Home Hybrid Cohort-Based Course: How to Make Your Course Scalable?
Hybrid Cohort-Based Course: How to Make Your Course Scalable?
Cohort-based courses are hard to scale. Let's explore another way to scale it using the hybrid cohort-based course model.
Cohort-based courses get their fame during the pandemic when education shifted to online learning. According to research, it works well compared to MOOCs. However, this model is hard to scale. Fortunately, there's another way to make it scalable—it's through a hybrid cohort-based course model.
The cohort-based course (CBC) or cohort-based learning (CBL) format is here to stay. But due to its hands-on characteristics, scaling your course and eLearning business won't be that easy. Yes, it is transformative. But keep in mind that digital products should be scalable and optimized.
Today, let's explore what are the benefits and challenges of a CBC, what 'hybrid' means, and how you can scale your course through the hybrid cohort-based course model.
I couldn't point this out enough. Cohort-based courses can transform your students from 0-1 if you design your course curriculum correctly. CBCs allow students to collaborate, discuss, and learn from each other which makes CBC the best for online learning. Experts say it's the future of online education. It's congruent to the Education 3.0 formula. There's no better way to learn online other than using a cohort-based learning model.
Cohort-based courses are both profitable and marketable. As a course creator or a Bootcamp founder, you can charge your CBCs more than you can charge a MOOC. Why? Because of its hands-on learning activities and a collaborative learning experience with peers. The higher the transformation, the more profit you will gain.
If you sell a MOOC for $15 in a popular marketplace, you can sell your cohort-based course 10x more than your MOOC. Normally, a cohort-based course price varies between $100 to $5000 depending on the topic, duration, format, and how many positive stories you have.
Cohort-based courses are also easy to sell and start. You may start with 20-30 students in your first cohort. Experiment with them. Ask for feedback. Then reiterate. After the first cohort, you can gather testimonials and get referrals from your students. If they like your course, they will surely tell it to everyone they know. All you need is to set up your second cohort.
Live learning creates too much hands-on work for instructors. Imagine, you are a part-time professor and you have a full-time job. You get to prepare the lesson plan, teach for 5-10hrs per week, check assignments, plan a social activity, etc. This sounds super busy, right?
In CBCs with pure synchronous live sessions, instructors need to put more time. This is not just in live classes but also with offline work like community building, class reviews, networking activities, etc.
Ideally, the number of students in a cohort should be 20 to 50. More than 50 is too hard to handle if you're running everything synchronously. That's why most cohort-based courses aren't scalable. It's hard to scale if you are only playing with synchronous or live sessions.
These are just some of the cons which prohibit you to scale. That's why a new model for this kind of course model is what we recommend.
Hybrid means "having or produced by a combination of two or more distinct elements."
A cohort-based course is where students learn a specific topic together in live sessions, led by an instructor. Check out this Complete Guide 2022 on how you can start your own cohort-based course.
While some called it semi-synchronous collaborative learning, we call it a hybrid cohort-based course. In the simplest term, it's a cohort-based course that is mixed up with asynchronous and synchronous sessions. Due to some of the cohort-based courses' disadvantages, using a hybrid model works well to make it scalable.
However, in the world of L&D, the hybrid doesn't only pertain to asynchronous and synchronous approaches. They can also be...
In this article, we're going to focus on how to use the hybrid cohort-based course model by mixing up asynchronous and synchronous learning.
👉🏽 Learn how to create a cohort-based course and scale it from 50 to 500.
Optimizing your course equates to scalability. Let's list down actionable tips on how you can make your courses scalable using this so-called hybrid cohort-based course model.
A successful and scalable cohort-based course is not just mixing up these two formats together. There's a formula that can work well for your courses or eLearning business.
70% asynchronous learning (self-paced learning). As a course creator, educator, or corporate trainer--I bet you already have content materials that are ready to be consumed by your students. Whether this content is from your MOOCs, lesson plans, training materials, etc in different formats (SCORM file, video, PDF, texts, slides, etc.,)
The good news is you can reuse them for your hybrid cohort-based course model. In this way, you can compose 70% of the course with content you already have by creating the curriculum quickly and 30% by adding live sessions.
In addition, here are tips to make asynchronous learning more engaging:
30% synchronous learning (live sessions). A cohort-based course's secret formula is the live and collaborative sessions during classes. Self-paced courses such as MOOCs failed to work well because of the lack of collaborative learning. Designing your course with 30% live classes can boost the learner experience. Mixing these two up will likely balance your course curriculum.
Here are tips on how to make your synchronous sessions engaging:
Now that you have your reusable content in your hands, plus you have identified your course duration and schedule--the next thing to do is to put these in one place.
Some course creators, bootcamp founders, and corporate trainers still use different platforms in their courses despite the thousands of learning platforms available in the web today. If you are one of them, I highly suggest to use an all-in-one platform and take advantage of these unbelievable features they offer.
Why? Because creating courses and training online should be scalable. You can do this through optimization and automation. After designing your course in 70-30 hybrid cohort-based course model, look for Learning Management System (LMS) that allows you to use these specific features:
One of the best LMSs that cover these features is Teachfloor. We are popular in helping course creators put up their online live academies using the hybrid cohort-based model. It works well for our customers whether they are solopreneurs and consultants who run their own courses, corporate trainers who run employee training, and bootcamp founders who run an edTech business.
Try it for free and let us know how it works for you! Tag us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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