What defines a successful online course Student Success with Greg Smith

let's talk about what defines a
successful online course there's a lot
of talk about how you can be successful
with online courses how you can create
and market and sell your own online
courses but what does it really mean to
have a successful online course I've
seen so many metrics of measuring this
and we have a ton of data across over 10
million students moving through online
courses to look at all of these metrics
and I see people tracking things like
the student reviews they get the number
of students the amount of revenue they
generate the thank-yous they get from
students the results that they get from
students a big one is actually
completion tracking things like Net
Promoter Score or NPS I've seen all of
these and so many more used to track the
success of a course and I'd actually
suggest to you that none of those are
really the right metrics to be tracking
around the success of your online course
it's helpful to look at them they can be
very informative and they can help drive
to great success for your online course
but there's something much more powerful
and if you focus on this you're gonna
have a much more successful course Plus
deliver way better results for your
students before we get into the specific
ways where you should be focusing on
success and the goal you should be
setting for your online courses let's
look at it what it looks like when this
is not done well so I would argue that
for a successful course your goals in
creating the course and in running the
course and helping your students should
be very closely aligned with those of
your students and the closer align those
goals are or that one big Norstar goal
is the more likely for you to be
successful and your student to be
successful in your online course but if
we have those goals diverge then things
start to break down so let's take a look
for an example and this can be a typical
one where as a course creator our goal
is in driving revenue we want sales we
want to sell the course or we want to
generate leads and then lead them into
some other funnel or opportunity or or
becoming a customer or maintaining a
customer relationship but we're really
driving to revenue and then we have a
student where their goal is really
something about learning or getting some
results in that case the natural
progression is you start to do things
where you're acting to drive revenue as
your course grader so you're doing your
your
focused on your landing pages your email
campaigns ads converting people getting
them in and once they get into the
course often a lot of the focus fades
because you've achieved your goal once
you've achieved a goal you're on to
getting the next student in generating
the next piece of revenue or maybe even
turning that student into another
opportunity where they're generating
more revenue that's in the extreme case
where you're heavily focused on
generating revenue only from your course
as your primary goal meanwhile your
student is focused on learning and if
all your effort is going in here you may
be neglecting them on the learning side
not delivering as much results and and
they're not achieving that the results
that they wanted now where that ends up
is initially you may actually make more
sales and you can see some big launches
this way some big wins but then if you
don't have a similar goal to your
students and they're not well aligned
then your students stall to falter on
their path to their goal and this is
actually extremely common where we see
extremely low completion rates students
not getting a lot of value out of a
course students not engaging with it not
coming back and what that translates to
is actually a drop in your revenues
because you'll see refund your requests
you'll see a lack of these people coming
back to subscribe or take courses from
you or purchase from you in the future
you'll see a limited amount of
testimonials or even negative
testimonials and they're not telling
their friends to come and take it so you
may not even be aware of all the revenue
you're missing out on by not aligning
your goals with your students when your
goal is primarily about revenue so if we
can do the much better scenario and
bring those calls clearly into alignment
you'll have better results for you
better for your student the metric that
I'm tracking in my courses is really
around the results for the students so
this is not completion rates a lot of
people are tracking completion rates and
courses that's one metric on the way to
this but it's not the end-all be-all
give you a good example I took a course
recently in how to edit video with a
particular piece of software and I
wanted to edit some family video that I
had shot and then produce a video and
then put it out on my sorta family
social channels and share it with my
family on Facebook so I went and signed
up for a course on how to edit video and
my completion rate in the course was
about 30% when I was done so I poked
around I grabbed some different lessons
I learned all the techniques I needed in
an editing video and I got my
edited and I got it produced and I got
to publish and I shared it with the
family and everybody loved it that's a
win for me I'm done with the course I
don't need to go back in I might one day
but right now I have what I need from it
it's a win the course was a win I
achieved my goal I got the result that I
wanted out of that course but if you go
look at completion rates it's a total
fail for me so instead of just focusing
on completion rates what I would focus
on is what is the goal or objective that
the students set for themselves when
they signed up or are engaged in your
course when a student or any of us go in
to learn something or sign up for a
program where they're gonna learn
something whether it's an online course
or a full four-year degree at university
we have some goal in mind some way we
want our life to be different some
transformation we want to go through
could be a raise or a new career or a
new skill set or accomplishing a very
specific task in renovating my kitchen
or editing this video the more you can
align your objectives and your goals
with that specific objective of your
students and drive everything you do to
achieving that the more successful
you're going to be as a course grader in
terms of having a better course
resulting in better results for your
students but that will also drive all of
the other wonderful things that can come
from online courses like revenue and
engaging and helping more students plus
it feels really good to have online
courses that actually drive result for
your student the people I see who are
not long-term successful where courses
some of them will have initial revenues
but not stick around for the long term
and engage with it for the long term are
the ones where these goals start to
diverge so the more you're closer in and
aligned in your goals with your students
the better off you're going to be you'll
stick around for a long term because you
will actually drive more revenue and
other wins for your business as a course
crater but you're also gonna feel a lot
better in that you're gonna make a
difference in people's lives you're
actually going to achieve transformation
for them they will achieve their
objectives you'll feel great about what
you're doing they'll feel great about
working with you and they'll come back
and send all their friends to work with
you again in the future so as much as
possible you want to be a successful
course creator you want to create and
sell amazing online courses and have
success in that align your goals with
your students and specifically focus on
what result what transformation what
goal did they set for themselves when
they sign up for your course and in fact
if you're using think epic which I do
my online courses you can actually turn
on the ability automatically to be
asking your students at the start and
again checking in throughout and at the
end how much progress they're making
towards their specific goal as opposed
to progress just in the course so check
it out if you want to learn more about
online creating online courses check out
think iveco more the link below lots of
help we can provide you there in
becoming a better online course creator
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