New Grumo Student Online Course: Getting Started with Unity3D and Playmaker

Jonathan O’Duffy tells us how was his experience creating his course on making Classic Video Games in Unity3D and Playmaker after taking Grumo’s How to Create an Awesome Online Course.

What is the course about?
The course is about learning the basics of Unity3D, and Playmaker Fundamentals by making some classic games.

How did you choose the topic of the course?
I reached out and contacted various groups: Facebook, reddit, forums, friends, direct messaging, etc.
I found that there are a lot of courses on the basics of playmaker but not in the area of Virtual and Augmented Reality. These will be the next two courses I create. I created the foundation course to make sure the students have a working knowledge of the tools so we can focus on the higher level stuff. The basic course will also allow me to test out my setup, get feedback on my online teaching style. All of this will go into helping make the special or more advanced courses/classes the best they can be.

Why did you decide to create an online course?
I taught Virtual and Augmented Reality at University level and won a teaching award. Since then I have been asked to make online courses to teach and reach people. After completing my masters degree I finally decided to focus on being an entrepreneur and one of my first tasks was to create an online course to show people how to do what I do. I will be launching my own crowdfunding campaign in Augmented Reality and really wanted to leave a trail for others from the very beginning.

How did you find time to produce it?
I am pretty much living off my savings. I do occasional contract work through self employment, but I am committed to making this happen. I see in my minds eye that I have burnt the bridge/boat so there is no way but forward.

How long did it take you to put together?
It.s hard to tell. The course is based on my experience and content I created for University and feedback over the years. So putting a timeframe on it is difficult.
But at University I worked everyday for weeks. As soon as I woke up I was creating the classes, then teaching them, assignments. The first and last thing I was doing at night was working for the benefit of the students. It paid off as they I was nominated by them for a teaching award which the university granted.
But the online course, maybe 2-3 months. One month of recording videos and editing and before that was the course outline and going over content I had. Plus doing online courses like the ones you provide. I also did a 3 month business plan course over Xmas.

What was the hardest thing to do?
Believing that the course was to build to high standard so it would be work for people to pay for it. Then deciding how much to charge for the course. Also stopping myself from adding too much content in a course. I had thought it would be around 4 hours but its around 11 hours.

What was the simplest thing to do?
Deciding to teach. I like helping people and it brings me joy. It also inspires me to continue on and create my own games/products based on how excited they are getting with their own. At University, one of the things I was doing was constantly looking at what value I could bring the students and what I could learn so I could then teach them. I was told it was the best unit they did at university during their whole degree – this is after they graduate a number of years later.

How did you determine the price of the course?
I looked online at existing content – before udemy changed to $50 dollar cap. I also looked at what the course would cost at university level, which would be well over $1,000.00 dollars.

What is your marketing strategy to promote it?
Currently I have reached out to Facebook groups, software forums, and contacted people with students and groups.

What software did you use?
Unity3d, and the Playmaker Plugin.

What hardware did you use? (camera, microphone, lights, etc.)
I used the logitech c910. I was going to buy and setup a studio but I decided that this was good enough for my first course. I plan to invest the profits from this course into setting up my studio for my next course.

What was the part the Grumo course help you the most with?
Don’t have to be great to get started but need to get started to be great.
It’s that mentality I took. Sometimes we worry and spend so much time thinking or trying to get things perfec that it never gets done or we never get started. I know my course has 200+ videos but I saved over 400 and must have recorded in the range of 600-800 videos.

What other resources have you used to make your course?
Screen-o-matic to recorded and edit the chapter videos.
I did my sales/promo video with Adobe Premiere.

Please add anything else you’d think it would be cool for people to know about you and your course.
My area of expertise is in Virtual and Augmented Reality. I have probably been studying and working in this area for around 10 years. I have been lucky to have the privilege to study along experts in various fields including:

Thomas Furness – Grandfather of Virtual Reality.
Mark Billinghurst – Co-Creator of Augmented Reality

I am fortunate that these people have been my supervisors, friends, and mentors. Tom is probably the main mentor I have and follow. I find it amazing that I can reach out and talk to him about everyday life as well as the exciting projects we are working on.

Here is a testimonial from the great Thomas Furness himself:

You can check all Jonathan courses here: http://courses.jonathanoduffy.com/

Jonathan has the courses separated into individual parts, combos – buy 2 get one free, and also a complete bundle pack with bonus chapters and content not available in the other courses.

So normally each course is $30 but you can get 3 courses for $60 and you can complete bundle for only $89.

And if you are interested in learning how to create and sell your own courses you can check Miguel’s course here and get it for a nice 50% discount using the coupon GRUMO50OFF.
Check it out here: http://grumoschool.com/course/how-to-create-an-awesome-online-course/