This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Online courses have come a long, long way. The quality, the depth, the breadth of the information that's available these days, it's just incredible. Like you can learn so much, not just learn, but also retain the information. That's always a big problem and online courses have really started to address that. Retain the information, apply it, you know, apply it in different ways.
So one of the more popular practices that we're seeing these days is a cohort-based course. A cohort is just a course that only opens a couple of times a year or whatever the frequency is. The point is everyone taking the course goes through it at the same time, as opposed to just, you know, an on-demand course that you can register for and take at your own pace, thus the term cohort-based. So today's caller is wondering, what are the advantages and disadvantages of structuring a course this way, both for the students and the course creator? I think it's important to think about both groups.
You want to think about the students, the learners, how can you make the best possible course for them? But also if you're the course creator, you need to think about the advantages and disadvantages for yourself. So that's what today's caller wants to know. They actually want to create a cohort-based course like Marie Forleo's B-School. So I'm going to talk about that detailed question and my answer is coming up in just 30 seconds.
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Hi Chris, this is Riley, and I've been following your projects for a couple of years. What are the advantages and disadvantages, if any, of offering an online course only during a certain time of year? I noticed that some online sellers have their educational courses and other products available for purchase at any time. Whereas some others like Marie Forleo only release theirs once or twice a year. Wouldn't someone like Marie make more money if students could register whenever was convenient for them?
Looking forward to hearing what you have to say. Thanks. [Music]
All right, so a cohort course, cohort-based course, has all the students going through it at the same time. And this kind of goes back to traditional education. If you went to high school, college, university, grad school, you typically had a cohort.
You had students that were also going through the course, they registered at the same time you did, they began at the same time, et cetera. And so online education, there are a few different forms. Some courses you can register for today and start taking right away. It doesn't matter when anybody else registers. But a cohort-based course specifically draws upon that more traditional model of everyone going through it and learning simultaneously.
So there could be one or more cohorts a year. Some courses operate every month even. But the key point is that there's some time commitments to it. There's some considerations built into it from the beginning. And there's more than one way to do it, of course.
But we are seeing this more and more, I think, from Marie Forleo's B School, as mentioned, to Seth Godin's Alt MBA, to a course called Build a Second Brain that is now in its 12th or 13th cohort now. It takes in more than 1,000 students every time. A number of other examples I could provide. But why would you do it that way instead of, as our caller says, why not just keep it open all the time? Wouldn't you make more money?
And I guess the first thing I'd say is money is not the only consideration. But advantages and disadvantages. With a cohort-based model, there is momentum and urgency. There is this built-in deadline. If you're considering taking it as a student, you know here is when it starts.
And if you don't register at a certain point, you're going to have to wait six months or a whole year. There's also much more accountability for students. Students are often grouped in smaller communities or smaller groups if there's a large number of students. There's much more of a sense of community. There's a sense of camaraderie.
There's a sense of, hey, we're all taking this thing together. So that's very powerful. And educationally, there's some argument that students are actually going to retain a lot more information when they go through a course this way. So those are some of those advantages. They are not small.
Disadvantages, well, your course doesn't earn on a regular basis, just like Riley said. The question, though, is would courses like B School really bring in millions of dollars a year, like they do now, if they were open all the time? It's hard to know for sure. But I would say the calendar-based scheduling and the cohort process is really integral to the whole design. It's a key part of the experience.
So I think for the right course, this model works very well. You always want to think about what's best for you, but I am, in general, a fan of cohort-based courses. I'm starting to think about working that way myself, so we'll see how that goes. Listeners, if you've got a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Let me know what you're working on, what kind of project you want to develop.
Hopefully, we can help you out a bit. We'll continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from listeners as they launch their projects. Wherever you are in the world, whatever you're up to, I'm cheering you on. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
