Five Important Design Elements of a Cohort-based Course
From my 2+ years experiences building cohort-based courses at MỞ
Hi friends, welcome back to or to my blog where I share my thoughts and learnings on online education (and occasionally on other things :D)
In History and Evolution of Online Education, I talked about the rise of cohort-based courses as a new form of online learning to compensate for the shortcomings seen in earlier forms of online education such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).
Cohort-based courses are a new way of learning that is on the rise in the online education space. They provide high-impact learning by combining live sessions, discussion forums, practice problems, and support from peers and instructors in an inspiring setting, surrounded by the community.
In this blog, I will discuss five important elements of a cohort-based course that our team at MỞ has experimented with in our mission to deliver high-impact, transformational online learning experiences to our learners.
🙌 Design Element #1: Live Interaction 🙌
In our cohort-based courses, live classes play an important role in fostering collaboration, live interaction, and a sense of community among students. They provide an opportunity for students to engage in real-time discussions, ask questions, and receive immediate instructor feedback and comments. Live classes help reinforce learning, make sure everyone is on the same page in terms of the pace of the course, and remind everyone that we are in this together.
ℹ️ Live classes allow learners to:
✅ Increase accountability
Live classes increase student accountability as they are expected to attend and participate in real-time. Accountability can lead to higher engagement and motivation and higher completion rates.
✅ Enhance engagement
Live classes provide opportunities for students to interact with their instructors and peers in real-time (such as receiving words of encouragement, asking questions, and offering comments), which can increase engagement and motivation. There is no lag time in the communication between the different stakeholders, which encourages students to get their questions answered. Real-time interaction can help students stay on track and focused on their goals.
✅ Foster a sense of community
Live classes provide opportunities for students to build relationships with their instructors, facilitators, and peers. Live interactions reassure students that they are not alone in accomplishing their learning goals. There is a whole community going towards the same goals.
❓How to design for live class:
✅ Community Shoutout
Live class is a crucial part of building the course community. It’s a time when everyone is present and learns together at the same time. Sharing community updates and highlights is a great way for people to get a grasp of what’s going on in the community and to feel a sense of belonging in the course.
✅ Important announcements
Oftentimes people can miss messages or emails from the facilitators and instructors of the course. Thus, important announcements about expectations, events or learning progress should be communicated to the students during live class so that everyone can be on the same page.
✅ Incorporate state change method
Instructors should bring enough energy to the live class so that students feel inspired and energized to participate in the session. If there are co-instructors, the instructors should alternate facilitating so that students get a taste of both’s instruction styles. Furthermore, instructors should vary their instructional styles throughout the live session to help students stay engaged and not zone out. For example, the instructors should incorporate Q&A, practice problems, or reflection questions throughout the lecture instead of just lecturing for the entire class. Read more about state change method here.
✅ Avoid overloading students with content
Live class only has a limited amount of time which also means that students have a limited amount of cognitive load. Instructors should avoid oversharing and apply the science of learning methods (design element #5) accordingly to ensure the quality of learning for the students.
🙌 Design Element #2: Community 🙌
A main characteristic of cohort-based courses is the effect of community on students’ learning. Instead of consuming content in the traditional sense, students are invited to collaborate and support each other in the learning journey. Learning in a community with classmates and teachers has always been a natural way for us to learn.
However, this element has been stripped away in many traditional classrooms in Vietnam and worldwide. The element of community is strongest when people feel connected over shared pains and challenges that they are hoping to overcome in the course.
We have seen the effect of community flourish when combined with a problem-based learning approach. The more hands-on the activities students participate in, the more questions they will encounter along the way, and the more chances students will reach out to one another for support or discussions.
Community is important in driving both the completion rate and impact rate.
ℹ️ Community allows learners to:
✅ Learn by gaining knowledge and advice from the instructors.
✅ Discuss and explore problems and questions presented through multiple perspectives by engaging with how their peers think.
✅ Find value in receiving and giving feedback and advice to constantly iterate their skills and craft.
❓How to design for community:
✅ Take a project-based approach
Have a hands-on project that students can work on individually or together, and get each other’s feedback and ideas to improve their craft.
✅ Design with customers’ pains and challenges in mind
Shared struggles are the key to community building. Since we are not just building a course by piecing together information, we want to design a transformative experience where students can overcome the challenges that they are facing together. Students have a stronger connection with each other when they join a community of like-minded people and people who are going through shared struggles.
✅ Optimize for live interactions
A lot of content can be turned into an asynchronous engagement. Instead of designing lectures during live interactions, we provide students with asynchronous content to engage with prior to the live session and maximize their interaction with one another during live class through questions/sharing in chat or activities in breakouts.
During live sessions, instructors play a very important role in bringing students in the community together where instructors inspire people in the community to finish the projects, learn actively, and reach out to each other in the community. No matter how well the community is set up, interaction with the instructors is crucial in both the learning and social aspects of the experience.
🙌 Design Element #3: Accountability 🙌
A lot of the time people fail to learn on their own and cohort-based courses promise to push learners to achieve what they cannot do alone. Throughout our design iterations, we have seen that most students often don’t feel confident to take initiative and they often seek someone or something to motivate them forward. Learning is a purchase that requires a lot intrinsic motivation in itself. However, even people who pay and commit to the course sometimes give up on the journey.
We have seen that students often need accountability partners to finish a goal that they set out to do in the course. Students also have an expectation to meet people who want to achieve similar goals when joining the course.
Accountability is an important factor in the completion rate of a course. Since cohort-based learning puts a strong focus on the community, setting an accountability system is a way for students to engage with people in the community while achieving the learning goals in an easier way.
❓How to design for accountability:
✅ Take a project-based approach
Have a hands-on project that students can work on individually or together, and get each other’s feedback and ideas to improve their craft.
✅ Match learners with the same level of commitment
Matching learners with a similar level of commitment will increase the effectiveness of accountability.
🙌 Design Element #4: Urgency 🙌
Our courses, along with many other cohort-based courses, do not fall under the category of formal education. Thus, it is not mandatory for our learners to finish at a certain time and date in their life. Furthermore, our courses do not provide credentials or degrees in the traditional ways for students to ascend some predefined ladder once they have completed, it’s very easy for people to prioritize the courses less.
Therefore, combined with accountability, urgency is a very important factor to push our students to participate actively and immersively in a short amount of time instead of letting them learn whenever they want on their own.
I do acknowledge the nuances that come with urgency. Learning is a slow-burn process instead of a sprint. Acquisition of skills and knowledge takes months or even years to master. Thus, we cannot expect our learners to master a certain type of skill or knowledge in a few weeks.
However, we are trying to help students get started and commit to trying and doing for a short period of time. Because it is short, we need to make it WOW and transformative so that students want to keep learning and joining our community for more accountability and inspiration in the long run.
What the cohort-based experience is effective for is to hook learners into a community of people who are valuable for their learning journey in the long run. Urgency pushes learners to get over their learning fears quickly and efficiently.
ℹ️ Urgency allows learners to:
✅ Save time by committing to something relatively short
✅ Commit more to their learning when they know the experience is going to end
✅ Value the experience they have with their peers more because they know it’s going to end
❓How to design for urgency:
✅ Have clear start and end dates
✅ Remind learners throughout the journey how much time they have left to encourage them to take advantage of the learning resources, mentors, peers, and spaces to practice and get feedback during the course
✅ Couple urgency with a strong support system so that learners feel supported while being pushed rather than being pushed to finish on their own
🙌 Design Element #5: Evidence-based/Science-of-learning-based 🙌
The goal of our design is to provide students with the most transformational learning which requires that we apply evidence-based research on the science of learning in our online learning experience.
1. We take a project-based, hands-on approach to our learning experience design. From the topic that our course creator is interested in sharing, we will align the creator’s expertise with an experience format such as a 30-day challenge, boot camp, or learning project throughout the experience.
For example, in WOTN#2, we take Tung and Tuan’s expertise, writing, and publishing systems, and turn it into a 30-day blogging challenge. A project-based approach aligns with such science of learning principles as deliberate practice, spaced repetition, and transfer learning. The goal is to provide opportunities for students to apply content provided by the instructor in their own projects and practice their craft.
2. We use self-determination theory to increase students’ (intrinsic) motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Autonomy: We provide students with certain levels of autonomy where they can choose the pace of their practice and the way they want to apply their learning. We want students to feel like they are in control of their behaviors and goals.
Competence: We create space for students to experience mastery and be effective in their actions and goals. We design the challenge so that it’s at the right level of difficulty for students so that they can still challenge themselves to increase their craft and go above and beyond their limits. We have mentors and facilitators to check in with students and think through the levels of difficulty if any student raises their concerns.
Relatedness: We want students to feel a sense of connection and belonging to other people. We have community highlights at the beginning of every live class in order to make sure everyone is up to date with the latest news of the community. We have channels to share wins and struggles on Discord where students can connect on a deeper level with their peers.
3. We apply Bloom's Taxonomy (“Bloom’s Taxonomy”, 2022) and Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 2011) to help students retain and apply information effectively.
Bloom Taxonomy: Using the principles from Bloom Taxonomy, we design our asynchronous and synchronous activities such that students are always encouraged to engage with the higher ladders of Bloom Taxonomy. Single information is not learned on its own but is always learned in relation to the bigger picture or other adjacent information.
Cognitive load theory: Using the principles from cognitive load theory, we never overload students with content and we maximize the time students engage deeply with the content. We prioritize quality over quantity. We apply cognitive load theory most in our live classes where we provide students with a moderate amount of concepts and frameworks related to the topic. We often spend half of the time in live classes asking students to explain to themselves what they have learned and using role-playing or case studies to apply important content to their projects. Generation effect is activated during these activities where students get to test their knowledge and ensure that they are using their learning effectively.
What are some other design principles and factors that you have found helped in designing community-based, cohort-based learning experiences?
Let me know down below!
References
Kao, W. (n.d.). Course Mechanics: Canvas. Retrieved from https://www.weskao.com/blog/course-mechanics-canvas.
Kao, W. (n.d.). State Change Method: Aim for Lasting Impact. Retrieved from https://www.weskao.com/blog/the-state-change-method.
Bloom’s Taxonomy | Center for Teaching | Vanderbilt University. (n.d.-a). Retrieved December from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25 (1), 54-67. https://mmrg.pbworks.com/f/Ryan,+Deci+00.pdf.
Sweller, J. (2011). Chapter Two - Cognitive Load Theory. In J. P. Mestre & B. H. Ross (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation (Vol. 55, pp. 37–76). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-387691-1.00002-8.