Three Design Lessons from Cohort Based Courses
What CBCs tell us about how to design for ~85% completion & ~90% impact rates
Cohort-Based Courses - also know as CBCs - are increasingly hailed as a victory for online learning.
These small-group online courses, in which instructors and students work together to solve problems, typically achieve completion rates that MOOCs and platforms like Udemy, Teachable and Skillshare could only dream of:
The Times Higher Education reported that Esme Learning’s cohort-based courses deliver 98-100% completion & satisfaction.
Seth Godin’s AltMBA famously sells itself on its 96% completion rate.
Nomadic Learning’s cohort-based programs are reported to deliver 90+% completion rates.
At Section 4, completion rates were above 70% in March 2021 and 88% of students reported that they had applied what they’d learned within three months of completing the course.
The Training Journal reports an overall completion rate for Cohort Based Courses of ~85%.
So, what’s driving this success and what can we learn about how CBCs are designed to improve learner motivation, completion & impact for all online courses?
Spoiler: the Answer Isn’t Zoom
Often it’s assumed that cohort based courses are successful because they take us back to a tried and tested method of learning: real-time interaction among peers, under the responsive guidance of an instructor.
The rise to prominence of CBCs is often seen as happening in parallel with the popularisation of video-conferencing tech like Zoom & Butter which make large group live classes more frictionless & reliable than ever.
While sync time can be a critical part of the CBC experience, it’s not fundamentally the reason that CBCs are effective.
My research & experience as a designer & instructor of CBCs shows that there are three design approaches which explain the success of CBCs and can be applied to the design of any online course.
Design Differentiator #1: Community
Cohort-based learning makes the learning experience collaborative & connected.
If you look at how human beings learn, it’s almost always in a community:
A novice learns by watching a master demonstrate the nuance of their craft.
Groups discuss & explore problems & questions from different perspectives.
Solitary skills like writing music and literature, come to life when people come together to compare their work and give one another feedback.
Design your course to foster community by:
Swapping lecture content for demo content [sync or async]
Taking a project-based approach - i.e. have learners produce, compare & give feedback on one another’s outputs [sync or async]
Design Differentiator #2: Accountability
Cohort-based courses deliberately recreate a number of types of social accountability.
Learners who participate in CBCs:
Are expected to “ship” outputs regularly
Are responsible for supporting & contributing to the overall success of a team
Are often required to share their outputs in a portfolio
Typically complete a final “showcase” project
Design your course to deliver accountability by:
Taking a project-based approach - i.e. have learners produce, compare & give feedback on one another’s outputs [sync or async]
Requiring learners to work in teams and/or support one another [sync or async]
Design Differentiator #3: Transformation
When people talk about online learning, they get get hooked on the importance of content. The true value of a learning experience lies in the experience and its ability to transform people.
Transformational learning only happens deep inside communities of challenge & practice - spaces where we can feel the delight of support and the pain of challenge and accountability.
Transformation happens when we have a visceral experience of pushing and striving against all odds to overcome a difficult challenge together.
This is perhaps where CBCs are most powerful:
They are typically designed as short intensive “bootcamp” style experiences which intentionally push learners to the edge of their capabilities.
They provide a visceral experience which pushes learners to overcome a difficult challenge & do something new and unexpected, together.
Design your course to deliver transformation by:
Designing learning experiences which sit at the very edges of your learners’ ZPD - i.e. experiences which are challenging enough to drive transformation.
Designing for intensity: short, intensive, hands-on experiences with tangible outputs shipped regularly.
Designing for support: provide spaces - e.g. Discord & Slack - for your learners to connect & work through the experience together, both as learners and humans.
Happy Designing 👋
One more thing…. You can apply for a place on the Course Design Accelerator here. It’s a four week, hands-on, cohort-based design sprint where we work together to design or redesign a course of your choice using the science of learning.
If you’re a fan of learning science, you may also want to subscribe to the Learning Science Digest, a monthly summary of peer reviewed research on learning science, translated into course design practices - check it out!