Turning your online course into a cohort-based model can be truly effective.
Why?
Because online course completion rates are falling day by day.
People are losing interest in a mere collection of pre-recorded videos.
Statistics show that self-paced courses may have completion rates as low as 3%, whereas cohort-based courses often achieve completion rates exceeding 90%.
What people truly desire is interaction.
They want to be part of a community where they can engage in activities, form groups, establish connections, and enjoy a sense of accountability.
Nowadays, people are result-oriented.
That’s where cohorts come into play.
Determine the length of the cohort
The first step in this process is to determine the length of your cohort.
How long will your cohort be?
To answer this question, you need to understand the purpose of your cohort.
Why are you creating this cohort?
Is it solely for making money, or is it for achieving a specific outcome for everyone involved?
A quantifiable result is very important. The result that you are promising doesn’t have to be massive.
For example, if you are creating a cohort for freelancers, don’t just promise a goal like: “I will help you earn a thousand dollars per month in the next one month.”
Instead, you can say something like: “At the end of 30 days, you’ll get your first client, or you’ll earn your first dollar from freelancing.”
Based on that transformation you focus, you can determine the length of the cohort.
Turn your course to steps
However, you might still be struggling to determine the actual length of your cohort. To solve this, you need to turn your course into steps.
Ask yourself, “What is the objective that I have promised to my students? What are all the six steps they need to take to achieve these results?”
For example, if the focus is on freelancing, they may need to work on building their portfolio, promoting themselves, creating a proposal, reaching out, finalizing the proposal, and securing the contract.
It’s important to estimate how long it would take for them to complete these six steps; it might take 30 days.
However, in other niches, it might not be possible to achieve the results in 30 days.
For example, when it comes to fitness transformations, it might take 90 days.
So, you need to determine the length of the cohort based on the nature of the objective.
Pick the right platform
And the next one is picking the right platform.
When it comes to hosting the cohorts, you need to pick a community-centric course platform.
You have various online course platforms like Kajabi, Skool, or Circle.
These platforms allow you to create a community, interact with people, and organize events with the help of a community calendar. This ensures that they attend without any missed notifications.
To take it further, platforms like Skool or Kajabi communities give you the ability to gamify the entire process.
You can give points and badges and set up challenges to keep the community involved.
Additionally, some of these platforms like say Kajabi also have assessment features that can help you implement accountability mechanisms in your community.
Cohort session
It’s time for the actual cohort session.
Generally, a single cohort session can last between 90 minutes to two hours.
In every session, for the first 1-hour, you need to:
- Explain the core principles to the participants
- Motivate participants towards achieving their goals
- Establish a weekly accountability section to track progress
- Conduct immediate implementation exercises for practical learning
In the next hour, you need to encourage them to take the next steps for the upcoming week, tying it to a course module they may need to complete.
Ideally, you should hold weekly cohort sessions or perhaps twice a week, depending on your niche.
Have them proactively take steps through accountability mechanisms by creating triads or groups that support and hold each other accountable.
To get more ideas on how to conduct cohort sessions, you can read my blog post on how to conduct online challenges and also create mastermind groups.
Conclusion
When your online course only consists of pre-recorded videos, the completion rates tend to be low.
However, if you convert it to a cohort, not only will people finish your courses, but they will also be taking proactive steps to transform themselves. This further increases your course success rates.
But the thing with cohorts is that they are quite time-intensive, as you need to block your time on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to interact with people.
However, if you love interacting with students and providing value to them, and you are not an introvert, you will absolutely love online cohorts.
