Teaching Mastery Academy for Digital Course Creators

This one game-changing teaching technique that most course creators overlook has the power to change everything with your digital course

• Francesca Hudson: Teaching Mastery Academy • Season 1 • Episode 22

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Today I'm lifting the lid on the secret to creating online courses that truly resonate with your students. 

Discover how guided reflection questions can transform the learning experience by promoting deeper engagement, retention, and practical application. 

Join me, Francesca, as we explore the science behind reflection and its ability to strengthen neural connections, making learning stick. 

Learn the art of strategically incorporating reflection questions into your lessons, whether through carefully timed pauses, personalized feedback, or thoughtfully designed worksheets that go beyond memorization. 

Prepare to revolutionize your teaching toolkit with actionable insights from our discussion. 

We'll uncover how reflection not only bridges the gap between learning and action but also challenges educators to elevate their course design for unforgettable impact. 

Plus, you'll get an exclusive preview of the Teaching Mastery Academy, where you can further hone your skills in course creation. 

As we conclude, I offer you practical strategies ready to be implemented, ensuring your courses leave a lasting impression on your learners. Tune in and embark on this journey to create courses that no student will forget.

Think of your course (or your course idea,) like a luxury car. People won’t pay top dollar unless it’s high quality, delivers an incredible experience, and meets their needs perfectly. Teaching Mastery Academy teaches course creators like you how to ‘build’ that luxury-level course—one that students trust, complete, and rave about, justifying premium pricing every time. Ready to take your expertise and ensure your digital course stands out from the crowd? Premium courses (and premium returns) start with the core teaching fundamentals that all the best course creators instinctively do, but now I'm showing you how! Join the VIP waitlist for Teaching Mastery Academy now! Click here to learn more.

Speaker 1:

Hello, welcome. I am thrilled that you are joining me here today. Welcome back to Teaching Mastery Academy, francesca, here for the next half an hour, and today we're going to be diving into a game changing teaching technique. We're looking at techniques today, just one in particular, but it's a very special one and it's one that most course creators overlook. But once you start using it, you can completely transform your student's learning experience. Do you know what I'm talking about? Okay, I'll tell you. I'm talking about guided reflection questions. Now I know you might be thinking, francesca, I already include review questions in my course. Isn't that the same thing? Nope, not even close. Because while review questions check what your students remember, guided reflection questions help your students to connect, help your students to process and help your students to apply what they've learned on a deeper level. And guess what? When your students reflect, they retain more, they engage more and they actually take action on what you're teaching, which is great, because then you get those course completion rates, then you get those testimonials and those referrals and those repeat sales. Get those testimonials and those referrals and those repeat sales.

Speaker 1:

So in today's episode, we are going to unpack what guided reflection questions are and why they're so powerful. We're going to look at how to strategically use them inside your digital course. We're going to look at the psychology behind why reflection makes learning stick, and I'm going to give you some specific examples of guided reflection questions that you can start using today in your own course. So by the end of this episode, you'll have a new tool in your teaching toolkit that will make your course more engaging, more impactful and more valuable to your students. So grab your notebook, get cozy and let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

All right, so let's start with the basics. What are guided reflection questions? So, guided reflection questions are not simple review or comprehension questions. Okay, these are in a separate category. They're not about recalling facts or definitions. We're not testing our audience. Instead, guided reflection questions are thought-provoking, open-ended questions that help your students process, internalize and apply what they've learned in your lesson or your module or your course, wherever you want to put them in your overall course. So think of them as the missing link between consuming content and actually using it in real life. And they are really effective, and I'll tell you why. So most online courses are designed like this Step one teach the concept.

Speaker 1:

Step two give an exercise or worksheet. It means. Step three, move on to the next topic. Right, does that sound like your course? But what's missing? The processing stage. Here's what happens when you don't build in reflection. Your students watch your content but they don't take the time to connect it to their own experiences. They understand the lesson but they don't apply it to real world scenarios. They don't find the relevance and they forget the material because they never actually deeply engaged with it in the first place.

Speaker 1:

And when you introduce guided reflection questions, you create a moment of pause in your lesson or your module. It's a structured space where your students actually think about what they just learned before moving forward. And I've got a little psychology fact for you, because research shows that reflection improves memory retention by up to 30%, because it strengthens those neural connections in our brain. It's like pressing save on everything that you've just learned. So, for example, let's say you're teaching a course on social media marketing and a standard review question might be what are the key metrics to track on Instagram? But a guided reflection question would sound like this which of these metrics is most relevant to your business right now and why Can you see the difference? The second question forces your students to think critically. Apply the knowledge to their own situation and make meaningful connections. So have a think about what type of questions, if you are even using questions in your course, and see if you can start to bring in some of these guided reflection questions.

Speaker 1:

Now that we know what guided reflection questions are, let's talk about how to actually use them inside your course, right? That's why we're all here. So here are three strategic ways to incorporate them seamlessly, perfectly. And the first way is to embed them directly into your lessons. One of the easiest ways to integrate reflection is to pause mid-lesson and ask a reflection question before continuing. And you don't just want to ask the question, I would suggest maybe asking your students to actually write down their response, because the act of writing really deepens that cognitive processing. So, for example, if you're teaching productivity strategies, instead of just explaining time management techniques, you could pause and ask which of these techniques have you struggled with in the past and why? And the reason why this works is it makes your students stop and engage actively with the lesson, and it also makes it personal. It personalizes the learning experience for each student. And this works really well for Evergreen courses in particular, because if you're not there, teaching the content live and you're not there to read the room as such and see what your students' responses and uptake is, then you have no way of knowing if what you have just taught in that lesson is resonating with your audience. So by having these reflection questions sprinkled into your lessons, it's a really great way to make sure that nobody no one in your class, no one in your community gets left behind.

Speaker 1:

Now the second strategic way that you can incorporate these reflection questions into your course is to use them in worksheets or journals. So, instead of just providing worksheets that summarize content, you could create reflection-based worksheets that make students analyze and apply what they've learned. So, for example, if you're teaching, let's say, business coaching, instead of asking what is a brand mission statement, you could ask what does your current brand mission say about your business and how does it align with your long-term vision? Do you see the shift? Now the question isn't about memorizing, it's about applying and analyzing. You could offer a course reflection journal in your course where students could say answer three to five reflection questions after every module and I know that I use Kajabi and I'm sure that all the other platforms, course platforms would offer something along these lines, where you can even lock the next module until they've answered a question or two and then maybe have access. Lock the next module until they've answered a question or two and then maybe have access to the next module after that. So there's lots of different ways that you can use journal prompts or worksheet prompts.

Speaker 1:

Now, the third way that you can integrate them is by adding reflection inside your community or on coaching calls. So if you have a student community or if you do offer live Q&A calls, guided reflection questions can spark deeper discussions with your community. So, for example, in a Facebook group or, let's say, a private Slack channel, you could post this question. What's one thing you learned this week that surprised you and how are you planning to implement it? Because these types of open-ended questions does two things it's going to keep your community and your students engaged and it's also going to create that peer-to-peer learning opportunities, and that's what we want. We want to encourage our community to be talking amongst each other. We don't want it just to be completely teacher-led, teacher-driven, because then no one will have the confidence or feel like they can spark up a question and have other people jump in to answer it. So, by using reflection, questions within a community is a great way to get everybody else on board, because reflection isn't just personal, it's social too, and when students share their reflections, they learn from each other's experiences, which also builds on the credibility of your course.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to look briefly at why guided reflection questions make learning stick, and there's a little bit of science behind it. Right, it's not just theory or I've tried it, I've thrown something, some spaghetti, at the wall, and this is what sticks. There's actually science behind why reflection questions work really well, and the first reason why is that reflection strengthens memory, and studies show that when people actively reflect on what they've learned, their brains create stronger neural connections, making the information so much easier for them to retrieve later on. Think of it like this without reflection, it's like scribbling notes on a whiteboard that gets erased, but with reflection, it's like throwing knowledge into stone. How powerful is that? So we really want to make sure that we are using reflection questions in our courses so that our students will remember what they've learned in three, six, nine, twelve months time, five years time. So reflection is really important.

Speaker 1:

Reflection also bridges the action gap, and I want you to think for a minute. Have you ever taken a course right, felt super inspired, but never actually used what you learned at the end. That's because most courses fail to bridge the action gap. I call it. The action gap force your students to do is it forces them to slow down rather than just binge watching all the videos and then not applying any of it. Moving on to the next course, they actually have to stop and think about what they've just consumed, how they feel about it, what they've learned, what they need to focus on for the next lesson, and so on. It forces your students to process their own thoughts. So it's about arranging your interpretation of the information that you've just watched or viewed or worked through and how you will apply it to your own situation. And then, obviously, yeah, it forces your students to decide how they're going to apply the knowledge. So how are they going to use it in their real life? For example, in a copywriting course? Instead of ending with here's how to write a great headline, you could add what's one way you can test a new headline this week in your business so they can apply it straight away.

Speaker 1:

A next simple shift will get your students thinking about implementation, which means they're more likely to take action. So, now that we've looked at why guided reflection questions are so powerful, we're going to look at how you can apply them inside your digital course. So I have a challenge for you, a little mini challenge, and the challenge is this I want you to go into your course today after listening to this podcast, or while you're listening to it, and look at your lessons, look at your worksheets or your community prompts, and I want you to ask yourself this question Am I asking deep reflection questions or just review questions? And I want you to find three places where you can add a guided reflection question to make learning more interactive and transformational for your students. Now, if you want to master how to teach in a way that engages, that inspires and gets real results, then you can join me inside Teaching Mastery Academy.

Speaker 1:

The doors aren't open yet, but the VIP waitlist is running and you can join the waitlist in the show notes. I will link it because that way you can be the first to know when the doors open, because we go into so much more in TMA. We go into every single little aspect of course design and course creation and course teaching for you, no matter what your niche is, no matter what your experience is, you are going to come out of it with a premium course, design a premium course that you can really start to command those premium price tags. So that's a brilliant all-in-one course and you will get the bonuses if you sign up now to the VIP. I've got some little VIP bonuses and I can't wait to have you join us.

Speaker 1:

So, my friend, that's it for today. Thanks for hanging out with me. It was a short podcast today, but I like to keep these short and sharp. So you've got something to go away and implement straight away. So go now, apply this strategy and make your course truly unforgettable. I would love to hear how you go on. Drop me a comment and let me know how you found this strategy Until next time. Bye for now.

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Francesca Hudson

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