My learnings from running cohort-based courses — Part 1
Hey! 👋 I’m Archie! Welcome to my newsletter. Among other things, I’m a creator-instructor of an online cohort-based course to help highly skilled immigrants learn about the fastest and merit-based green card — EB1-A. I also manage a community for my cohort participants.
In this two-part series, I’ll be sharing the decision-making on course mechanics, operations, managing a community, and some learnings along the way.
Context and background on the course:
I just finished the sixth cohort of “Demystifying EB1A — fastest and merit-based US green card”. Each cohort includes five group sessions and is currently priced at $XXXX. I offer a generous refund policy where a participant can drop out for a full refund for whatever reason as long as let me know halfway through the cohort — no questions asked. So far, I’ve only had two people ask for a refund. The course continues to get blazing reviews and the community continues to remain alive and vibrant. So, overall, I consider it to be a pretty successful outcome.
Self-paced vs cohort-based course:
When I was thinking of launching my course, I had a choice between offering a self-paced course with pre-recorded videos or an instructor-led live cohort-based course (CBC). I ended up choosing CBC, even though pre-recorded videos were more hands-off and scalable. Here’s why,
1. Superior course experience, accountability, and motivation lead to higher completion rates
It is well known that self-paced courses have low completion rates ranging from 3–6%. While these pre-recorded courses give unprecedented access to great content and great instructors, they fail to deliver a compelling course experience.
This is where CBCs stand out — they offer a compelling course experience for both instructors and course participants. I believe that CBCs are successful and exciting due to a combination of factors — fixed start and end dates introduce a sense of scarcity and urgency; live delivery and discussions lead to engagement; and continued interactions with other participants lead to a sense of community. For all those reasons, if you signed up for a CBC, you’ll not only complete the course, but you’ll also remember what you learned.
2. Candidness
Pre-recorded videos also by default mean that the instructor is going on-record on the topic. In CBCs, when content is not recorded, it often translates into candid dialogue from both the instructor and participants. People care about their reputation and may hold on to information they would share otherwise in a no-recording small group setting. So, candidness was an extremely important factor for me given that my topic was immigration, which is both sensitive and personal.
3. Real-time feedback, quick iterations, and inertia
CBCs have low inertia in getting started — all you need to launch is a landing page, course material, and video conferencing software. They offer real-time feedback and a faster iteration cycle. On the other hand, for self-paced courses, you first need to record, edit, and, decide on production value. You may need multiple takes before you reach an acceptable quality of the final recording. Imagine investing in recording content and production value only to learn at a later point that your message isn’t landing.
The live class setting facilitates real-time feedback from participants. You can tell based on the verbal, visual, and behavioral signals from participants what’s working/resonating vs not. You can tell when the eyes light up and when the heads nod. You observe what makes people unmute themselves to ask a question or join a discussion. All of this is in real time, right in front of you. This setup offers quick validation and faster iteration compared to self-paced courses that require video recordings.
When launching a new course, it almost always makes sense to start with CBCs even if eventually you may want to convert it to a self-paced course. It becomes easier to iterate along the way compared to a self-paced course where the feedback cycle is delayed and you may have to re-do the entire video in case of revisions.
Final conclusion:
Additionally, if I draw from my own experience, I’ve taken a variety of online courses — MOOCs, self-paced courses, as well as, instructor-led live cohort-based courses. Amongst all the options, I’ve gotten the most value(combination of enjoyment, learning, and community benefits) out of cohort-based courses. Nothing beats the energy of a live class. So, with all the factors combined, that was an obvious choice and made the most sense to me.
All things aside, leading these sessions sparked joy in me and it truly feels amazing to be able to make a fundamental difference in other people’s lives. It is extremely rewarding. I’m not sure if I’d experienced that to the same extent by directly talking into a camera to record myself for a self-paced course. It is the eyes-light-up moment for me — gets me every single time!
If you have questions regarding cohort-based courses, tweet them to me! If you enjoyed reading this, you may be interested in my posts on Substack and LinkedIn.
