#225: The Power of Live Q&A Sessions: Connecting with Your Students in Real-Time

Introduction

In a world dominated by AI and pre-recorded content, how do you truly connect with your online course students on a deeper level? 

The answer is simple, it is the thing that so many entrepreneurs have eliminated with automations and is sometimes pitched as an option that you should keep around until you get your messaging clear.

What is the answer? Live Q&A sessions.

Now, if you don’t want to build relationships with your students so that they are successful and become your biggest advocates, if you don’t want to foster a sense of community in a world that is increasingly disconnected from one another, and you definitely don’t want to create a course experience that transforms your students’ lives, then this episode is not for you.

But if you do want all of these things and more, then stick around because we are going to talk about why live Q&As are more important than ever, even in our increasingly digital world, and I’ll even share with you three reasons why you should incorporate them into your course offerings now, as in right now.

And if the idea of offering a live Q&A makes you a little queasy, stick around for today’s Sixty-Second Solution where I’ll give you easy to implement tips for managing even the toughest questions live in a way that highlights your expertise. 

Showing Up Live Changes the Course

Have you noticed that every email to your inbox, every course module, every logo and picture you encounter feels more and more like an AI-generated resource?

We are in a world filled with pre-recorded videos and automated chatbots. There are new apps and services being launched every day designed to take more of you out of the day-to-day business and create more automations so that you can scale more easily.

When we let automations take over, it is easy to feel disconnected from our students. They become a name in our Stripe account and we are just a talking head in the videos that they watch. 

Live Q&A sessions offer a unique opportunity to bridge that gap and create a truly human connection that has so many positive impacts.

After all, with all of the AI floating around, we need genuine human connections and relationships now more than ever. Without a live component to our courses, it is difficult to build a strong rapport and foster a sense of community within our course and our business ecosystem.

Don’t get me wrong, pre-recorded content is the bees knees because it allows our students to tackle content on their time, in the speed that is best for them. The problem is that it is passive. We aren’t interacting with our students and they aren’t interacting with us. In my own courses, I offer journal prompts that allow my students to ask questions, share ideas, and I will write back to every single person. Often, they state this is their favorite part of the course because it is a conversation. We can use Live Q&As to encourage active participation in our courses and keep our students engaged. While we still get paid that course fee whether they open the course or not, I know I always feel better when they get through the content and can implement what I’ve been teaching.

With all of the automation in our lives today, we are also missing out on something really important: feedback.  Live Q&A sessions provide invaluable insights into our student needs, challenges, and the areas that have them flat out confused. This real-time feedback allows us to refine our course content and improve the overall student experience.

If this isn’t enough of a nudge to get you looking at your calendar and finding a spot for a live Q&A, or even if it is, I want you to make the most of the Live Q&A opportunity. Let’s talk through three key reasons or elements that make live Q&As so critical to the success of our courses, our students, and ultimately our business.

Reason 1: The Human Connection Advantage

In a world increasingly filled by AI, human connection is more valuable than ever. Live Q&A sessions provide a unique opportunity to interact with your students in real-time, answer their questions directly, and build genuine rapport.

Yes, AI-powered tools can provide information, but they can’t replicate human interaction. I use a platform called Social Curator created by Jasmine Star. Social Curator has an AI bot that is one of my favorite to use, she is called Dottie and does a great job helping me organize my thoughts. However, Dottie isn’t the same as a real human helping me dig through my thoughts and figuring out the next best step. With Dottie you still need to use a good prompt, provide good information, and then adjust the response that you get to be just what you need.

Compare that to the last time I got my haircut and styled. My stylist, Jodie, always asks me what I’m thinking about my hair, and being me I rarely know what to say. But here is the thing. She can read my facial expressions, she can ask follow-up questions, and even make some guesses about what I might need based on the relationship we’ve built over the last 5 years. She knows that when summer rolls around I need to make sure my hair is long enough to get into a french braid and she knows where on my head my braid starts. This is something that Dottie can’t do. Dottie, as an AI bot, can’t read my facial expressions, know what follow-up questions to ask because she knows me well and knows my family. Jodie, my stylist, can do these things. It is the advantage of the human connection.

Live Q&A sessions allow us to connect with students on an emotional level, address their individual concerns, and offer personalized guidance.

We also have the benefit of building up trust and a community. When we sit down and engage with our students, they start to see themselves as part of a community that has their back, that knows who they are, and that leads them to feeling valued and heard. All of these things will build their engagement and motivation inside the course.

And if you are thinking that you don’t have a big program and what if just one person shows up? We still have the opportunity to create a human connection. Even if only a few students attend a live Q&A, it presents a valuable opportunity for personalized coaching. We can go deeper into individual challenges, provide tailored advice, and even identify potential areas for improvement in your course content. As a bonus, this often leads to students requesting and paying for more 1:1 help AND they become your biggest advocates when you talk about your course.

So first up, that human connection that is provided by Live Q&A sessions helps to create a community that is strong and thriving.

Reason 2: Deeper Learning and Improved Understanding

If you could wish for anything for your course students, what would it be? Would it be for them to be successful? What about really understanding what you are teaching? Or maybe it is really getting how to apply the concepts embedded within each of your modules?

Live Q&A sessions do all of this. They provide an opportunity for deeper learning and improved understanding of the core concepts that you are teaching.

Oftentimes Q&A sessions can get a bad reputation. You show up, ask your question, the leader will spend 1-2 minutes answering and move on. When they are done correctly, Live Q&A sessions go beyond a quick question and answer. 

When students ask questions live, it often shows us the deeper underlying issues or concerns that may not have been apparent in pre-recorded lessons. This allows us to address those concerns directly and provide more comprehensive support. 

Having these open and honest conversations about the content also encourages our students, and us, to think critically about the course material. It becomes more than a check the box approach to the course material. Instead they have to think about what is happening when they try to implement the lessons, where they are actually getting stuck, and even getting feedback on the things that they think are going well because we only know what we know. We don’t always have the big picture when we are just getting started. 

The beauty of this is that the more time we spend in these Q&A sessions with our students, the more engaged they become, the deeper questions they ask, and the more they want to interact with us, with the course, and with their fellow course takers.

As that happens, there is a dynamic and spontaneous thing that happens. Students start offering ideas to other students, they start comparing ideas, start collaborating, and get to new levels of understanding beyond just the course lessons they’ve watched.

The active conversations that happen provide new insights in addition to the deeper learning and understanding that happens and the course content gets more fun.

Reason 3: Course Content Refinement

Hosting Live Q&A sessions isn’t just a win for our students, they are also a win for us as the course creator. We have a unique opportunity to see where students are struggling, where they need more information, and where the examples we’ve provided just don’t work.

When we sit down at a Live Q&A session and really listen carefully to our students’ questions, we can identify common areas of confusion or frustration within your course. This valuable feedback allows you to refine your course content, address potential knowledge gaps, and improve the overall learning experience for future students.

For example, there is one element of a course that I teach that always creates confusion. The concept was difficult, new, and complicated because of the necessary terminology and application. By talking with my students it was easy to see where the breakdown in understanding was most likely to happen and why the example that I had provided just wasn’t enough. This led to me creating a new lesson complete with varying examples and applications. I could also point out additional resources based on the specific spots they were getting stuck. Without those live conversations, however, I wouldn’t have known that this particular concept was causing trouble.

We can more easily tailor our course content as we refine lessons, resources, and modules when we’ve had direct conversations with our students.

These Live Q&A sessions also give us the chance to try out new content and ideas before committing them to a formal lesson inside our course. We can talk about new innovations, new ideas, and new approaches during live sessions and see how they are received and understood before formally adding them to our digital course platform and plan.

Action Item

 By now you are either team Live Q&A sessions or you’ve decided that automated content it the way to go. I’m going to guess that if you are still listening you are on Team Live Q&A. So let’s put this into action.

The key is to not overthink the Live Q&A session. If you are worried about getting questions that you don’t know the answer to, I’ll give you some easy tips to manage that in just a minute with our Sixty-Second Solution, but first let’s get that session planned!

First up, choose a convenient day and time for your Q&A. You will never please everyone so don’t even worry about that. If you have a student who can’t attend live, give them a way to submit a question ahead of time that you can answer on the live call and will appear in the recording for them.

Once you have a day and time chosen, be sure you tell your students about the Live Q&A and why it can be so helpful to attend live. Remember, they are probably nervous about showing up and asking questions. Encourage them to show up even if they don’t have questions because they will learn from other’s questions. 

If it has been awhile since you’ve looked at your course, remind yourself of what is covered in each module so that you can quickly refer to that content when students ask a question. That being said, you don’t have to know the answer to every question. I’ll talk about that in just a minute.

Finally, show up for the Live Q&A session and welcome your students, encourage them to introduce themselves and ask their questions.

If you don’t have anyone show up to the live sessions, don’t worry! You can use this time to address common questions or issues that you see happening and provide this special recording as a bonus for your course students. 

So my question for you is, when will your first Live Q&A session be?

Sixty-Second Solution

 Before we wrap up the episode, I promised you a few tips for how to handle the questions that you get during a Live Q&A that genuinely leave you feeling stumped. 

This is something that happens to everyone at some point, but it does not have to bring things to a crashing, middle school dance level of awkward halt.

Instead, try one of these three approaches. First up, when you get a question that you don’t know the answer to, acknowledge the question, let them know that off the top of your head you don’t know the best answer to their question but you will research it and get back to them within 48 hours. This is especially a great option if you have a course that has ever changing content or research that you might need to review before offering an answer.

Second option is to ask the student what thoughts they have on the question. Sometimes the student knows the answer to their own question but need to be affirmed that the answer is reasonable. This is especially helpful when the question is more opinion-based rather than fact-based.

The third option is to crowd-source an answer. Let the student know that you are thinking through what they’ve shared and might want more time to research a good answer for them, but you’d love to hear what everyone else thinks about the question. Sometimes this unlocks a deeper issue, a shared question, or unlocks the answer that you can then confirm.

The key is to remember that although you are an expert in your course content, you are not expected to know everything at the snap of fingers.

Where to Go Next?

Today has been a big episode and it is hopefully getting you thinking about how to show it as a relay human in today’s AI generated reality. Live Q&A sessions are more than just a nice-to-have; they are essential for building meaningful connections with your students, enhancing the learning experience, and creating a truly transformative course. By embracing the power of live Q&As, we can elevate our course offerings and provide more value to our students.

As always, thank you so much for listening in. If you found this episode helpful, please share with your entrepreneur friends and colleagues who are building a digital course in their business and be sure to subscribe to the Digital Course Creator Podcast.

Until next time, happy creating!