The Power of an Aligned Student Experience Design

I want to talk about a topic that the online course community often tiptoes around, but has come to my attention as a coach and an instructional designer with 10 years in the education sector, and 4 in self-development. What I’m about to say might come off as a little abrasive, but my intention is to simply open up a discussion and offer another perspective. 

Before I get into it, I want to make it very clear who I’m talking to. This article isn’t for you if all you care about is making a quick buck, or building a “set it and forget it” source of passive income.  

What I’m about to say is relevant to established course creators in the transformational industry who not only have a validated product and community of students, but who truly care about transforming lives.

What I see in the course creator community is a huge potential wasted. Instead of cultivating the power of referrals, increasing the lifetime value of your students, and getting testimonials that literally sell the course for you, most creators focus only on short-term marketing efforts. 

Simply put, the majority of course creators put more time and money into marketing their course than designing a course that is truly aligned with their students’ real needs.

It’s when you design your course with intention that the course itself becomes your most powerful marketing tool. Your students become your ambassadors, and you cultivate organic growth that keeps your income stable for years. 

And most importantly, when you focus on designing your course you are creating an experience that has a lasting impact on your students.  

When I talk about the issue of students not engaging with or completing courses, I am met with huge resistance in course creator communities. Many coaches and course creators will justify, normalize and argue that low engagement/completion rates are inevitable, because they assume:

1. Students who do not engage with or complete the course are simply not committed. 
2. Completion rates and engagement mean nothing about the transformative properties of the course.
3. Once the course creator has provided the promised information, it’s not their responsibility whether or not students take action. 

At times I’m made to feel like a heretic for simply mentioning the incredible value of visionary instructional design and aligned student experience design – Transforming your students’ lives by supporting them in taking action. 

The truth is, course creators need to take responsibility for the amount of effort they invest into helping their students succeed. This doesn’t mean hand-holding or feeling responsible for every student outcome. 

I want to take another look at the assumptions course creators make for why student success has nothing to do with them, and show why those assumptions are incorrect: 

1. Assumption: Students who do not engage with or complete the course are simply not committed.

Truth: There can be a multitude of reasons why students don’t take action. It can be either their level of commitment or some sort of life change that is holding them back. And it’s true, there’s nothing you can do about that. But most people who pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for a course WANT to make changes in their lives. They are ready to make the change. So what can YOU do to help them take action? Here are some actual reasons your students aren’t taking action, and what you can do to change:

• We take actions that are in alignment with our belief systems. Are the actions you are asking of your students aligned with their beliefs? If not, you have the opportunity to shift their beliefs. That’s why mindset is such an important part of any course. 
• Students are not engaging with your content because it’s boring, repetitive, or not how their brain learns. Are you truly presenting new information? How can you present your content in an engaging way? How can you present your content in multiple media (ie written AND video) to support different learning preferences?
• They can’t take action because they are unable to follow the course because it’s not logically structured. It’s so, SO important to organize your course in a logical manner, and make sure all of the information builds off of previous information.  
• They are challenged by the material and not appropriately supported. What can you do to support your students through challenging material? Can you give more examples, offer to review their actions (ie worksheets), or give emotional support via coaching? Is the depth of teaching appropriate?
• They are overwhelmed by the information and are experiencing action paralysis. Is what you are teaching relevant and actionable? 

2. Assumption: Completion rates and student engagement rates don’t represent the transformation your students are undergoing.

Truth: I do actually agree with this statement. Some students come into the course with previous information, and only need 2 modules to experience transformation. The thing is, this won’t be the case for all of your students. I interviewed over a dozen of exceptional course creators, and their completion rates are at around 80/90%. Even more impressive, their past students ask them for more content and are eager to be program ambassadors (even without affiliate benefits), simply because they love the course so much. That is the kind of impact you are missing out on when you don’t design a course with transformative power throughout. 

It’s true that your completion and engagement rates are just data and should be only cautiously interpreted, but it is also true that in general the more engaged your students are, the higher the completion rates, and the more likely they are to take action and see results. We should be striving for better than 10-40% average completion rates!  

3. Assumption: Once you provide the content promised, the actual transformation is out of your hands. 

Truth: In marketing we are taught to build our marketing around the promise of transformation, so most people do. The question is whether your course is actually capable of creating this transformation for MOST students who engage with your course. If it only creates transformation for SOME, then you are reneging on your promise. You need to ask yourself why the majority of your students are not seeing a transformation. Is it because the few that do get results were already on the level they needed to be, and just needed the course as a nudge in the right direction? That’s not transformation. You may need to go beyond that level, or be more intentional with how you market your course. 

When I did my MSc in psychology, one of the most fascinating topics I learned was the question: What makes a person take the action to change their life vs a person who doesn’t? 

While the answer to that question is still being studied by psychologists, it’s clear that more information or a “how to” roadmap is NOT what drives a person to take action. Instead of information, a belief-led internal motivation is what makes people take action. It’s the belief that taking a particular action is logical and won’t trigger a fear response that helps people take action.  

So what does this mean for course creation? Information-dumping is NOT enough to get your students to take action and see transformation. You can create the most amazing business course, but if your student has the belief that they will fail then they will not take action, because they are afraid…

This is some next level stuff, and I know that most people are not psychologists. So how can you implement this insight from psychology? 

Some of the most successful courses out there always have modules around mindset and belief systems. That business course you’re creating? You need to put your students in the right mindset that they WILL succeed, so they are not paralyzed by fear. 

In this information era that we live in, students can find all the information they want, for free. They can watch a series of YouTube videos or sign up for dozens of free webinars and learn all the information they need to know about a topic. 

The true future of Online Learning is about creating transformations. It’s about designing truly transformational courses and programs that align with your students’ beliefs (or shifting their beliefs) to create real change. If you want to stand out as a thought leader in your industry, change lives, grow your platform, and develop more effective marketing efforts, then the way forward is to design your courses for student transformation.