Disclaimer: This email is a bit different - it started off as a simple announcement of my course... but then morphed into something on the lines of 'A Brief History of Online Learning: My Perspective'. :)

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Fair warning: It may not be everyone's cup of tea. But I thought I'll still share it so that you get to see what is the thinking process behind my decisions. I've also included those of you who had opted out of updates about my Data Storytelling course - since it has some content samples which you may be interested in.

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With that, let's dive in.

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Folks, I am excited to announce the launch of the self-paced version of my e-Course, 'Effective Storytelling with Data' on 15th-October 2021.

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In this email, I've included a sneak peek of the course content.

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But before that, some context.

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I made some promises which I couldn't keep

Let's say you've been reading my posts for some time now and want to learn the skill of Data Storytelling.

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Perhaps you would like to improve the quality of discussions at your workplace. Perhaps you could do a better job of presenting complex data. Or perhaps you just feel that the quality of your storytelling should match the quality of your work.

You are sold on learning this skill - and perhaps you have even expressed interest on the landing page of my cohort-based course, 'Effective Storytelling with Data' which optimistically promises that the next batch/es are 'coming soon'.

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But then you start wondering - where the heck are those promised batches?!

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Let me give you the backstory.

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A year of unprecedented change in teaching

Pre-pandemic, like most of the world, I was aware of only one form of teaching - classroom.

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Then our world got upended and I quickly came to terms with taking live lessons on Zoom. Here's what I'd posted on LinkedIn about 15 months back:

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Even as I was just getting used to the above 'live online' model, I realised that I'll need to build a stronger and wider online learning portfolio.

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Over the last 5 years, I have mainly worked for corporate clients. It has been great fun - the client coordinators are polite, the participant feedback is great and the fees are good!

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Of course, the corporate training model does have its challenges in terms of far-reaching outcomes (more about that in a separate post). But it is meeting a genuine need and I think it would continue to be popular (in evolving formats) in the foreseeable future.

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Having said that, apart from working with corporate clients, I also wanted to have a direct to consumer offering - something that allows the following two categories of learners the chance to learn these concepts:

- Committed individuals who would like to learn this on their own time and budget

- Small companies who may not have the scale of a large organisation

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And so, to cater to these audiences, I decided to launch my first open-to-all e-Course last year. As I was exploring various options, the serendipity of the internet connected me with Aditi Parekh. Aditi is a pioneer in the field of online course design and student experience. She's been a friend, philosopher and guide through the design process. (I also got great inputs from Rahul Tawde).

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The first thing I learnt from Aditi is the difference between a self-paced course and a cohort-based course.

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A self-paced course is what you'd normally think of when you think of 'online education', especially by leading platforms like Coursera, Udemy, EdX and Khan Academy. Also referred to as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) these courses are essentially a set of pre-recorded videos with some quizzes thrown in. Many also offer certification.

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Self-paced courses have strong advantages - they offer convenience and widespread access at a fraction of the cost of their offline equivalent. For a few years they were all the rage - the NYT called 2012 the Year of the MOOC and they seemed like the future of education.

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But they had one major shortcoming: dismal completion rates. People would sign up for MOOCs in droves, but only about 3-6% would end up completing the course.

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Which is where the cohort-based course (CBC) came in. A CBC comes in various formats, but it is usually a bounded program with a clear start and and end date and with live lectures offered by the faculty. It also typically includes some pre-recorded content which participants are required to go through before the lectures.

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CBCs offer a bunch of advantages over self-paced courses

• Accountability: The presence of specific session time slots and peer pressure ensures that you end up attending the lectures and working on the assignments
• Problem-solving: When you work on assignments, you falter and fumble and learn better
• Faculty feedback: When you falter and fumble, you have the faculty to give you feedback
• Community: Finally, you learn from the support, company and inputs of a diverse yet like-minded community of participants

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Given these advantages, in the last year or so, CBCs took off, with several creators running massively popular six-figure and seven-figure courses. Teachable, an online platform that enables such creators saw a 2.5X jump in its revenue in 18 months. Going forward, you can safely expect this learning model to grow faster than other competing models.

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I also launched my first CBC on Data Storytelling last year and had a blast running it with support from Aditi and Sanket. I definitely intend to add a 'Business Storytelling' CBC to the portfolio.

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Which begs the question: If CBCs are so great and represent the future of this field, why am I considering offering a self-paced version of my course?

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I'm trying to build the right portfolio for learners

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When I launched my CBC last year, I asked Aditi: Should I offer my data-storytelling course as an option between a CBC and a self-paced course, with the latter being priced lower?

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She convinced me to offer it only as a CBC, given the plethora of self-paced content available online. At that time, it made sense, given that I didn't want to compete either on price or quantity; instead my differentiator would be the course quality and student experience. So, I kept it only as a CBC.

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A year passed. I managed to offer one more open cohort of the Data Storytelling CBC, apart from a few cohorts run for corporate clients. But post that, I've not been able to launch further open batches of ESD or the first batch of a proposed new course on Business Storytelling.

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There are a few reasons for that:

- Building and launching a CBC is hard work - before the course and especially during it. I was struggling to find the time for it with other work stuff happening (mainly my live online sessions with corporate clients)

- The batch sizes for my CBCs are currently small, which means the effort-outcome ratio is not great. One way to make it work is to have a predictable course calendar (say 2 batches a year) and focus all my content marketing attention towards making those batches massive in size (this is what Tiago Forte and David Perell do). Directionally, that is where I need to go.

- Community: I need to fix the post-cohort community portion to make the product work better. Working on that!

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In sum, my CBC offering is a work in progress. But given my commitments on the Live Online training front, trying to fix it is challenging.

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In this context, I thought - if there are some people who have the drive to do a self-paced course, why should I make them wait an eternity for me to offer the next CBC? In any case, for some people the CBC might be too expensive.

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Self-paced courses aren't so bad...

I understand that self-paced online courses have their limitations. But they can be mitigated. For instance:

- No accountability: No two ways about this. Self-paced courses are for self-driven people. But if people can learn from good books and implement changes in their lives (as I have done all my life), surely they can do so from such courses too. And for me, it's about choice. Some people may require the accountability of a group - but for those who can learn on their own, there's no harm in having the choice to take a self-paced course

- No community: This is a challenge, but it can be solved. Participants in a self-paced course can be co-opted into a community later. This is something that I've been mulling over for several months now and hope to roll out a solution by early next year.

- Low completion rates: I think the completion rate metric is over-rated. The objective is not to complete a course for the sake of it. The objective is to get at least one idea that can make a tangible difference to your work. I'm certain my course will offer that!

- No practice on assignments: This part is an issue. But there are ways to manage this too. Participants can practice on their own work presentations and get feedback from colleagues and seniors. They can also wait for the next CBC - which will come!

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On that front, here's a promise - if you do the self-paced version of 'Effective Storytelling with Data', you can attend any CBC batch later by paying only the differential amount. So if the CBC is 100 and you paid 40 for the self-paced course, you will only be required to pay 60 for the CBC.

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... and here's some validation

Finally, I ran a small poll on LinkedIn and Twitter on this question - to gauge whether people would be interested in the self-paced course option

So a majority of people are interested in it. And so I said, let's do it.

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I'm sure some of you are thinking - why is Ravi making such a massive deal of a simple question? If you want to offer it, just offer it.

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Fair enough... I guess I just wanted to put my thinking out on paper to clarify things for myself. Also, you get to see the 'Why' behind what I'm doing.

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To conclude: We are all at the frontier of exciting developments in the field of learning. I'm happy to be running some of these experiments with an engaged audience like you.

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Before we close, here's a small extract from the e-course, as promised.

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A sneak peek

Here are a couple of videos from the course:

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And this one to help you remember the 7 questions:

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If you are curious as to where these two videos fit in my overall ABCD data-storytelling framework, it comes in the 'Messages' portion of the 'Build your Narrative' section.

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All details - the course inclusions, duration, fees etc. - coming on the 15th of this month.

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Excited!

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Ravi

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PS: This post of mine on LinkedIn resonated with a lot of folks:

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