share Membership earnings with instructors in a way that is similar to course enrollment fees: 50% of gross margin.
Here’s a breakdown of how one-month of membership earnings are calculated:
The instructor share is then divided equally across ALL courses that Member has ever enrolled in. In some cases this is one course, and that instructor recieves the full instructor share. In other cases the Member is enrolled in ten courses, so each course instructor receives 1/10th of the instructor share.
Membership payouts occur monthly and are bundled with other earnings from paid course registrations and affiliate earnings. You can see a full breakdown of your historical earnings, down to the individual transaction level, on your instructor dashboard.
You just got set up as an instructor on HeatSpring. How can you navigate around the instructor dashboard? How can you start building your course?
We made this quick demo video to show you how to get started.
If you still have questions, you can always reach us at teach@heatspring.com.
This is a brief overview of the tools used to create a zoomable video using, Miro, OBS, and Descript. In just a few simple steps, you'll learn how to build a presentation packed with movement that captures your learner's attention.
First, create your presentation slides using PowerPoint, Google Slides, or your preferred presentation software. Focus on crafting clear, concise content and visually appealing designs.
Next, import your slides into Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard. This powerful tool allows you to enhance your presentation by creating frames around each slide. The beauty of Miro lies in its ability to zoom in on detailed content within your slides, making it easier for your audience to follow along and grasp complex ideas.
Now, it's time to record your presentation. For this, we recommend using OBS, a free and open-source screen recording software. Set up your recording parameters in OBS, ensuring that you select the MP4 format for optimal compatibility. With OBS running, navigate through your presentation in Miro, zooming in on key content as needed. Remember to speak clearly and at a comfortable pace, while also using your cursor to highlight important areas of the screen to focus on.
Once you've completed your recording, upload the MP4 file to Descript, an all-in-one audio and video editing platform. Descript's AI tools help you identify any gaps of silence or filler words in your presentation, allowing you to refine your delivery and create a more polished final product. Finally, export your edited presentation from Descript, and you'll have a professional-quality, engaging video ready to bring into your course on HeatSpring.
Learning objectives are specific statements that describe what learners should know, understand, and be able to do after completing a course or lesson. They provide a clear direction for both teaching and assessment.
Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical model used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The taxonomy is widely used to help educators design curriculum, assessments, and instructional strategies that promote higher-order thinking skills. Bloom's Taxonomy categorizes cognitive skills into six levels, each representing a different level of complexity and uses action verbs to describe the cognitive processes associated with each level:
On HeatSpring, assessing learning objectives at different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy requires different approaches. The lower levels of the taxonomy (1-3: Remember, Understand, and Apply) are easier to assess through objective assessments such as multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank, or true/false questions. These types of assessments are well-suited for testing factual knowledge, comprehension, and basic application of concepts. They can be easily administered and automatically graded within the HeatSpring platform.
However, assessing higher-order thinking skills (4-6: Analyze, Evaluate, and Create) often requires more complex and subjective assessments, such as homework assignments or projects. These assessments challenge learners to demonstrate their ability to break down information, make judgments based on criteria, and create original work. They require learners to apply their knowledge and skills in authentic, real-world contexts and often involve open-ended responses that need to be manually evaluated by the instructor. While these types of assessments are more time-consuming to design and grade, they are essential for measuring the achievement of higher-order learning objectives in online courses.
Use action verbs in learning objectives to specify the observable and measurable actions that students must perform to demonstrate their learning. These verbs are aligned with the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, ensuring that the objectives are clear and achievable. By using action verbs, instructors can clearly communicate the expected performance and avoid ambiguity.
Level | Definition | Action Verbs |
---|---|---|
1. Remember | Recall facts and basic concepts | Define, List, Memorize, Repeat, State, Identify, Recognize, Recall, Retrieve |
2. Understand | Explain ideas or concepts | Classify, Describe, Discuss, Explain, Summarize, Paraphrase, Interpret, Compare, Exemplify |
3. Apply | Use information in new situations | Execute, Implement, Solve, Use, Demonstrate, Interpret, Operate, Schedule, Sketch |
4. Analyze | Break down information into parts and explore relationships | Differentiate, Organize, Relate, Compare, Contrast, Distinguish, Examine, Experiment, Question, Test |
5. Evaluate | Justify decisions or actions | Appraise, Argue, Defend, Judge, Select, Support, Value, Critique, Weigh |
6. Create | Produce new or original work | Design, Assemble, Construct, Conjecture, Develop, Formulate, Author, Investigate |
Learners will identify the main types of PV systems, including grid-tied with and without batteries, and off-grid systems.
Learners will be able to recall key figures and events in the history of photovoltaics, including Becquerel, Einstein, and Bell Labs.
Learners will explain the implications of increased PV penetration on the grid and the role of energy storage in mitigating potential issues.
Learners will be able to explain the significance of the Vanguard 1 satellite as the oldest man-made object in space and its role in demonstrating solar power's potential for space applications.
Given a scenario involving work on a PV system, learners will be able to select the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) to minimize the risk of arc flash incidents and other potential hazards.
Presented with various examples of fall protection systems, learners will be able to demonstrate the proper setup and use of harnesses and anchoring points to ensure worker safety during PV installations on elevated surfaces.
The new dashboard offers improved navigation and clear course status information at a glance.
Preview Options
New preview features allow instructors to see their course from different perspectives.
The dashboard is now organized into four intuitive main categories for streamlined course management.
This section focuses on preparing all the general information needed to market and launch your course. Under Gneral information you select a course title, description and ability to upload a trailer video to promote the course. In Learning objectives we provide helpful tips on writing learning objectives. Subjects is an important step where you determine where we list your course in our catalog. Under Pricing & launch date you and either make a free or paid course and select the price and have the option for a pre-launch date to begin promote the course before it is published. FAQ is where you can answer common questions related to the course.
This is where instructors will spend a majority of their time organizing the content for their course. This is where they can upload videos, support documents, links or quizzes.
Build out your course content with various types of materials.
Add evaluation tools to measure student understanding.
Integrate and manage a discussion forum in your course.
Manage student engagement once your course is published.
Gain insights into your course performance and student feedback.
Monitor student engagement over different time periods.
Review built-in survey feedback from students.
Access comprehensive data reports for in-depth analysis.
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