Do you instruct in-person? Deliver on-line instruction? Host a podcast with a goal to educate your audience?
Lots of of ways to consume educational content these days … which means there are lots of ways we can positively impact our students, too, right?
As you may recall, “instruction” is really a modern term. What we do used to be called “lecturing”, because early educators only had one book on a topic (before the printing press) and had to stand at a lectern to read the book aloud to eager listeners.
Boy have times changed, or have they?
One of the behemoth’s in education these days is called a MOOC, which stands for “Massive Open Online Course”. Kind of like the internet itself, except a little better organized.
MOOCs are widely used by people around the world, but the large numbers are likely because they’re free.
And when you add “FREE” to “massive amounts of educational material”, people generally sample, get distracted and drop out … in huge numbers.
Except the ‘build it and they will come’ strategy doesn’t work.
Not for training anyway.
The completion rates for most MOOCs is atrocious (less than 10% by one account!).
And that’s where online education and in-person education are similar. They still require valuable content, they still require low barriers to entry … and yes, they still require (above all else!) a competent instructor to bring it all to life.
Like you perhaps, the more I teach the more critical I become of instructors that no longer feel like they have anything to learn. Those types are no doubt many of the architects of the lousy completion rates in the MOOCs.
I’m changing how online education is delivered AND absorbed.
Soon, I’ll be sharing more specific details and opportunities to continue sharpening our instructor skills, regardless of where you share your content.
Click here to be the first to know about these new opportunities.Until then, keep on teaching and keep on reading.
The Moops and Moors reference? Seinfeld fans will remember this video clip:Â