Course Content Evolution: Adapting and Growing with Your Students

Ready to level up your course content and make a greater impact on your students? Discover the secrets to designing a program that caters to various learning styles, creates a more accessible learning experience, and scales seamlessly with your growth. I'll walk you through practical strategies for enhancing your lessons and keeping your students engaged, from adding slides to videos to utilizing written content.

Ever wondered how to gather valuable data to improve your curriculum and ensure your students achieve their desired outcomes? Listen in as I reveal the importance of regular assessments, creating milestones focused on key building blocks, and adapting your course materials to accommodate growth. Together, we'll explore actionable ways to identify and address common challenges, ensuring a consistent and measurable outcome for all students.

But that's not all! I'll also share my insights on creating a scalable sales system to maximize the lifetime value of your course. Learn how a simple launch system can help you make sales all year long and support your course's continued growth. Don't miss this game-changing episode that could revolutionize the way you approach your course content – and the results you deliver to your students!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Are you consistently and regularly updating your course content as you grow and scale? If not, you definitely need to listen to this episode. Today I'm going to be talking all about how to do this in a practical and tangible way so that your course can scale as you do. So stay tuned. What change becomes possible when 100,000 people are impacted by your work? This question came to me one day and I have been working to find the answer ever since. Hi, i'm Jess and I help online course creators amplify their influence and create a movement with their message. On this podcast, i am sharing the simple strategies and systems to help you impact more people with your programs so you can create quantum growth in your industry. You are listening to the Quantum Course Creator podcast. Hey there, and welcome back to the Quantum Course Creator podcast, jess. Here And today, i'm going to talk all about how to build it so they will come, and what I'm talking about is improving your course curriculum in a way that, as you grow and scale, it continues to support the people who you are enrolling into your program. This is one of the biggest struggles and, like mental hurdles that I see course creators hit when they start to grow and scale is that they created their course originally for the beta test members or the first few people who were in it. But as they enroll new people, they need to add things, change things, change content, and there it really becomes this overwhelming thing a feeling like they need to completely overhaul their program in order to continue to sell it, which, ultimately, if you feel like you need to start completely from scratch, it's going to keep you from selling your program as you go right And as you go through that process. So I want to help you figure out how do you create a system for improving and updating your program so that it can scale, and this is something that is a growing living thing, right? Your course is not something that you build once and then never touch again. And if you're feeling like, wait, it isn't, then this episode is definitely going to help you out, because your course will continue to grow and scale as you grow and scale your course It really is this symbiotic relationship between adding new members into it and then taking that feedback and applying it into the program, and so in this episode, i'm going to talk about three different ways that you can do that and how you can really create systems in your business so that you are continually keeping the pulse on the outcome that people are getting and continuing to improve the programs that it gets even more consistent results. So the first thing that I want to talk about starts with the actual design of the program. Now, i've talked about course design before, but I really do think that this is a key piece of creating something that can scale In terms.

Speaker 1: 2:49

We tend to create course content in the way that we consume course content or in the way that we learn. Right, and you may remember back from school where you learned about the different kinds of learners right. There's auditory learners, people who learn by listening. There's visual learners people who learn by seeing. There's kinesthetic learners and really like. It's far more varied than that, but those are kind of the things that you're maybe aware of. When it comes to different learning styles, ultimately, all people have different learning styles. All people need different sets of tools and things to help them learn something, but there are different things that you can add into your program that will appeal to all learning styles as well as create more accessibility for all of those different learning styles and abilities.

Speaker 1: 3:34

So the first thing is varying the type of lessons that you are creating inside your course. So not all lessons should be face to camera lessons, and I see this a lot in courses that are created in a beta test situation where people are taking it for the first time as they're going through it. We tend to or course creators tend to just hit record and get the content out there, and sure, that's a good way to get the content out of your brain, maybe the first time, but it isn't necessarily the most effective or accessible way for most people to learn, and so if you started here, that's okay. It's really easy to update from there. But not just having face to camera videos is going to be more accessible and help you appeal to that wider learning style audience. So some examples of things that you can do instead include adding slides to your videos. I think this is such a simple way to improve your course content and also tap into those different kinds of learners, and the good news is you don't even have to rerecord it. You can literally just overlay slides over the video that you already have. So it's a really low lift way to improve the accessibility of your program without having to go through all of the trouble of rerecording the entire course.

Speaker 1: 4:49

Now here's a little bit of a controversial one, but I think that is underutilized, and that's having written lessons. Not all of your lessons need to be videos, and I think we get into our head that like, oh, i have to record a video for everything, but honestly, that's not even really true or helpful at all. Right, if you find yourself recording a two minute video, it probably could have been better used as a written lesson, and especially if you're teaching a procedure or telling somebody how to do something, written lessons are a really great way to do this, so don't discount the written lesson. Another good way to do this is with tutorials, right, with like procedures, by giving them like step-by-step ways to do something rather than talking about how to do it. Actually giving them like an SOP, a standard operating procedure that they can then plug into their own system and help them do it. And that, again, does not require a video, though a video could be helpful in some situations, like a demonstration video. So that's different than like a face-to-camera. You are doing it rather than teaching. You are demonstrating the thing. This can be a screen share. This can be a demonstration, like face-to-camera. If you are doing something physical. This can be you like cooking, or you painting, or you with like filming the table below you and you showing them how to do something. These are very impactful styles of lessons that can improve the engagement and the effectiveness of your curriculum.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Also, another highly underutilized piece of curriculum is creating really robust resources. This goes alongside with the written lessons. Not everything needs to be a video And, in fact, most times, the things that get people the best results are resources. Their checklists, their calculators, their to-do lists, their cheat sheets those kinds of things are really impactful in your curriculum, and so if you don't have any of that, if your entire course is just face-to-camera videos with absolutely zero resources, this is a really good place to start to improve your curriculum so that it appeals to a varied audience.

Speaker 1: 6:53

The second thing is to regularly assess your learners for both comprehension and compliance. So what I mean by this is you wanna make sure that they're understanding what they're learning. That's the comprehension part but you also wanna keep them moving forward and keep them getting toward the outcome, and so by compliance, i don't necessarily mean like trying to get your child to do what you say to do That's not the kind of compliance, but like actually implementing the material right, and so that's a really good way to not only gather data, but also improve the learner experience and giving them some kind of tangible thing that you are testing as you're moving along. So one way that you can do this that I love doing this is by creating milestones focused on key building blocks. Oftentimes in your curriculum or I recommend in your curriculum that it scaffolds right You're building skills on top of other skills. You're scaffolding the information so that they are building foundational skills before they're adding on additional skills that are going to ultimately get them the result that they want. This is a really great way to build in milestones. Milestones are these checkpoints that assess whether or not they have adequately built the scaffolding before adding information on top of it, and so, whether you're teaching how to bake sourdough or how to like start a tech company, there are different parts of the process that you can likely imagine need to be created and understood before they can add on additional information. And so, by figuring out what are these hard pieces, these key building blocks that you are building with them through your curriculum, what are different ways that you can measure whether they have achieved that building block, whether they have fully reached comprehension and compliance, that they understand it and they can apply it. And so by creating these milestones, you can then create these checkpoints that help them feel like they are successful and help you track their progress with assessments. And so in this, you're going to have different ways for them to track their success, track their progress and make sure that they are actually understanding and applying the information. And you can really get people to comply to that process by adding incentives, adding celebrations, by really giving people the recognition that they're looking for for achieving that.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Oftentimes, when people do not complete a course, it's because they don't feel like they're making any progress And that progress is not meaningful in getting them the outcome that they desire. And so by creating milestones and checkpoints and celebrating and incentivizing achieving those checkpoints, not only will you boost learner engagement, because people will keep coming back to try to hit that. It will also give you tangible things that you can say, okay, like people are actually hitting these goals and if they're not, what can I learn from this? And this data can be used to improve your course and market your course right. You can say like so and so, hit this milestone in just this amount of time. Right? These are built in testimonials that not only are they submitting their data in order to, like, reach the milestone and it show you that they have achieved the thing to get recognition or incentivization is that a word, to be incentivized? but then you can use that data to understand how people are moving through your program, where people are getting caught up, and then also use it to market your course by showing that people are actually getting tangible results. So this is a really jam-packed thing that I feel like I could have an entire podcast about, but this is something that, if you don't have milestones with different checkpoints, it's a really good way to add it in to design that curriculum for that varied audience and help more types of people get better results.

Speaker 1: 10:41

The second thing that we're going to talk about is creating a schedule and a process for continually adapting and updating your course materials to accommodate the growth Right? I think that this is something that ends up on the back burner. For most people, it's like cleaning out your garage. You're like I'm going to clean up my garage when the weather gets better. I'm going to clean up my garage when I have a free weekend. I'm going to clean up my garage when my community is having a garage sale, i'm going to clean up my garage before the winter. I'm never going to clean out my garage right Because I don't have a schedule or a process. It's the thing that just kind of gets stuck on the back burner and you're like, wow, clean out my garage when I move right, and so it's one of those things that we just keep putting off and putting off because there is no incentive to do it.

Speaker 1: 11:26

And it's easy enough, if we don't have a schedule and a process, to just keep moving forward. But at the end of the day, your students' success is your whole business, right? If you put that at the front of your business and thinking like, how can I get people better results, how can I better utilize those results in my marketing And how can I look at the data around these results to improve my future students' results by improving the curriculum, that whole process becomes a much better mechanism for getting people results, because you're very student result and student success focused And that's a really good place to be right. That's where you're going to get people the best results. And so, by creating a schedule and a process for updating the content and assessing the effectiveness of your content. That's really going to be the best way to actually clean out the garage right, by setting a date and having a process for it.

Speaker 1: 12:18

So the first piece of this is that you should review student progress quarterly and just put this on your to-do list. I don't know if you have quarterly meetings in your business or you're checking your goals quarterly. You should be But every quarter you should be reviewing student progress. You should be looking at how many people enrolled, how many people got the results, how many people hit milestones, how many people got stuck? What does the current engagement rate look like? Are people showing up and taking the course or are they ghosting you? right? These are different things that you can start to look at and identify, like what that data is telling you. Not only re-engaging your students every quarter, because life happens and it's likely that maybe they took it and then something happened and they haven't had the chance to hop back in it, but having that opportunity to really look at it regularly and say, okay, what's going on? What is the lay of the land? Add that to your quarterly KPIs and goals that you're already tracking and this will become something that you just regularly do, and while you're doing that, you can identify different hangups and common questions.

Speaker 1: 13:15

So things that I like to look at is where are people getting stuck? If I'm looking at progress which inside Kajabi, you can see student progress by like the amount of time that they've been a student and like how much they've completed, which is really really valuable information you can see where people getting stuck. If you have 50 people in your course and 25 of them do not make it past module two after like six weeks or whatever, then you know that maybe there's something in module two that is getting people stuck. Maybe the lessons are too long, maybe it's hard to implement, maybe they don't know what to do next. Right, and you can really become curious in this process and say, how can I look at this and improve this place so that it smooths that transition? or maybe I can add a bonus or whatever. And so looking at that and creating those resources that address that hangup or updating the curriculum this is not something that you want to do like a full scale update, but if there's something quick that you're like, oh, i think that if I added this in, it would help them move past that Adding in those little like plugging the leak things is a good thing to do every quarter.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Another thing that I like to do is look at common questions. Your students will tell you where these loopholes are right, where these gaps are that you can then fill. And so, checking your student community, check in your feedback, in the forms that you're getting the trackers, the assessments, that you're checking those milestones, ask for feedback, ask for questions, and then check those and see if there's anything Sorry, john See if there's any common questions that you can go back and answer with a resource or with a lesson or with some kind of clarification on that point. This also, like side note, gives you really good content for podcasts and blogs, right, if you have things that people are constantly asking, it's likely true that, like, other people are asking that too And so, looking at these common questions and seeing how can I address them, what is a resource? I can create a video, i can record something that I can add to this program to or take away. Right, maybe there's a really confusing process that you're like this is not actually necessary, let's take this out, right. What can I add or eliminate to improve the process so that people are continuing to move through the content And then review, like student feedback annual, or review student feedback regularly, but annually update any content that may become updated or need changing.

Speaker 1: 15:38

So this is something that's like more of a full-scale process. For example, a lot of industries are updating quite rapidly right, like in the course creator industry. Right now, everybody's talking about AI, and so in order to remain relevant and effective to your audience, it's important to follow those trends and see, like what are ways that I can support my students with the upcoming information. And so all over your industry or whatever industry you're in, there may be trends and things that are coming up that you can anticipate and improve or add to your program to create a better experience as well as better results. And so in that, like every year, so start making that list of like. Okay, i want to add this in. I need to do this. That's a good time to completely update the program Again, not like whole-scale, like revamp, but like adding in those things right before your next big live launch, and so when you do that next big launch, you can say that there's updated curriculum or you've added certain things, and it really creates this incentive for people who've been on the fence to join in that time because there has been an annual update. So I recommend annually checking everything, making sure that it's all still relevant, accurate and effective and then making any of those changes before or leading up to your annual launch, so that you can create that excitement and anticipation for the new content.

Speaker 1: 16:59

The third way that you can update and adapt your course materials to accommodate a growing scaling course is by clearly defining your quantifiable outcome. So what I mean by this is that in your program you should have some kind of measurable outcome that your students are working toward, and if your course does not have some kind of measurable outcome, you're likely missing not only an opportunity to get people more consistent results, but also like messaging purpose around what they're going to learn inside the program. And you may be thinking, but yes, like, what I teach isn't measurable. I doubt that. I think everything is measurable. We're just not measuring it effectively or we're not looking at it as something that is measurable. And so quantifiable doesn't necessarily have to be about numbers, right, it can. Just. It just means that something is measurable.

Speaker 1: 17:52

And when something is measurable, it can be repeated, it can be systematized, it can become standardized. Right, and that's one of the most important things about a course is that it creates standardized results. That 10 people go through this course and at least eight people get the promised outcome, that there is some kind of standard outcome that people are achieving by going through this curriculum. And if you don't have something that most people are achieving, or if people are getting wildly different results from your curriculum, then you do not have a clearly defined quantifiable outcome that people are working toward. And when you don't have that, your course no longer has like a clear focus that is going to get consistent results and grow as you grow, right, and so really figuring out what is that quantifiable outcome that I can clearly define? So then I can ask like is this going to help them achieve that goal? So here's some examples of quantifiable outcomes. That may or may not be like number based summer, number based summer, not. So an example is like enroll 100 course members. That is a quantifiable outcome.

Speaker 1: 18:57

It can also be save five hours per day or save five hours per week. Five hours a day a lot. Save five hours per week on X task right, it could be anything. Save five hours per week on grocery shopping save five five hours per week on meal planning. Save five hours a week on creating content right, that's a really measurable, quantifiable outcome that people want. They want to save time right, that's a great one. What about sleep seven hours a night? in just four weeks, people who are not sleeping, sleeping seven hours per night will be like ooh, i want to learn how to sleep seven hours per night in just four weeks. That is quantifiable. Not get better sleep, not feel better because you are sleeping better, but what is a quantifiable outcome that you can help people achieve?

Speaker 1: 19:43

Another one that you can do that is more on, like, the subjective side, but by creating measurement systems, which I talked about on a different podcast. I don't know specifically which one, but I've talked about this before. An example of this would be like improve your anxiety by over 50%, and so that seems so smushy. Right, it's very like. Well, how do you know what is 50%? What you do is you create assessments before and after, before and in the middle, that people rank their current situation on a scale of one to five or one to 10, right, if you have everybody rank on a scale of one to 10, how creative do you feel? How often are you creating your using your creative skills right, and then at the end you go through your curriculum, you assess that again. You can say okay, when you join this program, you were feeling like an average of a three on the creative scale. Now you're feeling like an average of a seven. That's an X% increase in creativity.

Speaker 1: 20:39

That is a measurable outcome. That is a quantifiable outcome, even though becoming more creative isn't necessarily something you can measure with numbers, it is if you know how to assess it right. And so when you have this quantifiable outcome, you can create clear standards for hitting that outcome right. Standardization is really key in creating consistent results. And so how will they know that they received that outcome? How will they know that they hit that goal? And this is something that a lot of people are missing in their course, which often leads to people not completing it or not getting great results quote unquote because they don't know that they've hit the goal. And I think that when we can give people a clear, tangible outcome that they desire to hit and then help them figure out did I get it? That's how people get more satisfaction and better results from a program, because they know where they're going and they know how to get there, and so when you create this like standard for hitting it, then you know that, or then they know that they've hit it, and you know that they've hit it and it becomes quantifiable.

Speaker 1: 21:39

So, for example, one of my clients, danny, had a course that taught copywriters, like newer copywriters, how to become a sales page copywriter, and in the process, she determined that having some kind of certification and some kind of like stamp of approval like you now know how to do this was what they needed in order to really feel confident in their skills and get more clients, which is what they really wanted. And so she created a certification process And in that process of helping her do that, we asked things like okay, what do they need to know in order to be a certified copywriter? What do they need to be able to do, what skills do they need to possess And how can you measure those things? What is the process of saying like, okay, i have looked at your test and I can say that you can do these things. How does that become something that you can measure and then certify And you don't have to create a certification necessarily for whatever you're doing, but having some kind of process that you can say, okay, you have achieved this, you have learned this.

Speaker 1: 22:36

So, for example, in my new program, the quantum impact equation when you have helped, when you have enrolled 100 new course members, that is when you have hit the goal, that is, when you have achieved the outcome. That is, the quantifiable outcome is 100 new course members or your first or next 100 course members, and so that is the number, that is the goal, and I have a system for tracking that and checking on the progress of that and making sure that you're like, hitting, doing the things that you need to do in order to get that outcome. But that gives you a really clear like okay, success in this program is 100 people, right, and it gives you a really standardized measurement tool. So, like, everybody is working toward 100 people. And the reason why I chose 100 people just to kind of give you an idea behind the thought process of this is that it was a clearer like, quantifiable outcome that is more standardized, because I was considering doing like, for example, 100k.

Speaker 1: 23:34

A lot of people have like, make 100k with your course, but if your course is $300 or your course is $3,000, you're going to hit those goals in very different time, right, it's a lot harder for somebody with a $300 course to have a $100,000 course than it is for somebody who has a $10,000 course. That's only 10 people, right? And so instead of coming up with a revenue number that is so variable depending on your offer and your audience, 100 people is the same across the board, right? 100 students is the same across the board. It's the same process to get 100 students whether your course is $300 or $10,000. And so that's why I created that one.

Speaker 1: 24:11

So look at your audience. What is a thing that they want that is standard, no matter what or where they're starting from, and that's how you can create this really tangible, quantifiable outcome. And then I want you to be really like, ruthless and lean out your content and curriculum and bonuses that do not specifically lead to that outcome. Again, this is where we end up kitchen sinking, right, where you're just throwing in stuff because you're like I know this and I think that it would be fun for you to know this, and I feel like I need to add more and more and more and more for you to feel like this is worth the money that I'm charging for it. That's oftentimes where it comes from, but, at the end of the day, if it's not actually going to help them achieve that outcome, if it's not going to directly impact getting that quantifiable outcome, it's fluff and it's keeping people from getting results Right. They're getting stuck in the fluff, and so you need to be ruthless and lean out your curriculum by removing things that are not crucial to achieving that result. How do you know if it's crucial? Take it out Right.

Speaker 1: 25:16

Ask yourself if I didn't know how to do bookkeeping, would I still help 100 people with my course? Yes, you don't need to know bookkeeping in order to help 100 people with your course. Right? Is that a skill that somebody who owns a course business should have? Sure, i love that. I actually don't do it myself. I hire it out Like, and maybe that's a good thing, but it is not pertinent to the outcome, so I'm not the one to teach it. That really ultimately comes from this place of like. I don't want to lose anybody. I don't want them to go find somebody else to learn from, so I'm just going to give them everything they could possibly need to learn, and that's a terrible strategy. It is a terrible way to grow an audience and to grow a business.

Speaker 1: 25:50

I've been there Right, i've been the short order course creator where I'm like oh, you have a problem, i can solve it, let me create a course about that, right. And then I found myself creating a course about stuff I was not an expert in And I'm like why am I doing this? Why am I trying to fill every need? There are other people out there that I can recommend, that I can be an affiliate for, that can serve you in a way that is your zone of genius, not mine. So lean it out, cut it out. You don't have to be the expert at literally every part of this process.

Speaker 1: 26:17

So that is what I have for you today to go back through the ways that you can really make sure that you're keeping your course content updated as you grow in scale. The first thing is that designing your curriculum for a varied audience. Not just the face to camera videos, but thinking how can I really make sure that people of all learning types and all backgrounds and abilities can get results with this curriculum? The second thing is create a schedule in a process to update your course content. It doesn't have to be all the time, but by having a schedule and having a process, you'll actually get it done. And third is, clearly define that quantifiable outcome and be ruthless about everything in the program that does not directly lead to that quantifiable outcome.

Speaker 1: 26:56

So if you are a course creator who is looking to scale your online course, i have a new training all about creating a simple, scalable sale system for your signature course called Launch Once Make Sales All Year Long, and I'm so excited to share it with you And now you can check it out at quantumcoursecreatorcom forward slash once O-N-C-E. So if you want to learn how to launch once make sales all year long, which involves scaling, obviously, but also all of the things we talk about today, you definitely want to check it out. Go to quantumcoursecreatorcom forward slash once, and you can check out the link in my bio for all the details. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode and I will see you in my next one.