Introduction
Everything these days is about customization. It sounds great, right? Customization is better than getting some item that doesn’t really fit anyone perfectly.
The digital course industry is just one industry that has seen a big push for customization, and it is certainly not the last.
With all of the innovations and technologies available, customization is a hot topic, but sometimes it can be too hot to handle.
So the question is, should we be customizing your course for our online students? What are our students expecting?
As an entrepreneur and consumer, you’ve probably had expectations of digital learning experiences in the past. As a digital course creator you are probably asking what pieces need to be customized and which can be mass produced.
We definitely want our digital course students to be successful, but customization can get us into trouble.
We can make some big mistakes with customizing our courses that end up being detrimental to our student’s progress and success.
Now, if you haven’t ever thought about customizing your course and are now panicked that you have to customize it, please don’t panic. Listen to this episode and then consider your options. Just know that there are options for best serving your digital course students without overly complicating things on your end of things.
So let’s talk about the dangers of over-customizing online courses and how to customize an online course effectively.
Customization for the Win!
I know that Stanley cups are all the rage, but honestly, we are a Hydroflask family and have been for well over a decade. We even love the ability to customize our Hydro Flask tumblers with engravings straight from Hydro Flask.
When you first think about this, it sounds great. I get a custom cup, exactly the way I want in the color and style that I prefer.
Why am I telling you about some cups that we like in our family? Because we are a culture where customization is becoming more and more expected. It is the norm instead of the exception.
If this is the case, should we be customizing our online courses for our digital course students or should we be content with providing a solid, well-planned, and comprehensive course experience?
The answer is yes…to both options.
After all, the premise behind both is the same. We want our students to succeed. We want them to get the course content that they need and want without any extra distractors or confusion. And we want them to be able to implement what we are teaching them.
Don’t get me wrong, customization can be a good thing, but let’s consider 3 things to keep in mind when customizing a course.
Customization Consideration 1: Separation of Groups
One of the biggest considerations that you want to make with customization inside a course is whether it will create a division among students that limits collaboration and learning from others who are further ahead.
When our son was preschool age, he attended a Montessori school. One of the tenets of Montessori is that the classrooms are mixed age so that collaboration, learning, and connections can happen across ages, skill levels, and maturity levels.
The children are able to grow knowledge, skills, and abilities that they otherwise might have had to wait until they were older to be exposed to.
When we think about our digital course students, we want them to be able to create connections with people of all levels and abilities within our course. There is a great feeling when you can help someone with a step you had to work hard to master and likewise there is great satisfaction in seeing others ahead of you and knowing that you can be there too as you continue to work.
As you are considering customizations for your course, I would encourage you to make sure that you are embedding these connection opportunities within your course and then not canceling them out with the customization that happens.
For example, what if you have a course on reupholstering home furniture. You might be tempted to customize a student’s track based on what they are re-upholstering. You might have a track for dining room chairs, one for stools, one for couches, and so on. But if you create an experience where a student re-upholstering dining room chairs doesn’t get to connect with the people reupholstering their couches, they may never see in action the possibilities of doing their couch. They may think it is beyond their capabilities.
When we create spaces that allow for that mixed experience of collaboration and connection in addition to a customization of tracks, we are going to get the best of both worlds. We can help students find the modules on dining room chairs who need that information and we can help the students who are focused on couches to find that section. Then allow them to all come together for a shared experience of reupholstering.
Customization Consideration 2: Do the choices feel permanent?
There are a lot of benefits to customizing a course, including boosting a student’s likelihood of successful implementation and completion. Customization is not the bee’s knees, however, when customization generates a feeling of permanence that makes you wonder if you are in the right place.
Remember the “choose your own adventure” books from childhood? You could choose a direction for the story, but then if you didn’t like where you ended up, you could simply turn back the pages, choose the other option and go from there.
You were in full control of the customization, but you could freely make adjustments as you wanted.
Let me give you an example of where choices can lead to dissatisfaction and imposter syndrome among our online course students. There is a well-known digital course that asks students a series of questions at the start of the course and then you get plopped into one of two tracks. One is a more beginner track and the other track is more advanced. Depending on the track you are placed in, you are eligible to join a specific Facebook group. Once a certain date passes you are not allowed to switch Facebook groups if you feel like you are in the wrong place. There is a feeling of permanence. Because of that deadline date, I watched course students post over and over that they felt they were in the wrong group, that the questions weren’t accurate based on what they were seeing others working on. It created anxiety, fear, imposter syndrome, and a general feeling of panic that they weren’t going to get what they needed because they were in the wrong group.
Now, this track system was implemented to make sure that everyone got the support they needed, and the deadline date was set to help with the administration of admitting people to groups and removing them from a group they were no longer a part of.
On the surface it seems great. But what we have to remember is that we tend to learn from being around people who are both earlier in the learning process and later in the implementation process. We can mentor those who haven’t achieved our level yet and receive mentoring from those ahead of us, and we can get new perspectives from all.
So when you are considering having deadlines in place for your customizations keep in mind that this can introduce a new level of support that will be needed as students experience dissatisfaction with feeling locked in, panic at being in the wrong place and potentially not getting the most of their investment, or being separated from someone they intended to go through the course with.
It doesn’t make customization of this kind a “no”, but it should be heavily guarded and considered as a “maybe”. You want to not only keep customer service at the forefront, but also keep in mind that making permanent-feeling decisions without all of the information can close us off to opportunities.
Customization Consideration 3: Keep It Simple
As I’ve mentioned, creating a customizable path for students in our online courses can have great benefits, and often it is expected these days, just like that customized Hydoflask bottle I have on my desk today that says “Be kind to all kinds”.
We have to keep it simple. Our students are busy, they have more than one thing going on, and having too many options or intricate customizations can confuse and frustrate our students.
This is definitely not what we want from a customer service perspective. We want our students to enjoy signing in to our course and getting things done. We don’t want to create barriers to their successful implementation.
When I was a StoryBrand Certified Guide, we had a saying that Donald Miller was always repeating, “When you confuse you lose.”
This is true in more than just marketing and messaging. We thrive in simplicity and knowing what to do when and how. I say this knowing that I love complicated things, but when we are learning something new the faster we can get acclimated, the faster we will see a change. That is what we want for our students.
So although the world is all about customization right now. If you have to make a choice between customization for students in your digital course and simplicity for students, choose simplicity every single time and at every single bend in the road.
Simplicity wins, hands down. We are less likely to create barriers in understanding, in accessibility, in learning support, in setting up our course platforms, and so on and so forth. You get the idea, simplicity will keep everyone’s life simpler.
Action Item
And that brings us to my favorite part of the episode, the part where I ask you to take action.
If you’ve been considering how you can customize your digital course, or you have never thought about it before today, I’d like you to take time this week to explore what might be best for your students.
Do they need a highly customized experience? Or can you customize a small piece and see even better results by keeping everyone on the same track?
If you have an active course, survey your students. Ask them what worked well, what they enjoyed the most, and what the biggest barriers to success were. Test a few customization ideas with them. Ask them to rank them from, “oh, man we need this right now” to “eh, I’m good forevermore without this specific customization”.
Let your students guide you and if you get conflicting responses send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram and we can talk through what the right course of action might be so that you can get to testing and implementing.
If you do not have course students yet because you haven’t launched, talk to people who are likely to be your students and give them some options and ideas, let them give you feedback. If you were your student at some point, think back to what would have been effective for you, but keep in mind that your students are not clones of you and may have different experiences and needs.
The key is to actively explore what customization might mean in your course BUT keep it simple. If you are getting ready to launch, just launch. Don’t get buried in tech have-tos to create a customized experience. Just launch!
Sixty-Second Solution
Now, what if you want to keep customization simple and implement it right from the start, what can you do?
Create a survey for your students to gain self-awareness about where they are on their journey, what their likely challenges will be and where they think things will be easy. Then based on those responses you can encourage them to notice the different resources that are available. You can even create a welcome video that points out different resources based on how you responded.
Have a tight schedule and know that getting the course done is going to be an issue? Check out the calendar that I put together for you to make progress. You can choose from 3 different options based on your time availability.
Not sure if you have some foundation pieces in place? Not a problem. I have a bonus module that will walk you through some key preliminary steps to take before you dive into Module 1.
The key is to keep it simple.
Where to Go Next?
With simple customizations in mind for our digital course, we want to make sure that our students know we are there to help them.
Customer service can be something that feels a bit ambiguous and tricky to master.
If you missed last week’s episode, be sure to check out Episode 217: 3 Ways to Enhance Your Digital Course Student Support Strategies Without Burning Out.
And if you are ready to boost your course completion and retention rates, check out Episode 176: 5 Ways to Fix Your Digital Course Videos so Students Don’t Quit Early.
When we take time to really focus on our students’ experiences instead of sharing our expertise, we shift our mindset and approach and are able to find the right answers and solutions that create a stellar student experience inside our online courses.
Until next time, happy creating!
