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Sample Lesson

Writing a sample lesson during course design is essential to ensure you understand the basic unit of a DataCamp course.

Yashas Roy avatar
Written by Yashas Roy
Updated over 8 months ago

During course design process, you will be required to build one complete lesson using the Teach editor. 

This should include:

  1. A video with slides and a script (this can be the same as or similar to the one that you already created for your audition).

  2. Between 2 and 4 exercises that allow students to practice what you taught in the video. This does not include Submission Correctness Tests (SCTs), but does include the success message for each exercise.

  3. Please keep in mind we have a 550-word maximum for Scripts.

Why create a lesson as part of your course design?

It will:

  • Allow you to become familiar with the Teach Editor along with our different exercise and slide types earlier.

  • Give you a better understanding of course scope (e.g., what can be covered in a reasonable amount of time, and what must be saved for a future course - compared to creating just a course outline.)

In combination, this will result in faster course development time, a more frictionless course development experience, and prevent roadblocks that arise out of misjudged course scope.

Our experience working with over a hundred expert instructors over the past 4 years has taught us that the most challenging part of creating a DataCamp course is in understanding the scope of what can be covered in a lesson (and, by extension, a course). 

Which lesson should I create for my sample lesson?

This is your choice. We recommend the final lesson of your course, as it has the following advantages:

  • The concepts will likely be more advanced, and confirming that you can adequately teach the material in less than 550 words will verify that the course scope is appropriate.

  • Similarly, the code will tend to be more advanced and computationally intensive. Confirming that the code runs on DataCamp and that the exercises meet our content guidelines will provide another check to verify that the course scope is indeed appropriate.

  • It provides clarity on where students will be at the end of the course and a clear stopping point that you can then work towards during the rest of course development.

Whichever lesson you create, it is important to keep in mind the spirit of the sample lesson:

  • it is an important check on course scope,

  • an opportunity to acquaint yourself with the tools you will be using to build your course,

  • and a chance to receive early feedback on teaching style to ensure you and DataCamp are aligned on course vision.

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