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Guide 𧡠How I run Online Workshops (an alternative to online courses) TL;DR = βπ long one-off event ββοΈ choose-your-own adventure workbook βπ¬ chat-based coaching βπΊ video call for co-presence βπ€ optional advance content βπ‘ intake form for steering βπΈ pay-what-you-want
Context: with a small team, I've been running online workshops a couple times a year (30 sessions total) since 2017, and we're about to clear $100k revenue. The GCI is about life-effectiveness, but the event format could be used for many other topics! https://t.co/QyVa4ZneFI
π Long One-off Event Why? Self-paced courses end up never-paced courses, and cohort courses are easy to fall behind in or feel burdened by. Instead, get some huge progress made in a single 5h session! Participants only have to make it to one date. https://t.co/MR4NaiiY7c
The number of online courses I have signed up for & not actually completed is absurdly high. Especially self-paced ones but even like⦠I dropped out of @fortelabs' BASB halfway. Watched a lil of @nateliason Roam course. Early backer on @m_ashcroft's AT course, haven't touched.
π Long One-off Event 2 When? Pick a weekend and host 2 events at 2 different times if you want to suit a global audience. We usually do North American Saturday night (suits East Asia & Oceania) & Sunday morning (suits Europe & Africa). Can do a few weekends in a row if demand.
π Long One-off Event 3 How? For a 5h session, it's good to encourage folks to take breaks. We do set-up & wrap-up in the first & last half-hour, and the remaining 4h is divided into 8 half-hour blocks which we do as 25min pomodoros with 5min breaks.
π Long One-off Event 4 During the breaks, I encourage people to stretch their legs & look away from their screens. We also note that while usually you wouldn't chat during a pomodoro, the coaching channels are totally great for that purpose.
βοΈ Choose-your-own-Adventure Workbook Why? Your learners are all starting at different places and may have different goals and different struggles. This is very obvious in the context of a goal-setting workshop like GCI, but it applies to some degree with any course.
βοΈ Choose-your-own-Adventure Workbook 2 How? If you're thinking of running an online course/workshop, presumably you've got something to teach. You may even already have your own teachable, YouTube series, or other writing people could apply to their lives. Host that somewhere.
βοΈ Choose-your-own-Adventure Workbook 3 Where? We've got a simple password-protected wordpress site. Easy for multiple editors to access & update. The videos are hosted on gdrive & embedded. Could also use a teachable or other platform.
βοΈ Choose-your-own-Adventure Workbook 4 What? Have a few default recommended content+exercise combos. Some people like video but others don't, so offer both where possible. Aim for exercises that can be usefully completed in 30mins, but with more value if someone spends longer.
βοΈ Choose-your-own-Adventure Workbook 5 What else? Have a solid high-level framework & Table of Contents that shows how it all fits together and guides people on how to go about choosing what to look at. (More on "how to steer" below)
βοΈ Choose-your-own-Adventure Workbook 6 Key: CYOA is different from self-paced in that there's no single linear path. Some people might spend the whole session on exercise 1, start partway through, or even spend most of the time talking with coaches about a unique situation.
π¬ Chat-based Coaching Why? People get stuck. They may have Qs that need answers; they may just need encouragement. Chat scales & parallelizes unlike video/audio. For goals workshop, coaching is often psychological, but for eg photoshop workshop, it might be more technical.
π¬ Chat-based Coaching 2 How? Set up a new slack workspace for each 5h session. Add custom emoji β€οΈβπ₯ Public channels: #β_general #β_intros #β_links #β_techsupport As each participant joins, make new locked channel: πname_coaching & add {them + all coaches}
π¬ Chat-based Coaching 3 Why coaching, not open discussion? Not just privacy. It'sβ¦ many people are helpful to a fault π Given this choice: ββ’ face my own challenges ββ’ help fellow participants β¦guess what they'll focus on? Tell those folks "you can coach next session!"
π¬ Chat-based Coaching 4 Indeed, some coaches are past participants (in addition to friends etc). Our coaches are all volunteers, since it's fun & low-stakesβjust show up & say stuff & ask Qs. They also may get blog post ideas, & find ongoing clients (if they're looking).
π¬ Chat-based Coaching 5 We aim for 1 coach for every 4-7 participants, but it's pretty flexible. Fewer coaches just requires more focus on workbook. Above ~50 participants it's hard to coordinate coaches between all 50 channels though! We do have a private π_coaches channel.
π¬ Chat-based Coaching 6 Other tips for coaches to coordinate 50 parallel channels: ββοΈ star channels you're active in βπ turn off notifications except @-mentions & get participants to @-mention A LOT βπ½ tag other coaches in βπ° practice: start with ~20 people then scale
(aside: I *think* with software that was actually optimized for this precise purpose, we could reach like 100 participants without losing track of people, but tbh I'm still not sure that'd actually be better than just having 2 sessionsβwould love to have that software tho!)
πΊ Video Call for Co-Presence Why? Just having a chat system, especially without open discussions, people wouldn't get the chance to see each other, and it would be harder to keep people in sync.
πΊ Video Call for Co-Presence 2 How? Zoom or similar. Lately we've explored having a few breakout rooms, whether for coaches to do short out-loud coaching sessions in, or for me to run a 7min workout during the long break. Turn on "let participants choose room".
πΊ Video Call for Co-Presence 3 What else? Pretty straightforward. We like to have the coaches introduce themselves on zoom at the start & give a 1-2 sentence intro to their interests/specialties. (We also have coach bios listed on the website and in the #β_intros channel.)
π€ Optional Advance Content Since we start selling tickets a month before the sessions, it's good to give people something right away. Plus some of our exercises benefit from not just being done in one block. https://t.co/WEA8M6Vcmz
Even the pre-event exercises are quite compatible with people not doing it all at once but kind of opening it up periodically randomly. π Dream List benefits from background rumination & reverie. π Time Audit benefits from logging over the course of a week.
π€ Optional Advance Content 2 One way we encourage people to work on the advance content proactively is saying that they can get access to the rest of the course content before the event *only by* emailing us saying they've finished the advance content!
π€ Optional Advance Content 3 Important to have this be optionalβcan get tons from event regardless. We say > "It's not arbitrary homework designed to waste your time. If you feel like this is going to be a waste of time, then change the instructions until it feels worthwhile."
π‘ Intake Form for Steering At the same time as the advance content, we also encourage folks to fill out our intake form. It takes <5 minutes and gives us extremely useful context on what to encourage our participants to focus on during the session.
π‘ Intake Form for Steering 2 The two key Qs, which you can copy: > If there is only a single thing you get from this, what do you want that one thing to be? > If you imagine that you're at the end of the event and you're feeling disappointedβ¦ what would the reason(s) be?
π‘ Intake Form for Steering 3 Then, the magic happens at the start of the event, when we have coaches go through the form responses and *paste in participant answers to these questions*, so we're starting the conversation with the person's priorities top of mind.
π‘ Intake Form for Steering 4 Sometimes this we direct them at a particular video or exercise based on their main challenge. Another common "why I'd be disappointed" is "already knew all this", in which case we encourage these veterans to bring it on & talk directly with us.
π‘ Intake Form for Steering 5 Intake form also has a 1-10 scale for each of our 12 submodules, to gauge which ones people already grok. eg G1) I have a hard time knowing what I want or envisioning goals for the future that motivate me It can help see us spot bottlenecks.
πΈ Pay-What-You-Want High-level: β’ two payment options: ββ£ $275 up front ββ£ $25+PWYW (most pick this) β’ $25 deposit ensures people aren't never-willing-to-pay-for-anything ppl (& serious about coming) β’ some no-shows but π€·ββοΈ β’ frame: "flexible pricing", not "donation" https://t.co/QKrSV0EJTF
πΈ Pay-What-You-Want 2 At the end I speak out loud for a few mins about why we do PWYW, and encourage people to contribute whatever feels right based on: ββ£ value they got ββ£ their budget ββ£ their desire to support our work & other people with less money being able to attend
πΈ Pay-What-You-Want 3 I thank people by name as they contribute. We only recently added that part, and it increased contributions significantly! Social proof & appreciation matter to people. (HT @AbhayPrasanna for this idea, inspired by twitch & other streaming contexts)
This has been a long thread, & I still didn't cover *quite* everything (eg the ticket sales & pwyw payment pages which for us are custom code on the Complice site) But this is basically a sufficient playbook for someone to run this kind of workshop based on their own material.
If you're interested in running such a workshop, I'm available for consulting (so is @SarahAMcManus, or maybe other GCI teammates) to help you get things off the ground. If you're interested in building a *software platform* for this sort of thing, definitely get in touch too π
And if you want to come to the events we're running next weekend, there are still some spots! π (Would probably be a good first step if considering hosting your own similar event, to get a feel for it. Could even talk about those plans, there!) https://t.co/pERI2RuLgI
(If you have people who've gone through your course in a self-paced way already, they could make great coaches, or maybe call them "mentors". Even people who are only one step ahead of the other participants can have useful stuff to say.)
btw, no need for thread-reader: I turned this thread into a blog post already! https://t.co/qUduQVXVUn