We’ve all done it. We listen to the webinar. We buy the online course/program. We jump right in. We’re all fired up. We are going to get fit/start the business/organize the house/DO ALL THE THINGS, thanks to the awesome online course we just bought. Then it happens. Maybe it happens a quarter of the way through the course. Maybe it’s three quarters of the way through the course. Or maybe it’s somewhere in between, but at some point, we lose the motivation.
As a student, it’s disappointing when you lose motivation and don’t make the change you hoped to make. For an online course instructor, it’s is downright devastating. Goodbye, future sales! Goodbye, referrals! After all, who is going to tell their friends about your course, let alone buy a future course, when he/she couldn’t even finish the dang thing?
Keeping students motivated from start to finish throughout your course is crucial. Here are three tips to incorporate in your next online course that will help keep students motivated through the end:
- Create a tight knit community.
- Provide feedback and regular check-ins.
- Create incentives
Let’s look at each one a little more in depth:
Create a Tight Knit Community
Did you ever take a class that was absolutely horrible, but had an awesome study group that would go out for pizza or whatever after tests? I did. That group made the entire experience worthwhile.
Now hopefully, your course isn’t horrible. But the point still stands- creating a community within your course can make all the difference. The feeling of isolation is one of the major contributing factors to online course failure. Give your students the connections they crave (even if they claim to be introverts!) and provide them with a community.
I’m going to go into the best way to do this in a future post. (Hint: it’s NOT creating a Facebook group!)
Provide Feedback and Regular Check-ins
There’s this destructive myth out there that if your course is online, all you have to do is give the students the course and your job is done. I guess that’s the way you could do it if you truly ONLY care about making money.
But my guess is that for you, yes, the money is nice, but you actually care about your students and want them to make the change in their life (no matter how big or small) that your course is aiming to help them achieve. Am I right? Then please- do not “ghost” your students and only show up in their inbox when you have something new to sell them.
Personalized feedback on assignments, projects, journal entries (and yes, your course must have such things- I don’t care what you teach) is critical. Students chose YOUR course because of YOU. So give them as much of YOU as you can in the form of feedback and check-ins.
(More on giving them YOU in the future. )
Build in Incentives
When you are working toward a degree, your incentive is your grade. The grade gets you the diploma, which gets you the job (at least in theory). For many of my clients, there are no grades or diplomas, so incentives must be built in to the course at various points.
The incentives can be digital. For example, “When you finish x assignment, send it to me, and I’ll send you my pitch template!”
The incentives can be physical. For example, “After you finish creating your logo, send it to me and I’ll send you a custom phone case with your logo on there!”
Be creative with your incentives! The best incentives are the ones that speak directly to your students, so knowing your students is crucial. Just be sure to add in any costs for the incentives into the cost of your program.
Which of these three ideas can you start incorporating right now? What have you done to help students retain their motivation?