Hello friends,
🙌 Many thanks for reading The Quest, your weekly round-up of tips and insights to help you design and lead exceptional online sessions that your group members will love.❤️
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Let’s dive right in!
I’m addicted to learning.
I literally feel like there isn’t enough time in one lifetime to learn everything I want to learn. Maybe you feel the same way? And as a course creator, educator, and entrepreneur I’ve learned that being a learn-it-all is part of the job.
Online courses ✨done well✨ can deliver a transformative learning experience.
They are evolving from passively watching videos to becoming engaging real-time learning experiences. They teach you skills. And they help you shift your mindset and build new habits.
Taking courses has made me a better course creator.
I learn best practices from other course creators. I’ve grown a global network of collaborators. And being a learner myself helps me empathise with the learner experience in my own courses.
Whether you are a learning addict, course creator, or both you too can benefit from online courses. How? That’s our Quest for this week:🔎
👉 Tina Seelig – Lessons From the Crash Course on Creativity
👉 Wes Kao – In Online Education Content is No Longer King, Cohorts Are
👉10 Online Courses that Have Transformed Me
🔮Tina Seelig – Lessons from the Crash Course on Creativity
I took my very first online course in 2013. It was Stanford University professor Tina Seelig’s Crash Course on Creativity. The course was part of the MOOC movement where top universities offered their courses to a wider public. Mostly for free.
In 1 year, 44,000 people had taken Seelig’s course. The other day I stumbled on a YouTube video where she shared lessons from the course.
Here are three early insights she had about online learning:
👉People learn more when learning is interactive. Most MOOCs showed professors delivering lectures. Seelig made it possible for students to engage with what they were learning by designing a series of challenges. The student response was incredible.
👉The instructor’s role is “Chief Instigator”. Seelig saw her role as the person who gets things going and then “sees what happens”. She knew that by trusting the process her students would get a better experience.
👉Empower an online learning community. Seelig realized that she couldn’t answer 44K students’ questions. So she invited participants to answer each other’s questions drawing on the collective experience of the class to fuel learning.
Sadly I don’t think the course is still available. But you can hear her speaking about the course on this YouTube video👇
👑Wes Kao – In Online Ed, Content Is No Longer King, Cohorts Are
An article by online ed visionary and Maven Co-founder Wes Kao. It’s the best explainer of cohort-based courses and why Kao believes they are the future of online learning.
Here are the headlines:
👉CBC’s focus on active, hands-on learning
👉Live, bi-directional learning leads to more accountability
👉Community building improves learning outcomes through social features
While I am a big fan of cohort-based courses, I believe there is a role for well-designed self-paced courses. What’s your view?
🎓10 Online Courses That Have Inspired and Transformed Me (10 more that are on my wish list…)
A few people have asked me lately about online courses for creators that I would recommend.
In this blog post, I share 10 online courses that have had a profound impact on me as a creator covering online writing, making YouTube Videos, growing a community business, and more. I have also included 10 more that are on my wishlist.
I have had aha! moments sitting in front of my laptop. I’ve grown an international network of collaborators through the people I’ve met. And I’ve learned skills that I use every day in my professional and personal life.
I hope this list helps you unleash your inner creator as well.
Check out the blog post 👉 here.
What courses are on your list?
💌 Thanks for reading The Quest
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Creatively yours,
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