Get paid for helping others learn new skills.
More than 100k professionals have used HeatSpring for career development.
1,806,067 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.
Starting in 2023, we started using Descript. It's kind of like magic - you can edit videos just like a Word document. There's a free version where you can try it out, and the paid version isn't super expensive.
Honestly though, you can record videos using anything you like. Powerpoint, Google Slides, Quicktime, your iPhone. Recording is the easy part and you shouldn't overthink it. Editing is the bigger challenge.
Previously we encouraged all of our instructors to use Camtasia screen recording software to create lecture videos. It's still a good option. Typically instructors create videos by recording their screen and microphone with Camtasia while delivering a slideshow lecture. The people over at Camtasia have a great product and have excellent support resources available for both Mac and PC. They also provide great email and phone support and will even hand-hold you through your first video recording if you contact tech support.
We recommend that all instructors use Camtasia regardless of experience. It is available for both Mac and PC and cost $249 but comes with a 30-day free trial, so you can create your first few videos for free.
Alternatives:
Mac Only: QuickTime Version 10.x (Version 10 or higher. May not be available for older Macs). This is free as long as you have this version or higher. Upgrading, if necessary typically costs around $30. QuickTime has a very simple process for creating screen recordings, but it does not have the editing capabilities that Camtasia offers. You also loose out on Camtasia's fantastic support, so please only choose this path if you are comfortable googling for tech answers.
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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'll 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
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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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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 40% 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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