This episode discusses one of the hidden problems of course creation: getting your students to actually finish your course! Host Julie Hood shares 8 ways to you can help your students get all the way through your course.
This episode discusses one of the hidden problems of course creation: getting your students to actually finish your course! Host Julie Hood shares 8 ways to you can help your students get all the way through your course.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
Here are 8 things that impact whether or not your student finishes your course:
1. The instructor - are they concise or are they wordy and disorganized?
2. How big is the pain for the student?
3. Is there a community around your course so the students are working together?
4. Can you add gamification?
5. Remember... you can lead a horse to water...
6. Create a schedule and have your students commit to time on their calendars.
7. Use cheat sheets and templates to make completing the course easier.
8. Use your pricing to attract clients who are serious!
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Hello there. So glad you're here today. I want to talk about when you create your amazing online course, you get students to sign up, but then they don't finish the course. How disappointing is that for you as an instructor? So let's plan ahead and avoid some of those issues with the suggestions I have for you today. Let's get to it.
Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood. Hey, there, you're here just in time for episode 57 of the course creators HQ podcast. And this one is a little bit different. I want to tell you what I did today. I'm a big,
big fan of repurposing your content. So when you create one thing using it over and over. So for example, if you've paid attention, you will notice that sometimes the content that is in these podcasts will then show up later as an essay in my email newsletter or show up as a blog post on my website. I like to reuse my content. So what I was able to do this weekend was host a clubhouse room where we were talking about all kinds of things related to online courses.
So I hope you will definitely get on my list so that you find out about the next one that I do. We had over a two hours session, really, really amazing questions, really, really helpful answers. I had some other folks jump in to talk about what they were doing and give some more advice. But what I wanted to do for today's episode is I pulled out a section where I was doing teaching during that clubhouse room.
And it's all about what to do. If your students aren't completing your courses. And I'm inserting that in here, I made a couple edits. I had a coughing fit during part of it. So I took that out and redid that part for you. But next week, I'll explain how I did this so that you can do something similar, repurposing your clubhouse content for your podcast and using it elsewhere.
But today I want to talk about what to do if your students are not finishing your course. And in the meantime, if you are thinking about an online course and you're not quite sure if your idea is any good, make sure you go to the show notes coursecreatorshq.com/57. That'll be the notes for this episode and grab the freebie that I'm giving away about is your course idea
Any good. So that's coursecreatorshq.com/57. And you'll be able to grab the free training on whether your course idea is any good or not. Okay. So a big shout out to John, thank you for this fantastic question. I appreciate you sending it in and I hope you find these answers a little bit helpful. Let's get into it.
How can you make sure your students actually finish your course here, feel free to raise your hand and let's talk about your specific situation. Those are my favorite things. I love to brainstorm individual situations in courses and your audience, and kind of see how to move you forward. And then while we're waiting on that, I will jump in. I got a great question this morning and I want to talk about with you all.
And it was an email that said, you know, I hear that only 1 to 3% of people that take online courses actually finish them. And they were wondering if that's actually true that it's so small and you know, why is that no matter what the instructor is doing, that sort of thing. So I came up with a few different ideas around this because I have heard a similar stat that it is a very small completion rate.
So here's a few things that you can actually do to make sure your courses don't end up in that, of that uncompleted stage with your students. So the first thing really is the instructor. And as you are putting things together, if you can be as concise as possible, because I know we've all sat down to a course and the very first video is a 90 minute introduction video.
And I don't know about you guys, but I just kind of go, oh, I don't know if I have 90 minutes to watch a video right now. And so that, that right away gets me off to a rough start with a course when that's the way it starts. So I love it when my instructors keep their videos to 10 minutes or less,
because what happens is every time that your students click that complete button on a video lesson that they're watching, they get this burst of endorphin hit in their brain that, Ooh, I'm moving forward. I'm making progress. I'm going to keep going and keep going on my course. So one of the first things you can do to help with that completion rate is making sure that you put together your course as succinctly and concisely as possible,
and that you make it as interesting as you can. So sometimes that's easier than others, you know, but we'll try the best we can with that. The second thing you can think about is how big is the pain that your student is trying to solve. And by that, I mean, how big is the problem that you're solving for them or how big is the reward that you're providing for them?
And here's why I want you to think about this. I'll give you an example. I signed up for a photography course earlier this year, really outstanding course instructor was phenomenal. She did a great job, but it was just kind of a hobby sort of thing. For me. I was super busy at the time and I became one of those students that didn't complete all of the homework and
didn't complete it. And that was not her fault. That was just my fault because it wasn't a big enough problem for me at the time. It wasn't a big enough thing that I was willing to give it a lot of my attention. So that was nothing that the creator did. That was just me. So sometimes that can also happen with your students.
It just really depends on how strongly they are interested in and want to make sure that they get this problem taken care of. So the third thing that will help make sure that your people are finishing and your students are finishing the course is to have some kind of community where you are connecting with your students regularly. So Tim was part of, one of the earlier sessions,
of course creators the 24 Hour Course Creator. And we had a weekly session where we would get on and talk to each other and hear about how things were going and cheer on each other. So that was a really an important part of finishing because it wasn't like someone just bought the course and went off to do it by themselves. They had a whole group of people.
We were doing it together. We're all trying to focus and finish in a similar time period. So the second piece of that is of course I actually took not one that I taught, but when I took my podcasting course, I also had a similar experience because they gathered it was about 17 or 18 of us that all wanted to launch a podcast. And so we joined the podcast and the course and jumped in together with the goal of launching.
I think it was August the 17th of 2020. And because we were all doing it together, nobody wanted to be the person that didn't launch on August the 17th. So we were all sort of going through it together and that, that almost peer pressure sort of it sort of situation made sure I did actually launch on that day. So any way that you can add community into your course will definitely help you with building up and getting your students through the course.
Number four is any kind of gamification that you can add. And by that, I mean, having a scoreboard or a leaderboard or points that you give students as they're completing things or badges that they get, depending on your audience, that might be a great way. If you've got a super competitive kind of audience, that's a great way because people want to be at the top of the leaderboard.
So that's another thing that you can add to help with the completion. The fifth one I want to mention is actually something my daughter said to me earlier this year, I was working on a challenge and I had had people sign up for the challenge. It was a five day challenge, and I was trying to make it as easy and as efficient for them as possible.
And there were a lot of people who jumped in and did all of the challenge, but then there were also some who weren't doing it. And I remember saying to her, like, I don't know what to do. You know, some of the folks are not jumping in and she said, mom, you know what, it's that whole thing about
You can lead the horse to the water, but you can't make them drink. So keep that in mind, you know, there's only so much that you can do as an instructor and it's okay. Like you can make it as good as you possibly can, but there will be some students for different reasons that maybe won't be able to finish your course.
And that's really up to them. Number six is to include some kind of scheduling that your students commit to. So when we do 24 hour course creator, I give them a list of here's the list of the 24 hours that you're doing. And I want you to commit and fill in when you're going to spend these 24 hours and put them on your calendar.
So it's just another way to kind of make sure we take it from here's the course to inside your calendar, your real life. This is where it's going to fit and where I'm going to finish. Number seven is using any kind of cheat sheets or templates that you can make it easier for your students. So instead of them having to go through a 50 page ebook,
condense it down into a one page cheat sheet, so they can just click off the steps of the lesson and get through it. It's all of those kinds of things where you're making it faster and easier will help them get through the content. And then number eight is, is kind of at a different level. And it's making sure that you are attracting students that are very serious about completion.
And one of the things I will tell you that can help with this is your price point. So the higher, the price point, generally, the more dedicated students you will get. And I know I've seen this when I pay for my expensive coach, I am doing everything. She says, reading every single one of her emails, I want to get every drop of value because that was a very expensive endeavor that I undertook as opposed to the other day,
when I bought a $7 course that I kind of stumbled across and sort of forgot about it. Then it only spent $7 on it. So somewhere in between, there is the perfect pricing for you and figuring that out will also help you figure out the students that are perfect for what you're doing at the price point that will help them complete the course. So I hope that gives you a few ideas about how to not only put your course together,
but let's make it work for your actual students. So feel free please, to raise your hand. If you've got any questions Dr. Tim, if anything comes up just unmute and jump in, you are very welcome to comment or ask questions to, I'd love to have you guys jump on so we can talk about your specific situations. So that was sort of my spiel about creating your courses.
Let's also talk a little bit more about the marketing side of things. So I hope that gives you a few ideas of what you can do to make sure your students are actually finishing your course. And if you have your own question that you'd like to get answered, please jump over to AskJulieHood.com or go to the show notes for this episode. At coursecreatorshq.com/57. And you can jump in and leave me an audio question so I can include it in a future episode. I'd love to hear what ideas or thoughts or things are bouncing around and bothering you about online course creation. Let's see what we can do about it. And I also want to tell you, thanks so much for listening. I appreciate the time in your inbox in your podcast app.
I appreciate you following or subscribing in your app. That really makes a difference and helps us get in front of more potential online course creators. If you can throw out a review, if this was helpful for you today, I love those five star reviews. They keep me happy dancing around my office. So thank you for listening. Thanks for following. Thanks for subscribing and reviewing.
You guys are the best. Have a fantastic week and I will catch you on the next episode.