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A Clear Guide for Creating an Online Course Your Students Will Love

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The exact steps I followed to reach course-market fit (including templates).

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Many online courses are money machines for course creators but time-wasters for their students.

By creating my first cohort-based course last August, I wanted to do it differently. My goal wasn’t to maximize income but learning effectiveness.

Looking at sales, net promoter score, and completion rate, I succeeded. I sold all 25 available spots, 85 per cent completed all assignments and rated the course with 9.6/10.

Students’ responses to the NPS question of the feedback survey.

The following guide can help you create an online course your students will love. After a brief explainer of why cohort-based courses are the future of online learning and my prerequisites, you’ll find the exact 5 steps I followed to achieve maximum course-market fit.

Why Cohort-Based Courses


If you went to school, you’re familiar with cohort-based learning. Students take the same lecture, assignments, and tests simultaneously.

In Cohort Based Courses (CBCs), a group of people moves through the same curriculum at the same pace. CBCs often include a mix of life lessons, pre-recorded videos, remote assignments, and peer learning.


 are the Future of Online Learning

In 2011 massive open online courses, so-called MOOCs were praised for revolutionizing online learning.

But data from Harvard University and MIT revealed only three to four per cent complete self-paced MOOCs— a rate that hasn’t improved in the past six years.

On the opposite end, reports about CBCs look promising.

Seth Godin’s altMBA, a cohort-based online MBA, has a completion rate of 96%. Other CBC providers claim to have 85% of their users finish the course they started.

CBCs are designed around best practices in online learning. For example, a study found interaction with instructors affects learner retention. CBCs use online tools like Zoom or Slack to give feedback, host group coaching, or offer 1-on-1 check-ins to help students complete the course.

Source: Eva Keiffenheim

Don’t Compare Apples and Oranges

A friend told me he attempted to copy Ali Abdaal’s structure to make $2,000,000 on Skillshare. My friend soon gave up. He neither had the video experience nor an existing audience that followed him everywhere.

The best tutorial is useless if you compare yourself against someone too different.

Knowing where I started when I built my first course will help you determine whether and which of the below steps will help you.

  • Audience. Before creating the course, I had 15,000 followers on Medium, 2,500 on LinkedIn, 10,000 podcast listeners, and 3,500 e-mail subscribers of the weekly Learn Letter.
  • Teaching experience. In 2018, I completed a six-week teacher training as Teach For All fellow. I worked as a full-time Maths, Informatics, and PE teacher for two years. I hosted about 25 online workshops, and I’ve read around 30 books about how we learn.
  • Additional support. I was accepted to the Maven accelerator and supported by pedagogic, marketing, and point coaches. I also contracted brilliant Eszter Brhlik for e-mail copywriting and operational support.

You can create an effective online course without the above prerequisites. But an existing audience, didactics experience, and support can make building a course easier and faster for you.

The biggest struggle most online creators have is selling their courses. This is so much easier if you have an existing newsletter subscriber base (here’s what I learned from growing my newsletter to the first 3000 subscribers).

But enough with the prerequisites — let’s get started.

1) Collect Data to Make an Informed Best Guess

Source: Eva Keiffenheim

I wanted to run a course on learning how to learn.

Luckily, I learned from my smart fellow writer Julia Horvath that you should first understand your customers before you build a digital product.

In my weekly newsletter, I sent out a couple of questions:

“I’m thinking about building an online course. Which topics would you like to see me cover?”

People replied with questions about how to write online.

In my next mail, I asked:

“What’s the number one biggest challenge when it comes to learning or writing?”

Informed by around 25 replies to these two questions, I wrote this e-mail and created this survey. 200 people replied to the survey, which helped me with the subsequent step.

The e-mail template I used to ask my audience.
The e-mail led to this survey, where I would capture initial interest.

Action steps for you:

  1. Brainstorm 3–5 course ideas informed by what you’re good at.
  2. If you have an audience: Ask them what they would like to learn from you.
  3. Create a survey to learn more about your potential customers.

2) Find a Compelling Course Title and Scope

As a next step, I searched for the intersection between the problems people have around writing online and the problems I can and want to solve.

Narrowing the course scope can feel hard. But if you build a course for everyone, you build it for no one.

The first step I took was copying all survey responses into a visual tool such as Miro. Then, I clustered the responses. After an hour, I realized around 80 percent of the respondents shared the same four pain points.

I decided which of the pain points I wanted to solve and came up with a couple of title ideas. My first three versions for the course name were the following:

  • I help beginner; occasional writers transform into consistent writers that attract a broad audience
  • How to write non-fiction short-form for beginner writers who struggle with publishing consistently
  • How to build an online writing habit to accelerate your learning, express your thoughts, and fuel your impact
Screenshot of Miro, a digital whiteboard I used for organizing the survey results.

Action steps for you:

  1. Analyze the data you acquired from the previous step.
  2. Narrow your course scope by deciding which problems you can and want to solve.
  3. Come up with 3–5 course titles that include whom you do the course for, what they can do based on the course, and which struggle you’re solving.

3) Test and Refine Your Course With User Interviews

Next, I sent out an e-mail to all people who answered the survey. I asked them to book a 15-minute session with my Calendly.

Screenshot of the e-mail for my user interviews.

I felt a lot of resistance in sending out this mail. Until then, I communicated with my audience through writing. I was scared and curious, how Zoom calls would turn out.

After two hours, all 20 available slots were booked. The conversations were interesting and inspiring. During the sessions, I asked the following questions:

  • What’s your single biggest challenge with online writing right now?
  • Name 2–3 areas you are stuck in for reaching your writing goals.
  • How are you currently tackling it? What have you previously tried to achieve your writing goal?
  • What’s your primary goal with writing online?
  • What else should I have asked?

While listening, I took a lot of notes. I organized them on a digital whiteboard.

Screenshot of Miro, a digital whiteboard I used for organizing the user interviews.

Action steps for you:

  1. Schedule user interviews with your potential customers
  2. Analyze the answers to better understand their most pressing problems.

4) Define Your Students’ Transformation

This is what many online instructors spend too little time thinking about — their students’ learning outcomes.

You want to be crystal clear on what your students should be able to achieve with the help of your course.

A helpful framework is the following, suggested by Wes: “By the end of the course, you’ll be able to do X without Y (usual blocker or friction).”

You can replace the verb “do” with anything from blooms taxonomy:

Revision of Bloom’s taxonomy. (Source: Eva Keiffenheim based on Krathwohl and Anderson et al.)

To set the learning outcome, think again about what people told you in the user survey combined with what you know about the topic you’re teaching.

Here are the key learning outcomes I defined:

  • Publishing three high-quality articles within three weeks during the course (and overcoming any mindsets that have held them back before).
  • Discovering, learning, and using the tools that help them with their creative workflow (e.g. for knowledge management and editing).
  • Learning how to use the data they will generate (reading time, views, clicks) to make future content decisions.
  • Starting an e-mail list including landing page, call-to-action, and optimized welcome e-mail that will become their most valuable asset.
  • Having a repeatable and consistent idea-to-paper process that works for them long after the course.

Action steps for you:

  1. Informed by the previous three steps, fill the sentence, “By the end of the course, you’ll be able to do X without Y (usual blocker or friction).”
  2. List all learning outcomes required to make your sentence true.

5) Use Backward Design For Your Course Structure

Traditional curriculum planning uses forward design. People plan learning activities, forms of assessments and only then try to connect them to learning goals.

In backward design, you start with the learning outcome. You think about the destination your learners want to reach and plan the trip to help them get there.

This is more tricky than simply cluttering the curriculum with anything that might be relevant, but it’s far more intentional and effective.

Two questions that led my thinking was: “Which activities would students need to practice to achieve the desired learning outcome?” and “Which input is required so they can best complete this activity?”

Screenshot of the first version of my course structure.

Only once I was happy with the backwards-designed curriculum, started to collect content and resources.

The result were action-oriented sessions that focused on the “how” instead of the why and what:

Source: Eva Keiffenheim

Action steps for you:

  1. Consider the learning outcomes and the necessary practice for achieving them prior to considering how to teach the content.
  2. Design the lessons around action orientation. Provide guided exercises, templates, and step-by-step guides to help your students succeed.

In Conclusion

While getting here can seem tiring, and like a lot of work, the effort is worth every minute. The five steps help you get very specific about the learning design required to help your students succeed:

  1. Collect data to find out what people want to learn from you
  2. Set a compelling course title and scope
  3. Speak to potential users to further refine your course content
  4. Be clear about your student’s transformation
  5. Plan your course structure with backward-design

Building this course has been one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my life (apart from teaching kids at a school). I hope you will find similar enjoyment in building a course your student will love.

Sign-up free for the weekly Learn Letter and register your interest for the second cohort of the writing online accelerator.

Most Online Courses Are a Waste of Your Time — Here’s How You Know

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A quick guide that helps you find the worthy ones.

Picture bought by the author via Canva.

This year I spent around $5000 on online courses.

Warren Buffet said, “the best investment you can make is an investment in yourself. The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.”

But his statement is flawed.

Not all learning investments are created equal. People who’ve excelled at their craft are often not the best teachers. Likewise, creators who write the best sales copy don’t offer the most value.

Here’s precisely how you can spot bad online courses so that you won’t waste your time and money.

1) They Tell But Don’t Show

Most online courses are useless because they focus on the why and what instead of the how.

In a Medium writer’s online course, for example, the instructors spend 90% of the time exploring what writing consists of. They have an hour-long conversation about the importance of consistency. Yet, they don’t show the students how they can write consistently.

The medium star could’ve talked about the roadblocks and how he overcame them. He could’ve shared his calendar or accountability system. He could’ve shared strategies for when you’re struggling to get started. But he didn’t. For me, the course felt like a time-waster.

“Never tell us a thing if you can show us, instead.”

— Steven King

What to look out for instead:

Look for how material instead of endless talks on the why and what. Valuable things often include templates, tutorials, spreadsheets, and screen-sharings.

Here are some examples, so you know how to tell the difference:

Source: Created by Eva Keiffenheim.

2) Instructors Teach in One Direction

“Active learning works, and social learning works,” said Anant Agarwal, founder and chief executive of edX, in an interview with the New York Times. To back this up, a recent study suggests social learning helps you complete online courses.

Yet, most online course creators choose alow-maintenance model. They pre-record videos so you can watch them at your own pace.

But what’s scalable for the instructors isn’t the best for you. Data from Harvard University and MIT shows only three to four percent complete self-paced online courses.

To increase your chances of success, you need a community.

I love Cam Houser’s comment in a joint Slack channel: “People don’t take courses for information. That’s what google and youtube are for. They take courses for outcomes, accountability, process, community.”

What to look out for instead:

A slack channel or Facebook group isn’t enough. Great courses offer structured space for social learning. You have an accountability group, comment on each other’s work, and have regular live touchpoints with your instructors or coaches.

Source: Created by Eva Keiffenheim.

3) They Ignore the Principle of Directness

Online courses are often distant from the actual application. You watch videos about your desired skill, but you never actually practice.

Let’s consider one of my favorite examples.

Imagine you’re a frequent flier. Before every start, you watch the video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. You watch the video again and again.

But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

The author of ‘Ultralearning’ calls this principle directness. It is essential for mastering any skill. Yet, most online courses teach skills far from direct.

What to look out for instead:

You don’t learn by watching things. You learn by doing them. So the more you engage with the content, the likelier it will stick with you.

What’s your desired outcome behind taking the course? Check whether you have assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill. Pick a class as close to your end goal as possible.

If you take a course on e-mail newsletters, write your e-mail and ask for feedback. If you take a drawing class, do your first drawing. If you take a course on online writing, write your first article.

Just like the minimum viable product, find a minimum viable action. What is the simplest thing you can do based on what you’ve just learned?

Foster a bias towards action. You learn best when you do the work.

“Just keep working at it, and you’ll get there is wrong. The right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else.”

— Anders Ericsson

4) They Don’t Understand the Science of Learning

Masters might not be the best teachers. More likely, they’re beginners when it comes to instructional design and the science of learning.

Most online courses are built on the assumption that our brains work like recording devices. But students don’t acquire their desired skills by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step process — we acquire, encode, and retrieve.

Learning scientist Roediger writes: “Learning that’s easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow. Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful.”

Learning through passive content consumption isn’t effortful. That’s why most online courses are a mere form of entertainment.

What to look out for instead:

Look out for active learning elements. Check whether the course uses evidence-based learning strategies such as:

  • retrieval practice ⇟ recall something you’ve learned in the past from your memory
  • spaced repetition ⇟ repeat the same piece of information across increasing intervals
  • interleaving ⇟ alternating before each practice is complete
  • elaboration ⇟ rephrasing new knowledge and connecting it with existing insights
  • reflection ⇟ synthesize, abstract, and articulate key lessons taught by experience
  • self-testing & calibration ⇟ answer a question or solve a problem before looking at the answer and identify knowledge gaps

“Mastery, especially of complex ideas, skills and processes, is a quest. Don’t assume you’re doing something wrong if learning feels hard.”

— Roediger et al.

Conclusion

Most online courses don’t help you reach your desired outcome. You can spend thousands of dollars and hours without learning anything at all.

Learning doesn’t help you per se — it’s taking the right courses that can make all the difference:

  • Check whether the course curriculum goes beyond why and what and teaches the how to do stuff.
  • Evaluate whether you’ve got regular touchpoints with your instructor and learning opportunities with fellow students.
  • Understand whether you’ll practice your desired skill.
  • Look out for evidence-based learning elements such as spacing, retrieval, or reflection.

I’m building a course on how to write online based on evidence-based practices to make the most of your time. You won’t sit in front of pre-recorded videos and struggle to stick with them. If you’re interested in joining a group of 25 people, you can pre-register here.

The 5 Best Platforms to Create Your Cohort Based Online Course

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Teachable & Co belong to the past. Here’s what’s next.

Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash

Whether you’re a serial course creator or entertaining, the thought of launching your first online course — cohort-based courses will likely disrupt the way you teach.

Platforms like Teachable, Podia, and Kajabi belong to the past. Say goodbye to course design that ignores social and active learning.

Your (future) customers don’t acquire new skills by consuming pre-recorded content. Learning is at least a three-step process: acquisition, encoding, and retrieval.

That’s why learning by doing is much more powerful than learning by watching. These platforms will help you create and sell learner-centric courses that help your customers master the skill you teach.

1) Teachfloor

Teachfloor combines all the tools you need to build a cohort base course. The platform equips you with a curriculum builder, Zoom and Stripe integrations, e-mail automation, a course landing page, calendar scheduling, on-demand videos, and peer-review opportunities.

Teachfloor offers a vast course creator academy with 24/7 support in 50+ countries. With more than 3,000 clients, Teachfloor belongs to the more seasoned platforms.

After a 14-day free trial, pricing starts at $49 a month (billed annually).

Screenshot of Teachfloor’s landing page by the author.

2) Maven

Maven is a very new cohort-based course platform started by the founders of Udemy, altMBA, and Socratic.

In a podcast interview, Maven co-founder Gagan Biyani shared how they aim to revolutionize education and replace universities with a more individualized approach to education.

Pricing is not displayed on their website. If you want to create a cohort-based course on their platform, you must apply to their course accelerator. In an intense 3-week program, you build and get feedback from a cohort of top-notch instructors and coaches.

Screenshot of Maven’s landing page by the author.

3) Virtually

Virtually provides all tools you need to run your online learning program in a single place.

Features include analytics, life conferencing, payment processing, calendar management, auto-attendance tracking, assignments and grading, student records, and content libraries. Plus, Virtually has integrations with Zoom, Slack, Stripe, Google Sheets, Airtable, Circle, Zapier, and Google Calendar.

According to their website, creators such as Ali Abdaal and Tiago Forte built their courses with Virtually.

If you join the beta, pricing is $50 a month for your first 250 students and $0.25/month for each additional learner.

Screenshot of Virtually’s landing page by the author.

4) Graphy

Similar to Teachfloor, Graphy is an all-in-one platform to help you set up your live courses, grow your community, and monetize your knowledge without any barriers.

Yet, Graphy doesn’t include features or integrations for asynchronous communication. Instead, they built a tool similar to Zoom that can be used for online live teaching.

The platform doesn’t charge upfront. They make money only when you make money with a flat 5% platform fee only on successful enrolments in your courses.

Screenshot of Graphy’s landing page by the author.

5) Classcamp

Classcamp is a mobile-first, interactive learning platform for creators. Unlike the other platforms, your brand will serve as the center for the learning experience.

Features include the option for pre-recorded or live lessons, fan assignments, submissions, and reaction videos.

The platform launches in September, but you can already sign up on their website.

Screenshot of Classcamp’s landing page by the author.

Excluded Platforms

While researching this article, I stumbled upon a few sites that were recommended as cohort-based-course platforms. Yet, upon further review, I found these sites to be misleading.

Airschool

Airschool is a course creation tool. As a creator, you start a landing page and launch with them, then share the link with your community. Initially, I found their claim to “Sell Courses, Make Money!” a bit sketchy, but the team reached out and clarified all my doubts. The tool is free to use but charges 9.90% of the product’s price if it’s priced higher than $30.

Airtribe

Airtribe aims to help the world’s top instructors start cohort-based courses which are live, engaging, and community-driven. While the claim sounds promising, the platform is very early-stage, and it’s not clear how Airtribe intends to achieve its goal.

Disco

Founded in 2020, Disco helps creators build live learning experiences. It comes with integrations to Stripe, Mailchimp, and Zoom. From their website, the exact features and the pricing are not listed yet. Similar to Maven, you can apply to get creator access to build your own course.

Eduflow

Eduflow is a well-established collaborative learning platform. I didn’t include their solution in the list, as they targeted higher education and corporate training. For example, they don’t have payment provider integrations, and you’d have to go with the $400/mo subscription to add your personal branding to the course.

TopHat

Founded in 2009, TopHat provides an all-in-one teaching platform purpose-built to motivate, engage and connect with students. TopHat offers interesting features (e.g., interactive textbooks, simulations, testing as a tool) but is targeted at higher education institutions.

Conclusion

Most educational video content is available free — learners watch content on YouTube 500 million times every day. But while the means for learning online are abundant, community-based experiences are scarce.

The list of online creators who successfully scaled their business by running cohort-based courses is long:

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

How Cohort Based Courses Can Help You Master Any Skill You Want

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MOOCs are dead. Here’s what’s next.

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

Having access to content is not enough to master a subject. Learners ace a skill via direct practice of the skill they’re trying to master.

In 2011, people believed massive open online courses, so-called MOOCs, would revolutionize online learning.

Yet, data from Harvard University and MIT revealed three devastating data points against these courses:

  1. Completion rates. Only three to four percent complete MOOCs — a rate that hasn’t improved in the past six years.
  2. Retention. Only seven percent of MOOC learners start another course after their first year.
  3. Accessibility. While MOOCs promised to bring high-quality education to all corners of the world, only 1.43 percent come from countries classified as “low” in the Human Development Index.

As a result, the future of education doesn’t belong to MOOCs any longer. Instead, a new model emerged. Whether you’re a content creator or a lifelong learner — here’s how Cohort-Based Courses can help you master any skill.

What are Cohort-Based Courses?

In Cohort Based Courses, so-called CBCs, a student group moves at the same pace through the same curriculum. Typically, CBCs include a mix of life lessons, remote assignments, and peer learning.

If you ever attended school, you’re familiar with cohort-based education. Schools and universities rely on cohort learning models — students take the same lecture, assignments, and tests simultaneously.

Both have in common that you don’t pay for the content’s quality. Studying with free videos can teach you as much as attending universities or CBCs. What you pay for is the likelihood of completing the learning track and achieving the desired outcome (e.g., land a job or acquire a specific skill).

Why CBCs Are Better Than MOOCs

Socrates tutored two learners at a time; a MOOC scaled learning up to 100,000. With CBCs, the teacher-student ratio increases, and relationships are at the core of the learning process again.

If you want to master a skill, access to instructors will help you stick with the course.

A study found interaction with instructors affects MOOC learner retention directly. CBCs use online tools like Zoom or Slack to give feedback and help students complete the course.

“Active learning works, and social learning works,” said Anant Agarwal, founder, and chief executive of edX, in an interview with the New York Times.

Seth Godin’s altMBA, a cohort-based online MBA, supports this fact with a completion rate of 96%. Other CBCs report, the completion rate is up to 85%.

Building relationships with instructors and peers, plus the limited time factor, is a way to force yourself to complete a course. Through more teacher-student and student-student touchpoints, you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable.

The Distinctive Learning Features

There’s more to CBCs than the tutoring and completion ratio: collaboration and community.

While you go through the course, you interact with your peers. Thus, learning is not one-directional (teacher to student) but also bi-directional (student to student).

Through regular collaboration, you form a community. You network with like-minded people from across the globe. As you follow the same learning goal, these relationships can be very powerful.

If you join a community of future data scientists, this network can give you access to opportunities and resources in the future that will enhance your career.

How You Can Distinguish Average from Great

You don’t absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. Instead, learning is at least a three-step process — you acquire, encode, and retrieve.

Learning by doing is much more powerful than learning by watching. When you pick a course, evaluate whether the curriculum design will help you achieve your desired outcome. Here are key features to look out for:

  • Real-time feedback on learning progress.
  • Assignments that are directly linked to your desired skill.
  • Structured access to a subject-specific community.
  • Evidence-based learning design, e.g., spaced repetition features and testing mechanisms.

7 Promising Cohort-Based-Courses

Here are seven courses you might want to consider:

  1. Career Advancement
    Reforge teaches the systems and frameworks that help you take the next step in your career. CBCs include product management, marketing, and growth strategies.
  2. Writing (Beginner level)
    Ship 30 for 30 teaches online writing through active learning. You will establish a writing and publishing routine with 500+ other writers.
  3. Writing (Advanced level)
    Write of Passage helps you develop a process for cultivating ideas and distilling them into writing.
  4. Knowledge Management
    Building your Second Brain can support you in saving your best ideas, organizing your learning, and expanding your creative output.
  5. Video Creation
    Minimum Viable Video is a 5-week live cohort that helps you creating and publishing professional videos that move the needle.
  6. EdTech, NoCode, Deep Tech, Scale, and More
    In 2021 Be On Deck launches 120 cohorts of 25 programs. They attract top talent to accelerate your ideas and careers, surrounded by a world-class community.
  7. Youtube
    The Part-Time YouTuber Academy teaches you how to grow your YouTube channel from 0 to 100,000+ subscribers and transform it into a sustainable, income-generating machine while keeping your day job.

In Conclusion

In a podcast interview on the future of education, Udemy founder Gagan Biyani stated how in 2009, nobody believed in online learning. Since then, everything has changed.

Apart from MOOCs, like EdX or Coursera, other EdTech solutions emerged. Platforms like Udemy or Skillshare created marketplaces for online education. Teachers competed with keywords and content and shared their earnings with the platform.

Then followed a third iteration: direct-to-customer solutions, such as Teachable, Kajabi, and Podia. On these platforms, online educators bring their own audience while keeping most of the revenue.

The new iteration towards CBCs is more student-focused than any previous solution, and it’s one of the most effective ways to master skills online:

  • Accountability through communities and instructors helps learners follow through when things get hard.
  • Because CBCs are outcome-focused (e.g., mastering a skill, landing a job, growing an audience) instructors focus on the how instead of the why.
  • CBCs help learners build skill-relevant communities that will support them in their future endeavors.

Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Get More Value Out of Online Courses with These Four Strategies

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Knowledge is useless unless applied.

Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

Have you ever paid for an online course and failed to finish it?

In 2020, 183,744 courses launched on Teachable alone. And while the number of new courses keeps rising, their quality doesn’t. Studies show only one in seven people completes them.

In the last months, I spent around $2,000 on online courses. And if I’ve learned one thing then it’s this:

Whether you spend $900 or $50 dollar on an online course, chances are your course creator doesn’t know much about evidence-based learning design.

If you don’t take charge of your learning, nobody else will. Here are the things that will help you make the most of any online course.

1) Start with what you need the most.

E-learning is often ineffective because it’s distant from the actual application.

How often have you watched an aircraft’s safety video? Every time before take-off, you watch how flight attendants put on their life vests. With every flight, you re-watch the video. But it’s ineffective.

This study shows, putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

Ultralearner Scott Young labels this the principle of directness. But how you call it doesn’t matter. Simply focus on what you need the most and skip the rest.

How to do it:

Why did you take the course in the first place? Decide on your learning goal and start with the lessons closest to your objective.

When I took my first online courses I felt like disrespecting the course creators by not watching from start to finish. What I didn’t realize is I disrespected my time.

Online lessons aren’t created equal and not every section is worth your time. Many times you find fluffy filler sections. When you see one, skip it.

Treasure your time and jump ahead whenever you feel lessons are a time-waster. Prioritize what you need the most and ignore the rest or save it for later.

2) Find a way to apply what you learn directly.

In my first months of online writing, I took three online courses. And while watching successful writers inspired me, it didn’t help me advance my craft. I ignored that the only way to get better at anything is by practice and application.

“The one who does the work does the learning.”

— Terry Doyle

Online courses can help you create better products, earn more money, and help you live a happier life. But unless you apply the lessons from the instructors, the courses remain mere entertainment. Knowledge is useless unless applied.

How to do it:

Just like the minimum viable product, find a minimum viable action. What is the simplest thing you can do based on what you just learned?

If you take a course on e-mail newsletter, write your first e-mail. If you take a drawing class, do your first drawing. If you take a course on online writing, write your first article. Foster a bias towards action.

You don’t learn by watching things. You learn by doing them. The more you engage with the content, the likelier it will stick with you. Knowledge trapped in online courses is meaningless unless applied to your life.

3) Form an accountability group with fellow learners.

It’s difficult to hold yourself accountable if you’re sitting alone in front of a computer. Last year, I learned it the hard way.

Studying has always been easy for me. I finished my Bachelor and Master studies with great results. So when I started part-time studying philosophy, last year I was nothing but thrilled.

Yet, five months later and I didn’t take a single exam. The reason? I didn’t connect with fellow learners. I lost motivation. I stopped.

I’m only a month into the new semester but my accountability group makes a difference. We e-meet once a week and share tips and resources, ask probing questions, and encourage each other.

Accountability groups add personal layers to online environments. Community-based learning can work on different levels: as a motivational safety net, learning practice, relationship builder, and accountability tool.

How to do it:

If your online course has a Slack channel or private Facebook group look at the most active members. Reach out to them personally, to form an accountability group.

Schedule weekly check-ins. Discuss what you applied. Listen, talk, read, write, and think about the new material. The more work your brain does, the more connections you establish. And the more connections the higher the chances that you remember what you learn.

4) Take effective notes using a Roamkasten.

Our brains don’t work like recording devices. Learning and memory need two components: the learned information itself and a so-called retrieval cue that helps you find the learned material.

In the last years, I experimented with various note-taking systems — outlining, sketchnoting, mind-mapping, Notion workflows, and BulletJournals — before I finally settled on the Roamkasten, an implementation of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten in RoamResearch.

Here’s why this note-taking system beats others:

  • The Roamkasten gets more useful with every additional note you create.
  • The system is built on state-of-the-art learning science.
  • It offers you serendipitous idea discovery.

Through bi-directional linking, the Roamkasten helps you create connections between different domains and challenges your insights while minimizing effort and stress.

Former R&D lead at Khan Academy Andy Matuschak said if you had to set a single metric as a leading indicator for yourself as a knowledge worker, it would be the number of permanent notes they take.

How to do it:

First, decide on a digital tool. You can pick between programs solely built for Zettelkasten, like Zettlr and The Archive, or more functional alternatives like TiddlyWiki, Obsidian, RemNote, Amplenote, and Org-roam. I use Roamresearch ($15 a month) because of its clean design and its Readwise connection.

Second, create a page for your online course where you write down your standard course notes. They include everything the instructor said that you might want to remember. It’s easy to write them because you don’t have to think for yourself. Simply jot them down, one bullet at a time.

Third, create permament Zettelkasten notes. Look at your course notes and ask yourself questions like “Which new insights do you have based on the new material? How does it relate to what you already know? Where in your work or life will you apply it?”

Write exactly one note for each permanent note and write as if you were writing for someone else. Use full sentences, disclose your sources, make references, and try to be as precise, clear, and brief as possible.

When you’re done, relate the note to existing notes inside your storage system using bi-directional linking. That way, you implemented two strategies that are known for effective learning — elaboration, and retrieval.

Final Thoughts

Online courses can improve many aspects of your life. But to belong to the few percent who take away a lot from it, consider:

  • Starting with the lessons that help you the most. Skip what you don’t need.
  • Apply what you learn as soon as possible.
  • Form your accountability group to boost motivation and learning.
  • Use a personal note-taking system that helps you remember what you learned.

Don’t feel discouraged by these different ideas. What worked for me might not work for you. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, take what resonates and forget the rest. And most importantly: enjoy your learning journey.

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How to Host Learner-Centric Zoom Workshops

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Online workshops rooted in evidence-based learning techniques.

Photo by Artem Podrez from Pexels

A great workshop is less about the tools you use but more about why and how you use them.

I’ve run many interactive workshop sessions using Zoom in the past year: individual coaching calls, digital maths lessons for my students, and larger scale workshops on reflecting and goal setting.

If your target audience differs, don’t worry. When it comes to learning, human brains work in similar ways. Here’s how you create digital workshops on Zoom, rooted in evidence-based learning techniques.

Make Your Workshop as Direct as Possible

Learning in formal settings is often ineffective because it’s distant from the actual application.

Imagine you’re a frequent flier. Before every start, you watch the video of a flight attendant putting on the life vest. You watch the video again and again.

But as this study shows, actually putting on the inflatable life vest a single time would be more valuable than repeatedly watching another person doing it. You acquire true mastery by performing the procedure yourself.

Using the power of directness, ultralearner Scott Young mastered four languages within one year. He traveled to the respective country and forced himself to only speak in the foreign language.

Learning works best when you apply it. Hence, aim to include exercises as close to your desired outcome as possible.

What’s your workshop’s learning goal? Once you know what you want your learners to achieve, design exercises directly linked to that goal. Offer a bias towards action.

If you aren’t clear on your learning objective, none of this article will matter. Without learning goals, you’re choosing your gear without knowing whether you’re going on a surf trip or snowboarding.

How to do it:

Write down the learning goal. Then come up with activities that lead to the desired outcome.

If you’re a writing coach and want your participants to reach a broader audience, share headline writing insights. Then, make your learners come up with their own headlines.

If you’re a life coach and want your learners to unleash the power of visualization, make them write and record their own prompts to listen to them after the workshop.

The opportunities are manifold — once you know your what you’ll easily find your how. Focus on your true end-goal and pick a practice that’s as close to it as possible.

Include Testing as A Learning Tool

Many people shrug when they hear about testing as a learning tool. Their memories of tests as a measurement tool have taken their toll. But if done correctly, testing can improve the way we learn.

A study by learning researcher Roediger showed that testing has positive effects on long-term retention. In ‘Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning’ he writes:

“Testing helps calibrate our judgments of what we’ve learned. In virtually all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool to identify and bring up your areas of weakness.”

Self-testing helps your learners overcome the illusion of knowledge. It shows whether they really understand the subject at hand. Plus, testing helps in identifying knowledge gaps and bringing weak areas to the light.

How to do it:

Instead of repeating your input a third time, use the time for a quick quiz. Kahoot or Zoom Polls will show whether your participants understand the new concepts.

If you’re hosting a series of workshops, you can also open each session with a quiz on the previous lesson. Even if they don’t get the right answer, the process facilitates remembering the correct answer.

During my math lessons, students loved to do low-stakes testing. They revised the material before our session as they wanted to win against their classmates.

I loved it, too. I gained insights into my student’s comprehension. Plus, this type of testing gave entry to meaningful questions.

Unlock the Power of Reflection

Brains don’t work like recording devices. We don’t absorb information and knowledge by consuming content. We store new concepts in terms of their meaning to our existing memory.

If you want your participants to remember what they learn, include them in the learning process. Let them interpret, connect, interrelate, or elaborate on new material.

To remember new concepts, your workshop participants not only need to know it but also to know how it relates to what they already know.

Reflection is an effective exercise to help learners connect new information to existing memories. Again, Roediger:

“Reflection can involve several cognitive activities that lead to stronger learning: retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these new experiences and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do differently next time.”

How to do it:

Include reflective exercises after every learning unit. Chats are a great way to create a collaborative reflection experience. You can, for example, ask your learners to answer reflection questions like:

  • What surprised you the most, and why?
  • How does your new knowledge change the way you look at life?
  • What’s one thing you will implement today?
  • What might you need to learn for better mastery, or what strategies might you use the next time to get better results?

Be Aware of Zoom Fatigue

Did you ever wonder why you’re so tired after an online workshop?

In the book ‘Engaging Learners through Zoom,’ the author shares a study by Sacasas, director of the Center for the Study of Ethics and Technology:

“One of the reasons Zoom can be so exhausting is the additional focus needed during video communication to remain attentive to facial expressions, body langauge, and the subtleties of verbal language.”

That’s why learners need more focus on a video call than they need in an offline learning setting. It’s hard to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, or the voice pitch, via a screen.

Video chats mean we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and body language; paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy.

How to do it:

Ask participants to use speaker view. Explain that they’ll feel less tired once they’ve minimized their own window and the other participant’s faces. That way, your participants only have to see one individual, which simplifies non-verbal cue processing.

In Closing

Attention and time are the most valuable resources of our time. Don’t waste your learner’s time. Don’t ever give an hour-long lecture using PowerPoint slides. Lengthy lectures without learner engagement are extremely boring and don’t lead to meaningful learning outcomes. Instead:

  • Link your exercises as close as possible to your desired learning outcome.
  • Use testing as a learning tool.
  • Include reflection exercises to help learners remember what they learn.
  • Help your learners overcome Zoom fatigue.

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