## 10 Wins & 10 Lessons From Running My First Live, Cohort-Based Course
### 10 Wins & 10 Lessons From Running My First Live, Cohort-Based Course
#### Metadata
* Author: [[linkedin.com]]
* Full Title: 10 Wins & 10 Lessons From Running My First Live, Cohort-Based Course
* Category: #articles
* URL: <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-wins-lessons-from-running-my-first-live-course-balasubramani->
#### Highlights
* the 15-minute calls proved to be a worthy investment: Aside from converting ~20% of those I had calls with, I also got a chance to peer into the thought process of someone who was thinking of taking the course and understanding their hesitation.
* Hence, for my course, I purchased another virtual phone number through OpenPhone and used it to set up a WhatsApp instance on my work phone. Once set up, I gave access to my WhatsApp via the web to my course manager and posted the number publicly everywhere I marketed the course. Instead of sending us an email, now interested students were able to directly reach out to me on WhatsApp and get quicker, personalized responses.
* Guided brainstorms: Asking a question on the screen and letting everyone think through the answer in silence. This was my favorite one as it introduced gaps of silence between classes and gave us all a chance to pause.
* I organized a 3-hour "Crash Course" in the last week of my course targeted towards those who couldn't attend many of the classes in the previous 3 weeks (more on this under the (1) under 10 lessons).
I distilled all the highlights from my 4-week course into these 3 hours to give them an opportunity to learn the important concepts without having to sit through 16+ hours' worth of recordings. 12 students were invited to the crash course. 5 students made it to the class, and all walked away feeling great about catching up on the course despite missing many lectures.
* Even if you find the perfect timing that works for everyone, some students will end up missing your lectures. You can delight them by organizing a crash course that delivers enough value for them to walk away happy
* Tags: [[blue]]
* Even if you find the perfect timing that works for everyone, some students will end up missing your lectures. You can delight them by organizing a crash course that delivers enough value for them to walk away happy.
* Think of running a course as running a Coachella for your topic: Bringing in speakers from such eclectic backgrounds and plugging them into the right part of the course will greatly enhance the overall learning experience for your students
* 9. Uploading Recordings With Timestamps
You would be hard-pressed to find someone who enjoys watching recordings of a lecture in isolation.
One way you can help your students not lose motivation in watching class recordings is by adding timestamps for the various topics taught during the classes when you upload the recordings on YouTube or Vimeo (sadly, Zoom does not support timestamps today, which is a shame.)
You can reduce the effort on your end in adding timestamps by asking your course manager/coach to note down the times when you switched between topics during the class, to avoid having to watch the recording back to figure it out.
* My students were spread across 10 countries and 8 time zones. While this was a wonderful thing to witness, it made it extremely hard to find a time that worked for all. We sent out a form asking everyone's feedback on the days and times they prefer.... and it turned out to be an insanely complex optimization problem. We could not find any time that worked for even 80% of the students. So we ended up picking two different times since the western side of the world preferred 7 PM PST and the eastern side preferred 8 AM PST. This resulted in many students being able to attend only half of the classes.
* But, this turned out to be a lesson and not a win since we discovered that many students found this to be overwhelming, especially those using Notion for the first time. What caused more overwhelming is the fact that we didn't have 1-on-1 onboarding before the course began to get them acquainted with the tool.
* Lesson learned: Moving forward, I am making this more streamlined such that each medium is used for specific purposes, and the student does not feel overwhelmed.
* Without an effective onboarding process, your students will not stick to using your tools, leading to waning motivation and other downstream effects in the course. For example,
Pooja doesn't know how to use Circle --> Pooja stops using Circle as she thinks it's not important to the course --> Pooja loses out on all the serendipitous interactions and mini-announcements
Lesson learned: Ensure every student gets a 1-on-1 or small group onboarding session by a coach where they're (a) taught the purpose of the tool, and (b) asked to open the tool and use it for something specific.
* Parity Bar is a website that lets you create coupon codes based on the country from which someone purchases your course. You can set the discounts you want for the various countries, thus giving everyone on the internet a fair chance to take your course.
* After ideating for a while, we decided to send the following as welcome gifts to each of our students: a copy of the book Getting Things Done, scented candles, and a laptop stand (because ergonomics is important!)
* physical gifts makes sense if your cohort is from a single country where it's possible to order multiple quantities of the item. Otherwise, it will become a big, logistical time sink. You can spend this time elsewhere in the course
# 10 Wins & 10 Lessons From Running My First Live, Cohort-Based Course
## Metadata
- Author: [[linkedin.com]]
- Full Title: 10 Wins & 10 Lessons From Running My First Live, Cohort-Based Course
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-wins-lessons-from-running-my-first-live-course-balasubramani-
## Highlights
- the 15-minute calls proved to be a worthy investment: Aside from converting ~20% of those I had calls with, I also got a chance to peer into the thought process of someone who was thinking of taking the course and understanding their hesitation.
- Hence, for my course, I purchased another virtual phone number through OpenPhone and used it to set up a WhatsApp instance on my work phone. Once set up, I gave access to my WhatsApp via the web to my course manager and posted the number publicly everywhere I marketed the course. Instead of sending us an email, now interested students were able to directly reach out to me on WhatsApp and get quicker, personalized responses.
- Guided brainstorms: Asking a question on the screen and letting everyone think through the answer in silence. This was my favorite one as it introduced gaps of silence between classes and gave us all a chance to pause.
- I organized a 3-hour "Crash Course" in the last week of my course targeted towards those who couldn't attend many of the classes in the previous 3 weeks (more on this under the (1) under 10 lessons).
I distilled all the highlights from my 4-week course into these 3 hours to give them an opportunity to learn the important concepts without having to sit through 16+ hours' worth of recordings. 12 students were invited to the crash course. 5 students made it to the class, and all walked away feeling great about catching up on the course despite missing many lectures.
- Even if you find the perfect timing that works for everyone, some students will end up missing your lectures. You can delight them by organizing a crash course that delivers enough value for them to walk away happy
- Tags: [[blue]]
- Even if you find the perfect timing that works for everyone, some students will end up missing your lectures. You can delight them by organizing a crash course that delivers enough value for them to walk away happy.
- Think of running a course as running a Coachella for your topic: Bringing in speakers from such eclectic backgrounds and plugging them into the right part of the course will greatly enhance the overall learning experience for your students
- 9. Uploading Recordings With Timestamps
You would be hard-pressed to find someone who enjoys watching recordings of a lecture in isolation.
One way you can help your students not lose motivation in watching class recordings is by adding timestamps for the various topics taught during the classes when you upload the recordings on YouTube or Vimeo (sadly, Zoom does not support timestamps today, which is a shame.)
You can reduce the effort on your end in adding timestamps by asking your course manager/coach to note down the times when you switched between topics during the class, to avoid having to watch the recording back to figure it out.
- My students were spread across 10 countries and 8 time zones. While this was a wonderful thing to witness, it made it extremely hard to find a time that worked for all. We sent out a form asking everyone's feedback on the days and times they prefer.... and it turned out to be an insanely complex optimization problem. We could not find any time that worked for even 80% of the students. So we ended up picking two different times since the western side of the world preferred 7 PM PST and the eastern side preferred 8 AM PST. This resulted in many students being able to attend only half of the classes.
- But, this turned out to be a lesson and not a win since we discovered that many students found this to be overwhelming, especially those using Notion for the first time. What caused more overwhelming is the fact that we didn't have 1-on-1 onboarding before the course began to get them acquainted with the tool.
- Lesson learned: Moving forward, I am making this more streamlined such that each medium is used for specific purposes, and the student does not feel overwhelmed.
- Without an effective onboarding process, your students will not stick to using your tools, leading to waning motivation and other downstream effects in the course. For example,
Pooja doesn't know how to use Circle --> Pooja stops using Circle as she thinks it's not important to the course --> Pooja loses out on all the serendipitous interactions and mini-announcements
Lesson learned: Ensure every student gets a 1-on-1 or small group onboarding session by a coach where they're (a) taught the purpose of the tool, and (b) asked to open the tool and use it for something specific.
- Parity Bar is a website that lets you create coupon codes based on the country from which someone purchases your course. You can set the discounts you want for the various countries, thus giving everyone on the internet a fair chance to take your course.
- After ideating for a while, we decided to send the following as welcome gifts to each of our students: a copy of the book Getting Things Done, scented candles, and a laptop stand (because ergonomics is important!)
- physical gifts makes sense if your cohort is from a single country where it's possible to order multiple quantities of the item. Otherwise, it will become a big, logistical time sink. You can spend this time elsewhere in the course