Course Creators Weekly #40 🗓 March 29th, 2021 - How to stoke motivation in learning

"It's about creating an emotional connection for the learner to the content that they're learning. It's this emotional connection that sparks intrinsic motivation to keep going and keep learning."—Andrew Barry

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  Look for intrinsic learning motivations hidden behind people's extrinsic motivations
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  Probe learners to look inwards for their intrinsic motivations by asking 'why' questions
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  Ask your learners to share with you why they're doing the course, early, and often
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  Don't rely on leaderboards or other gamification to encourage people
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  Strive to satisfy people's desire for Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose (I'd call it AMP-lify)
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  Create an emotional connection for the learner to the content they're learning

In this episode of the FLW podcast, Spencer Kier talks with Wes Kao about CBCs, how they're different, what made them possible, and where they're headed.

3 characteristics of a cohort-based course:

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  Time-bound, with a clear start and end date
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  Active learning, with hands-on activities, not passive content consumption
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  Community-based, learning interactively with likeminded peers

What makes them different:

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  Compared to university education, CBCs are relatively frictionless + more accessible
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  Compared to MOOCs, CBCs are more social + engaging with higher completion rates

Other takeaways:

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  The shift to remote work + people's openness to video comms has given rise to CBCs
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  It's too soon to tell how CBCs will transform education—likely in unimagined ways
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  Make student transformation your north star, and focus on that at every decision point
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  Don't build a course in silo—build your audience and your credibility at the same time

In this episode/article, Arvid Kahl shares his 5-step process for finding a viable audience. It may be geared towards bootstrapped businesses, but I think it applies equally as well to teaching on the Internet.

You have to listen/read for yourself to really get a sense of the process, but I'll share the steps and some of the key points below:

The steps:

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  Awareness — Think of possible audiences
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  Affinity — Find out how much you care about them
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  Opportunity — Find out if they have interesting problems
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  Appreciation — Find out if they’re willing to pay
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  Size — Find out if this market can sustain a business

A few key points:

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  Open up your mind and expand your horizon to find an audience that you care about
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  Explore potential audiences—do they have exciting problems that you can help solve?
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  Make sure your potential audience has the agency and the means to pay for a solution
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  Design solutions that solve your audience's problems within their existing workflow
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  Coming up with a 'product' or 'idea' should be the last step in your validation journey