Divided by timezones, united by pixels, and built with love: The age of cohorts in the cloud
A playbook to make your cohort-based course successful
Greetings from Melbourne, Australia!
👋 Hello! I'm Aarushi Singhania, and this is the #7 issue of Edstreet. It’s a monthly newsletter that connects ideas on education, skills development, lifelong learning, and how do you prepare for your next thing.
I had to push this newsletter issue by three weeks, but I’m glad to be here with you now. This is a long piece, so sit back, might want to grab some popcorn, and enjoy reading. Throughout the issue, I use the words ‘instructor’ or ‘course creator’ interchangeably, to indicate the person who builds and teaches online courses.
One of my professional goals this year is to be more active on Twitter. While I joined Twitter in July 2013, but I never really bothered to find my rhythm until Jan 2021. Here is what happened in the first half of 2021- I met over 220 content creators, artists, writers, and subject-matter experts through several online communities on Twitter. These creators are all united by a mission to make lifelong learning accessible and teaching great on the internet - paving the way to a new form of online learning called Cohort Based Courses (CBCs).
CBCs are interactive, live, synchronous learning experiences in which a group of students advances through the content together. As the courses have a firm start and end date, they have a limited chance of gathering digital dust unlike the courses on Udemy, Skillshare, and Masterclass. While the world of MOOCs has increased access to learning but it also means we have got into the habit of stacking online courses like books in our bookrack. What we need today is a new model of online learning where you are actively learning with a community of like-minded learners, supported by coaches, and not passively consuming videos from your bedroom.
To pour life into the idea of cohort-based courses, Maven launched a first-of-its-kind platform that lets anyone, with expertise in any domain, become an instructor and launch live, online, community-driven courses. Today some of the popular cohort-based courses are in the space of personal knowledge management, leadership, product management, writing, and the creator economy in general. You can check out Maven.com to see examples of different CBCs, my top favorite is Return to Workforce for aspiring women in tech.
While the future of cohort-based courses looks promising, the idea is still at a nascent stage and evolving. We will likely see several bumps, and the definition of cohort-based courses will continue to evolve.
In this issue, I want to share my take on what needs to happen in the next 12 months to continue building the momentum for CBCs. Sharing 10 points I think are the most important for the success of CBCs.
#1 Course creators need to learn how to handle a wide range of student personas within a CBC
It is true that handling a wide range of student profiles in a course is daunting for both novice and experienced course creators. In some cases, I have seen instructors not realizing the variety of student personas and learning goals until halfway through the course. I suggest two ways to think about this problem:
Identify your ideal student profile: The internet enables niche in a powerful way. As course creators, your first task is to identify who is your ideal student? You can teach that one topic or course on repeat to 1000s of your students, but first, find your niche.
Differentiate Instruction: If you decide to open up your course to a wider audience. In this case, I like to think, ‘how did my teachers manage a group of 30-40 students with different knowledge and skill levels in the same classroom back in the 90s?’ It turns out they use a teaching technique called ‘differentiate instruction’. This means to design a pre-assessment survey to gauge student readiness, skills, and learning goals and then differentiate course content, learning tasks, learning environment, and support to align with their learning goals. It also means intentionally designing peer-to-peer learning groups and coaching support that meets students where they are.
If we don’t get this right, it worries me that we will step into traditional models of ‘one size fits all’ in online space, failing to fulfill CBCs promise of a transformational learning experience for all students, sort of what happened to the MOOC promise. The bigger question in my mind is that, apart from coaches and student success teams, in what other ways can we scale personalized learning and support for students using technology?
#2 Fostering peer-to-peer learning in the cloud
Millions of people are finding their true peers in the cloud, a remedy for the isolation imposed by the anonymous apartment complex or the remote rural location. The latest wave of technology is not just connecting us intellectually and emotionally with remote peers: it is also making us ever more mobile, ever more able to meet our peers in person. - Balaji Srinivasan
Peer learning doesn’t happen by accident in online courses. Within a community, you need peers, a peer learning culture, and a structure to help each other meet, stay motivated, and stick through the end. One question that I have heard over and over is what encompasses a great peer-to-peer learning community for all students, especially for the students that are anxious and introverted?
My response is that an online peer-to-peer learning experience is built on the foundations of creating a safe space to learn - a space where students trust each other, run experiments, and feel comfortable taking risks and challenging each other. A learning environment where students encourage and applaud the spirit of ‘ever tried, ever failed, try again, fail again, and fail better.’ This peer learning experience makes students feel energetic, inclusive, invigorating, and makes them want to come back.
The best model I know for online peer learning is the one I experienced as a peer supporter in the On Deck Course Creator Fellowship. It was built on the values of giving and collaboration. The message was very clear from Day 1, let’s win collectively. There is always someone who is going to be your cheerleader in such a community. No idea or question is too big or small. How ODCC got to this point was through a rhythm of student-led community sessions, fireside chats, peer supporter sessions, slack channels like #asks- and #offers, #smallwins, #amplify, and #magicmoments. Most importantly, peer-to-peer learning was well communicated and encouraged even before the course began through #ODCC1 on Twitter. Such intentionality in building student learning resulted in ODCC1 online friends meeting in person in Berlin (not to mention, my FOMO).
Another solid example of peer-to-peer learning comes from Ali Abdaal’s Part-time Youtuber course where they have introduced a new House Support System for cohort 3. Ali says, ‘while 400 students in an online course are great for making new friends, sometimes a smaller, more intimate group is better for accountability and support. That’s why they broke the cohort into Houses of 30 students.’
Students meet with their House for an hour once a week, in a small group House Party Zoom call facilitated by Housemaster. How it works is that students are asked to choose the time slots that best suit them for the House parties and then students are sorted based on their skills and knowledge about the content and time preference. For accountability and fun, students are awarded House Points for completing assignments and other things throughout the course. The House with the most overall points will win the House Cup, and every student in the House will get a special prize at the end of the course. In my view, this model not only enables a more intimate peer-learning experience but also solves the challenge of handling a wide range of student personas in the course.
In the CBC world, there is no playbook on how to create transformational peer-to-peer learning in an online environment yet, what works, and what can be scaled. If you are still reading, you might be interested in mocking up an ideal peer-learning model.
#3 Coaches, Community Managers, and Director of Operations are the heartbeat of the cohort-based community
Peer-to-peer learning in CBCs is impossible without the energy and enthusiasm of coaches, community managers, and directors of operations.
Coaches in CBCs not only act as intellectual support for your students but a big part of the role is to provide emotional and social support that students need to build their next thing. Every CBC is different. Some see the role of a coach as a domain expert while others are big on coaching skills. More or less the coaches help in making every student visible, support students to go from 0 to 1 on their projects, be community leaders, and light up Zoom grid and Slack with their experience and knowledge.
Community is the driving force behind the effectiveness of CBCs. So we need a community manager who is responsible for designing the ship and making sure the ship is sailing smoothly and reaches its destination. Community managers are more or less responsible for coaches, keeping the Slack/Circle community alive, and designing learning experiences that stick with your learners.
The Director of Operations is this special person with magical powers to handle wide-ranging matters related to your course - tech stack/digital infrastructure, workflows, student experience, comms, course prep, and curriculum materials. In Marie Poulin’s words, ‘It’s time to find your Georgia’ (AKA your director of Ops).
As you can see, CBCs are quite a resource-intense model. Just like universities and institutions, CBCs require - a whole team to successfully run the show. If you are just starting out and thinking of hiring the #1 person for your CBC - my suggestion would be to go for a generalist - someone who can do a bit of operation, community management, and course marketing.
#4 Students feel overwhelmed by the time commitment it takes to complete a cohort-based course
On average, a CBC demands somewhere between 5-15 hours of time commitment per week. This can be a lot, especially if you have a family and are also doing a 9-to-5. While you can always watch a video or catch up on the content later but that’s not the point of the cohort-based learning experience. The point is to learn with others, enter into a dialogue, and hold each other accountable, and this is what differentiates CBC experience from other forms of online learning.
To help students make a decision about whether or not they can enroll in your course at this stage, every course instructor needs to address a question upfront in the FAQ section of your landing page ‘what is the expected time commitment’. Just like 👇
Of course, it is still time-consuming. I have heard students spending 17 hours in the first 48 hours of the kickoff but that’s a choice you have to make as a student - whether you are willing and able to stretch or commit those extra hours. After all, what differentiates CBCs is that it is not so much about the transmission of knowledge but more about a transformational learning experience. Transformations like shifts in behavior, developing a new habit, or a changing mindset can’t happen by watching one inspirational video - it needs consistent energy and effort from both ends - student and instructor.
Another way to emphasize time commitment is through the ‘kickoff event’. Your kickoff event slide deck needs a slide that charts out expectations about different sessions, workshops, time commitment, and how to prioritize to get the most out of the course. Doing this, not only helps in setting expectations but also encourages students to prioritize sessions and tasks to drive the most value and get things done.
Ultimately as instructors, you should know that it is not going to be practically possible for your students to attend 100% of sessions live. So how can you set realistic expectations for yourself, without killing yourself too much about why is attendance dropping in Week 2 and Week 3 of course? Also, if you want to go the extra mile, you can set up a Zapier automation that sends an automated check-in DM to your student, if you see their attendance dropping beyond 2-3 sessions or workshops.
#5 On building your tech stack early on
Earlier this month, I tweeted about innovations in cohort-based courses and found creators using some 20 tools and/or platforms to deliver a CBC. This is obviously not an exhaustive list. After nailing your transformation promise and selling out your first cohort, the next thing you need to figure out is how to deal with technology paralysis as a result of a variety of tools you can use to manage course operations and student experience. At the bare minimum, I have seen creators using a tech stack of Slack, Notion, Zoom, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Learning Management Systems. If you start getting creative, your tech stack will easily include Luma, Canva, ConvertKit, Zapier, Loom, Paritybar, and much more.
All of this is a lot for one instructor to manage on their own!
Maven and Graphy are solving this tech platform challenge to a large extent. As they build a one-stop-shop for both students and instructors to reduce the overwhelm and overload of managing communication, landing page marketing, operations, running sessions, and designing a transformational student experience.
What I see as an immediate opportunity in this space is a newsletter, a podcast, or tweets from experienced CBC instructors discussing their tech stack - start with simple questions - what does your tech stack look like? why does it work for you? where did you spend most of your time and what would you do differently? This will help novice instructors who are just starting out, to figure out their tech stack, plug-ins, and automation that works and makes life slightly smoother.
#6 Your alumni community is the most valuable asset
One reason why higher education institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, or Accelerator programs such as Y combinator generate greater interest every year is because of their ability to leverage the alumni network as a resource for new students & startups, who also act as the aspirational benchmarks of success. We need to apply the same principle of leveraging and nurturing your alumni community to Cohort-based courses.
Your alumni community is going to be your biggest cheerleaders. They take pride in coming back in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th cohort… In fact, Gwyn Wansbrough stated in one of the tweets, ‘that nurturing alumni needs to be an integral part of your course’s vision and plan from inception.’ The alumni community can wear several different hats:
Student testimonials - at the very least, they can provide killer student testimonials that act as social proof for your CBC.
Alumni mentors - they can act as alumni mentors, peer supporters, and coaches in subsequent cohorts, sharing their knowledge and experience.
Referral partners - they can help with outreach, refer students to your programs, gain referral bonuses, and drive sales for your course. This acts as a win-win for everyone.
First hires - as instructors, you have already seen your students in action. As a former teacher, I can share that I was always noticing students who show up generously with their time and find ways to reward them. Eventually, your team will organically form from star students in the first, second, and third cohorts.
Advisors - just like businesses, your CBC is going to be a full-fledged business someday. You will need advisors who can help you in small and big ways - you can’t do everything on your own. These advisors don’t have to be McKinsey consultants as such, they can be your students, alumni, or friends who can help you win.
You can also provide discounts to your alumni community for subsequent cohorts, give them access to lifetime community, and so much more. If you are a course creator, I'd encourage you to think deeply about your alumni strategy and share what works.
#7 CBCs are a premium product, so does that mean they are only accessible to an elite group?
CBCs are expensive. It is true that most CBCs don’t even provide a credential in a more traditional sense yet. The credentials in a CBC come in the form of a bigger Twitter audience, a new career pathway, lifelong community, in some cases landing job offers, or your next gig.
A recent article makes a case for why pay $750 to $5,000 for a cohort-based course when you can take a MOOC for $10 to $50. This is where I want to share my spiky point of view, I still think paying $750 to a first-time instructor is a big ask for not only students in developing countries but even the ones in the mature economies of the US and Australia. While a premium price does induce some accountability and self-discipline among students to finish the course, but it's likely that the price filters out other interested students who might not be able to afford the course. What if those students are your ideal student profile? I also understand that it takes years of research and practice before someone decides to monetize their knowledge through CBCs and design transformational student experiences, but again, does it make sense to charge your beta cohort $1000 when you haven’t fully nailed your curriculum?
For the same reason, I like to think about alternative pricing models - I love Paritybar.com, a plug-in that offers course discounts based on your geographic location because not everyone earns in USD. Discount codes are another way you can think of helping highly committed students. If your course is about skills development, you can think about a hybrid payment model - a minimum base payment upfront plus an income-sharing agreement like Lambda school. I’m also seeing more and more CBCs willing to offer scholarships to signal accessibility.
What's my point? My point is that a premium-priced course is great, but only after you have discovered your course-market fit and tested your curriculum. What you think your course is worth, might be unaffordable for your potential students, who can otherwise benefit from accessibility features like - tiered price points, discounts, scholarships, or other such help.
#8 Novice online course creators need help with course-market fit, course marketing, and curriculum - in that order
While the idea of monetization of knowledge through CBCs is compelling, it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. If you are someone who has never taught or created a course before, I suggest you adopt a 2-2-2 model. Run a two-hour workshop, then a two-day course, and finally a two-week course. Let me know how it goes.
For the first-time CBC instructors - I ran a thought experiment on Twitter to collate ideas on how to prioritize many moving parts of a CBC? I'll share the pattern I found in several responses.
#1-Course market-fit: Most new instructors find it hard to nail their ideal student profile - who will benefit from this course? What problems and pain points are you solving for them? What emotional needs is your course fulfilling for them? what jobs are taken care of after students take your course? What is your course’s transformation promise? Even if you hire a course creator advisor or a coach - they will push you to answer the exact same questions, so go think hard about these questions.
#2-Course marketing and Curriculum building: As a teacher, I am keen to put curriculum before marketing. As an entrepreneur/policy professional, I like to think - ‘sell first, build later.’ Let’s come to a common ground - to a new creator, I would say build a minimum viable curriculum and shamelessly share your content on socials, and with your friends. You will soon receive feedback on what sticks with them, and what you should build further. Before you realize it; content, marketing, and sales will start feeding off of each other.
#9 Leverage data to monitor and evaluate the quality of student experience
At the end of the day, what really matters is a quality student experience. While student testimonials are a good place to start, it is not enough to understand how to improve future cohorts systematically. I'm yet to see a CBC that fully utilizes data to make decisions about improving student experience - what does Slack analytics tell me about my community? how do I group students to optimize for learning?
Even using and integrating data from all the sources such as Zoom, Typeforms, Slack, LMS, and Twitter is something that we haven’t yet figured out in the CBC ecosystem.
Designing a course’s data strategy and course metrics should not be an afterthought. Any new CBC platform has to solve this challenge of integrating a data strategy that provides you obvious and non-obvious actionable steps. I definitely don’t mean providing me with data on enrollments, completions, but an end-to-end solution that helps to measure - student engagement, performance, growth, support, requests, and interventions. Challenge questions are - What kind of questions are you interested in answering through all the data collection and analysis? What does v1 of Course Creator Metrics look like? How are you integrating data strategy into your online course’s DNA?
#10 The emergence of Online Lifelong Learning Schools
The rise of cohort-based courses in the last 6-9 months has meant that there are a lot of new job openings for community managers, community designers, course creator advisors, coaches, content marketing experts, and operations geeks.
What this means is as more and more CBCs launch, it is going to create a whole new possibility of remote jobs in online education over the next few months. Even more, as instructors find joy and rhythm in running 1, 2, or 3 cohort-based courses, online lifelong learning schools will emerge and even become mainstream in the next few years. Graphy has already introduced this feature - they call it, 'launch your school and run as many courses as you’d like.'
As an educator in Australia, think about the possibility of teaching kids in North America early in the morning, New Zealand and Australia during the day, South Asia in the early evening, and ending your day with a session in Europe. On top of that, you can run cross-country sessions and classes once every month to bring together all your students from different parts of the world. A version of this is already being implemented in a cohort-based course AltMBA. That’s why I say building CBCs with intention and love means that this new mode of online learning has united students by pixels in ways I never thought could have ever been possible with online learning.
I am not yet done with this topic but for now, it is time to stop. As the next steps, I’m going to think about how will credentials play out, how do we monitor the quality of courses, and how would the whole online education ecosystem evolve over time but that’s a topic for another time.
Until next time,
Aarushi Singhania
🎧 Song - If you made it to the end, you deserve some entertainment. I have been listening to this Avicii song on repeat basically the whole month.
Quote of the month 💭
The only way we can remain coherent people in a distracted world is by forcing ourselves to focus.
- Ava, the bookbear express newsletter
Thanks Aarushi for an incredibly insightful piece on how the CBC sector is evolving. I especially appreciate your advice on accessibility and collecting data. And thanks for the mention:))
Thanks Aarushi, this is a great article. I loved the point on how marketing and curriculum can feed off of each other.
I’m curious though what were the metrics that you defined for ODCC?