Hey there!
It’s been awhile since I sent out a message. But I still have people signing up and following the Twitter account, even though I ended up overloading myself and not producing content.
I just finished up the On Deck Course Creator fellowship, so I’m hoping to get back into a somewhat regular cadence of posting on here, although I think I’m going to do things a little differently. I’m probably only going to post every other week. I don’t want the newsletter to be the primary form of communication. It’s not very personal and honestly, I have a hard time thinking about it when I’m not doing something all the time on the platform.
I’ve also rethought how I’m creating my course for Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs. There is definitely a lot of interest in a course like that, but I haven’t really come to a model that I liked. Until now.
I’ve been developing a framework for what I’m calling a community-driven course. The idea is that there will be a free community that will be the basis for a course. The problem I have with newsletters is that I don’t get the level of interaction I would like. I definitely prefer a community that can have many-to-many conversations instead of all relying on me. As I’ve proven with this newsletter, that’s not always a good thing. But a community can prop each other up even when I’m not always around.
I’ve been introduced to the power of community-focused learning with On Deck. But the problem with cohort-based courses is that they are typically limited in size and come with a high price. These aren’t as accessible as they could be. But the learning potential is definitely huge. When I say I was transformed by On Deck, I definitely mean that. I’ve completely redesigned the way I think about online education.
It also takes a ton of work to run a cohort-based course. There are a lot of moving pieces and you really have to align your life around running the cohorts. But I’m still in the process of trying to get DeFiNet up and running and if there’s something I’ve learned the hard way over the past month, it’s that I need to stop pushing myself so hard. I’m working on doing things at a more sustainable pace. I have to, or I’m never going to make it through.
That’s when I realized the potential for community-driven courses. These types of courses aim to get the benefit of cohort-based classes. But they can be priced the same as massively open online courses (MOOCs). And most importantly, they can give ways for folks to access the same levels to materials and communities as cohort-based courses but at a fraction of the cost.
That’s what I put together as my capstone project for the fellowship. I presented it yesterday as part of the On Deck Learning Conference and I think it went well. I let myself get a bit vulnerable and talked about the challenges I’ve had with ADHD and Autism and how that’s impacted what I’m trying to build.
I’d like to thank the subscribers that have stuck with me. Here’s a link to get free enrollment in my new course on Community-Driven Courses. I want you to see what I’m trying to build and this course will help outline what I’m trying to do.
I’d also love to have you as a member of our community. It’s still early for this platform, but I’ve been working with the founder as one of the first users to really design the experience I’m looking for in my community. I want to make sure that I can reward those who help make the community great. I’m also working to integrate my revenue-sharing platform with them, so that will be one of the ways you can be rewarded. I’m also working on creating some other pretty cool experiences and events. I’ll hopefully have more to announce on that front soon.
Finally, here’s a blog post I wrote about building Community-Driven Courses. It might be good supplemental information for my course. It contains a lot of the same info but in a different format. The course will be evolving and expanding over time as I work out the specifics with Super and what works and what doesn’t with that community. But the blog should remain pretty evergreen.
Thanks for sticking around. It’s been an up and down journey for me, but I’m starting to get things figured out, I think. We’ll see what happens, but I hope to see you over in the community soon!
Until next time!
~Leo