3 powerful ways to help students learn through self-paced courses

The following is a guest post from Teachable creator and coaching expert, Fab Giovanetti. Fab is an award-winning entrepreneur, supporting people making a positive impact through their marketing. She is known as the founder of Creative Impact Group, a collective of hundreds of conscious creatives and experts. She is also the CEO of Alt Marketing School, on a mission to raise a new generation of purpose-driven marketers.  In honor of Teachable’s Creator Month, in which we celebrate and share the expertise of creators everywhere, Fab shares her tips for helping students succeed in self-paced online courses.

Digital courses and online courses have become such a key asset for so many creators, which has helped them scale their efforts. Yet, seven years ago, most people had never heard of digital courses. As I started creating digital products, I produced good courses with good content to attract the masses, as there wasn’t as much market saturation. The knowledge and advice were great—delivery and engagement needed refinement—still, the bar being relatively low helped me make many mistakes. I learned a lot about creating a course, especially a self-paced online course, to stand out from the crowd. 

I was able to go from good to great and have courses students would rave on and recommend to their friends. Referrals and word of mouth are especially important when launching your course to the masses. It was not about adding more content but making the students feel seen and supported, even when creating a self-paced course.

How to craft a unique self-paced course

“I wish this course had more content,” said no student, ever. With market saturation playing a big part in the conversation, a lot of creators are asking themselves the question: “Can I make my course stand out from the crowd?” If you’re choosing to go down the road of a self-paced course over a cohort-based course, you can still help your students learn and implement their learnings. You have to be smart about it. If you want your students to get success and results, you need to make sure that you map an excellent learning path.

What will make a difference is how you can connect with your students on a deeper level. They come to you because they want to learn from you over anybody else. The topic is relevant, but the options are endless. The content is essential, but it’s not the reason why these people are here.

The experience you provide is what attracts people and drives results—even with a self-paced course.

Introduce practice

We need to reiterate the importance of providing meaningful practice and homework throughout your lessons. Especially with content-heavy courses, students will struggle to implement what they are learning after watching your video content. The time commitment is a significant barrier for most students, and one a lot of self-paced courses do not account for.

When it comes to the practice, I recommend making sure that you allow the students to start creating something as they follow along throughout the lesson you’re teaching. Instead of reminding the students of the worksheets at the end of each class, they do their homework throughout. 

You will learn how to take breaks throughout your lessons to allow students to pause and answer questions or fill their workbooks throughout. You may have to get comfortable with silence and make more space for people to reflect on the learnings. Help students learn better through a self-paced course by allowing them to practice throughout the lessons to feel they are implementing this as they go. 

Provide feedback

You might be wanting to create a self-paced course as you are looking to scale your efforts. You don’t want to provide one to one feedback or work in a group coaching environment. Still, this should not take the invaluable aspect of giving feedback to your students out of the equation.

Feedback means getting access to you. I would steer away from reminders via emails or automated check-ins where possible. You want to encourage your students to talk to you and get, obviously, your opinion on their progress. You can even provide them with an incentive. 

I see a lot of talented creators, including members at Creative impact, introducing Q&As with their students. You can do it as a drop-in session you can host fortnightly via Zoom, or you can even direct people, for example, to Instagram and host a special live session. 

The way you provide this access will also depend on the quality of your course and the objectives you have. Another hands-off way to provide feedback could be encouraging students to submit the final project or the final piece of work and get your video feedback. You will make your self-paced course a lot more valuable, and he adds to it an extra element of magic, which otherwise would be lost.