The pandemic has thrown the importance of learning, and especially online learning, into high relief.
Going to school is a privilege that, we are now seeing, we can’t take for granted. The issue of equal access to online education for all, is a profound social issue that lies at the heart of building a society that provides equal opportunities for all.
As we’ve explored in the pages of this blog, barriers created by lack of access to technology, or lack of knowledge as to how technology works, are the biggest obstacles to online learning.
The next biggest obstacle is poor learning design… an obstacle that can be overcome using the Course Design Formula®.
Even with good learning design, we also need to take individual learning styles and preferences into account.
As I shared in last week’s blog post, I’m creating a course to help each learner customize their own learning experience in any online course they ever take… including yours.
So those are the obstacles we need to overcome.
But How?
What’s the biggest facilitator of online learning?
What’s the one thing that makes the most important difference
in helping people learn online?
The biggest facilitator of online learning is YOU.
You, the teacher.
Who are you, as a teacher?
What do your interests, training, and life experiences uniquely qualify you to teach to a global audience?
What’s the key transformation you are on this planet to help people achieve?
That’s a really big question,
and the answer might not be what seems immediately obvious,
on the surface.
Take me. I thought I was here to help people create effective and engaging online courses. And I am. That is what I do.
But if you look behind that, look deeper, what do you see?
You see that:
I am on this planet to help you step into YOUR power as a teacher,
and express that power to a global audience.
That’s my unique teaching proposition.
That’s what I’m here to help you do.
Take a minute and think about what YOU are here to do.
Start at the surface level... what’s the clear and obvious end product of the online course or courses you want to create?
Then go deeper. Look behind that surface level.
What is your “WHY” for teaching online?
Finding your why is an important component of mindset change. But...why do we need an attitude adjustment for online learning?
We need it because setting up a successful online teaching business is a marathon, not a sprint.
This is a community of dedicated experts and entrepreneurs, whose motive for teaching online is to make a positive difference in others' lives.
We're neither fooled nor motivated by popular ads that suggest it's possible to make oodles of cash by "teaching online while you sleep", without having to actually do any work or know anything about our subject matter.
In order to fulfill our goals as service-oriented, mission-driven online educators, we've dedicated our lives to learning a LOT about what we are here to teach.
And we know we have to be awake to do it… both literally and figuratively.
NO
YES
The conventional wisdom in the online course marketing space, is that one should sell one’s course before one has built it.
I find that many people in the Learn and Get Smarter community, myself included, don’t find this way of thinking about course creation workable for the courses we want to create.
It certainly makes sense to pilot one’s course and test one’s ideas to be sure there’s a market for them, and to find out who our future course participants are and what they want and need to learn from us.
(I've even created an action plan to help you get started on that process, if you haven't already.)
But the kinds of courses the members of this community are committed to building can’t be put together in a week or two once we’ve seen there’s demand.
If you’re part of this community it’s because you want to share your life’s work with the world in a meaningfully transformative way, and it takes time to build an online course that can truly change peoples' lives.
Selling an online course is hard, there’s no doubt about it.
But creating an online course that provides real value and real results,
is even harder.
And if you don’t have an online course that provides real value and real results,
you won’t have anything you'll be truly excited about selling, to begin with.
Understanding who YOU are as a teacher, mentor, and guide is key to this whole process.
As that teacher, mentor, and guide, you are going to be leading groups of people on a journey from point A to point B.
What’s the journey you want to take people on, and why is it important to you to do that?
And since it's the time of year when we explore things that are on the scary side,
let's remember what's REALLY scary in online courses.... long talking heads videos
that put your students to sleep and turn them into ZOMBIES!
You are invited to continue the conversation in the Facebook group,
and at the Learn and Get Smarter community meeting next Saturday.
I hope you can join in and share your thoughts.
What is YOUR deep purpose for teaching online?
Come to the community meeting
Saturday, October 31st, 2020
9 AM Pacific/ 12 Noon Eastern
