How to Ensure People Actually Learn From Your Online Course

Something to ponder: Creating an online course is not the same as ensuring that learning takes place for your students inside the course. Creating an online course and RUNNING an online course are two different things. Luckily, I can show you how to do make sure that the course you CREATE actually helps people learn. 

If you’ve been putting off creating your online course because you don’t think you can actually teach someone the things you know or you worry about whether or not your online course will work for your students, keep reading.

In this article, we’re talking about the almighty lesson plan and how to create a lesson that speaks directly to your clients and students to actually teach them something valuable. Lord knows a lot of online courses are just glorified webinars that don’t teach you anything. I want to make sure your course doesn’t just end up in the rubbish pile with the other noise. And I bet you don’t either. 

There are three things you need to address in everything you teach so that you can ensure your students actually learn. Of course, I teach you this in greater detail inside my program, but I want to give you some insight as to what makes a great learning experience for your students. 

The 3-Step Formula for Teaching in an Online Course

This is a three-step process that goes a little something like this: educate, aware, solve. 

Now let me explain these elements to you so you can start putting them to work. And here’s a pro tip: you can use this formula in your marketing strategies as well.

Educate Customers About the Problem They Have to Learn

You have to educate your students on the fact that there is a problem to begin with. Of course, what they think is the problem is almost always never the actual problem. You start by figuring out what they think is the problem. Then apply your subject matter expertise to the situation to see what the real problem is. Let’s say run a human resources company that consults with businesses. Your customers think they have culture issues due to poor attitude. As the subject matter expert, you know it’s not JUST a poor attitude. You know it’s also a lack of empathy, support, structure, accountability, trust, communication, and so on and so on.

You know this. But your clients blame poor attitudes for the reason they have a poor culture. Now here’s the tricky part. You have to market to those people as if you help them solve their attitude problems because that’s what they think it is. BUT inside your online course, you educate them on the real reasons they have a problem. You point out all the gaps in their knowledge. The way you do this is you talk about poor attitude as a symptom of the real problem, which you know to be many other things. That’s step one. Educate.

Once they are in your course and you are teaching them any concept, you want to educate them to bring them from where they are to where you need them to be. Meeting them where they are is so important, but you want them to move on from that as quickly as possible. 

Draw Awareness to the Real Problems they Have

The second step is aware. Once you’ve educated your clients about the real problems and you’ve started moving them away from the belief that it’s an attitude problem, you need to make them aware of the real problems in relation to them. As you address issues like communication, lack of empathy, structure, support, and so on, you want to be asking them lots of questions about what they think and what they’ve seen. In an online course, this is usually done through discussion forums, activities, reflection exercises, and worksheets. You might even record a video that talks about the relationships between poor attitudes and unmotivated cultures and everything in between. You bring your client to the table with you now.

Making someone aware of the real problem in relation to them can take time depending on how willing your student is to accept responsibility for their own learning. And here’s where a lot of inexperienced course creators get hung up: if you can’t get your student to commit to the learning process through education and awareness, you’ll never get them to solve their own problems. In other words, they’ll never finish your online course. And that’s basically the kiss of death for an online course creator. You want 100% completion rates and if you’re not getting 100% completion rates, you want to find out why. Completion rates improve when people actually learn something from you. You might start losing people early on because you haven’t done a good job of making them self-aware of their problems.

Solve the Problem Your Customer Really Has to Help Them Learn

Step three is to solve the problem so people can learn alternative ways of doing things. Now, if you are a coach or a consultant, you might be used to just doing things for clients. But in an online course, the point is NOT to do the work for them. And this might take some getting used to on your part. The point is the teach them how to solve their own problems.

So let’s say the client thinks the culture is rotten in their business because of attitude issues. You’ve talked about that, educated them on the underlying issues, and helped them see that they can do things to improve the situation. Now it’s time for your client to learn what to do. If your client believes things can change, they’ll move to the solutions piece with no problem. They’ll adopt your suggestions for implementing change. Again, YOU don’t make the changes. You teach THEM how to make the changes for themselves through systems, frameworks, templates, worksheets, and so on.

If your student is resistant to the change, they probably shouldn’t be in the course in the first place. You might need to ramp up your onboarding process. If they say the course isn’t working for them, you haven’t done a good job of making them self-aware. 

Walk the Walk of Creating an Online Course

My best advice for creating online courses? Let me do it for you. You focus on selling. I focus on building great online courses so you don’t have to worry about whether or not people can learn from the materials. Don’t just talk about solving problems and then make your students go out and find the solutions themselves. Keep things tight and concise and give them the information they need to take action. Don’t take the action for them. 

When you use this system to educate, aware, and solve, you can easily spot the gaps in your learning plan. And when you can easily spot the gaps, you can quickly and easily adjust and adapt your course. This allows you to continue to better serve your students and clients. 

Create Your Online Course Quickly, Easily, and with Confidence

Book a call with me and we can discuss what problems you’re trying to solve and what your students might think is the actual problem they have. All you have to do is show them the roadmap to get them from where they are to where they want to be. And I can help you do that.