Hello Friends,
Greetings from Barcelona ☀️where I have officially wrapped up cohort 1 of Breakthrough Facilitation. The learning is still sinking in. One thing I do know is that it takes a community of course creators to launch a cohort-based course. More on that below👇
🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest. Special shout out to Gillian in Kingston, Brendon in Turin, Georgia in Cape Town, Michaele and Barry in Bracebridge, and Connie in Toronto.
If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our deep dive into all things creativity, facilitation, and learning.
You can catch up on the last edition 💫7 Secret Zoom Hacks That You Need to Know and all past editions here.
Are cohort-based courses the next phase of online education?
What can they teach us about the future of learning?
These are questions I have been exploring over the past year.
What do you need to know about cohort-based courses?
That’s our quest for this week🔎
👉The 10 best pieces of advice I received for launching a cohort-based course
👉10 Gold Standards of Premier Cohort-Based Learning by Alexandra Allen
👉5 cohort-course creators to follow
👉 And more…
Let’s dive right in!
👋It was time to say goodbye.
After an intense 4-week journey, with 22 participants from 10 countries, we had come to the close of Breakthrough Facilitation cohort 1.
Starting in Manila and ending in Hawaii, participants gave a one-word check-out, waved, and said goodbye.
And with a click on “end meeting for all,” my first cohort-based course came to an end.
It was a learning odyssey that started a year ago and culminated in an emotional closing session last week.
It was one of the most profound learning experiences that I have had in my professional life to date.
I am still processing the millions of lessons I learned.
But what became immediately clear is that it takes a community of course creators to launch the first cohort.
I benefitted from advice, and inspiration from countless other course creators several steps ahead of me.
People who generously gave advice, shared their experiences, and expertise to set me up for success.
The only way I know how to pay their generosity back is to pay their generosity forward.
Here are the 10 best pieces of advice that I received from these amazing course creators:
Read the whole thread on Twitter👇
🌟10 Golden Standards of Primier Cohort-based Learning
A brilliant article by Alexandra Allen that distills down the best practices of really great cohort-based courses based on her experience in Write of Passage.
Write of Passage has honed the emerging art and science of how to deliver a complete and powerful learning experience. 100% online.
In Allen’s words “Write of Passage is a life-changing experience and an education rolled into one.”
There are important insights in Allen’s article for learning that go beyond cohort-based courses.
Read the full article 👉 here.
Thanks to Julia Saxena for sharing this link in her fabulous newsletter.
💪5 people to follow if you want to learn more about CBCs
Andrew Barry – Superstar teacher and course creator. Check out his Curious Lion website and newsletter
Julia Saxena – If you have a question about Cohort-based courses I guarantee that Julia has written about it on her blog or in her newsletter.
Merott – Check out his Course Creators Weekly newsletter for excellent emoji-filled curation of cohort-based course articles.
Wes Kao – Co-founder of CBC platform Maven and CBC thought-leader. Check out her newsletter.
Tiago Forte – Founder of Forte Labs, course creator of one of the most successful CBCs out there called Building a Second Brain. He may one day be known one day as the grandfather of CBCs (although I am not sure if he has even turned 30 yet).
Who else do you learn from?
💡Quote of the week
“A man’s [person’s] mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, American Jurist
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Creatively yours,
