Introduction
You want your students to be successful, but so often they drop off the face of the earth after they’ve entered their credit card number or maybe they make it through Module 1 and then suddenly it is crickets.
Why does this happen with alarming frequency?
A lot of reasons, but one big one is that your students aren’t ready for your digital course, become overwhelmed, lost, and frozen.
This is NOT what we want for our students. We want them to be successful, first and foremost, because we have entered the digital course realm to make a difference. If our students don’t finish our course, then we aren’t having the impact that we hoped to have. Secondly, we want to be able to feature our students, celebrate their wins, and learn from their struggles in the course so that we can make it better.
Neither of these things happen if our students don’t make it through the course. And this brings me to the question of whether you should consider prerequisites for your course and how that works when anyone can get to your sales page and enter their credit card number.
Now, clearly, this episode is not for you if you have 100% student retention and completion, you don’t really care if your students finish your course, or you aren’t concerned with making a lasting difference in the lives of your students.
For everyone else, let’s get into the details.
Are Prerequisites the Way to Go?
Do you remember in high school that you couldn’t take Algebra 2 until you had successfully completed Algebra 1? Or you couldn’t take Spanish 3 without a successful completion of Spanish 2? In college, the same thing happens, you have to have English 101 before taking Psychology 201. These are all prerequisites and they are put in place to boost the likelihood of student success.
Prerequisites have a way of doing three things: level-setting, creating a pathway, and reducing the freeze. The truth is that we all want our students to be successful and not every student is ready for our course. Sometimes they need foundational work in place before our course can help them.
I heard a great example of this the other day. Someone was considering signing up for a VIP level of a course that had access to the course creator in a smaller setting. It had more of a mastermind feel. The other option was to save money and just purchase the course. When they asked for opinions, the best response was unless you have x, y, and z in place, stick with just the course and then level-up into the VIP option when you have those figured out. That is when the VIP level will make the most sense financially and success-wise.
This is exactly what I mean by introducing a prerequisite into your course materials. Now let’s talk specifically about why prerequisites are helpful and in today’s Sixty-Second Solution I’ll share with you how prerequisites might create a slowdown in your revenue and what to do about it.
Reason 1: Level-set Student Expectations
One of the most important reasons to include prerequisites for your digital course is to level-set student expectations. Let’s face it, we all fall prey to FOMO, fear of missing out, but our bank accounts can’t endure endless FOMO. At some point we have to make solid, thoughtful decisions on what to invest in and what to skip on.
As digital course creators, we can help our students have accurate expectations by setting prerequisites. For example, if you are creating a course on baking macarons you might have the prerequisite that students have baked cookies from scratch, not the break and bake kind, in the past. This lets you know that they have at least mixed, scooped, and put something on a tray and popped it into the oven before. Macarons are not the simplest of baked goods and this lets them know it is not a beginner course.
If you have a course on opening a storefront business that they have a tested product that has sold in the past and they have a working knowledge of budgeting.
You get the point here. When you have prerequisites in place a potential student can see those and say, “hey, this is exactly the next step that I’ve been looking for!” or “Oof, I still have some work to do before I take this course.”
Either way, students have the right expectations of the course, their ability to succeed, and even what the course can do for them.
Although I just talked about really concrete prerequisites, which I’m a fan of whenever possible because they offer a really clear picture for potential students, you can also label the course as 1, 2, 3 or beginner, intermediate, difficult, expert if you’d like. The challenge here is that everyone interprets those designations differently, BUT at the very least if you are teaching high level content an “expert” designation is alerting students to this fact ahead of time and helps them to know that this isn’t going to be easy.
We really want our students to be able to self-select in or out of our digital course experience as appropriate for them. When we have students selecting in because they are ready for the course, they are much more likely to be successful. And if you are worried about the students who self-select out, stick around for the Sixty-Second Solution at the end of today’s episode because I’ll give you some ideas of how to help them too.
Reason 2: Create a Realistic Pathway to Success
Really helping our potential digital course students to know if our course is right for them is key to their success, and ultimately to our ability to make a difference in their life. Prerequisites are a great way to help students determine whether our not the course is right for them right now for a variety of reasons. One reason is that the prerequisites can help potential students create a realistic pathway to success.
What does that mean? Think about Algebra 1 and 2. With the prerequisite of Algebra 1 before taking Algebra 2 we are creating a realistic pathway to success. Students know what they need to do to be more successful in Algebra 2. They need to take and complete Algebra 1.
If you are tackling content in your digital course that is beyond the entry level, first glance at a topic level, then having prerequisites actually helps your students to create a roadmap to follow. Remember that macaron course that I talked about? With a prerequisite of having baked cookies from scratch previously, now a student knows that if they want to nail the macaron a good starting place is to bake regular cookies first. They can find a class on baking cookies and then come back for the macaron class that you have carefully created. They have a foundational level of knowledge of mixing ingredients, portioning out dough, baking and looking for doneness of a cookie, and the cooling process. When they come back to your macaron class, they are a little more experienced in the kitchen and ready to tackle the delicate macaron recipe and process that you are teaching. They can handle the crankiness of macaron baking with greater chance of success.
We always want to provide our students with a roadmap, a realistic pathway to success. Remember, if they aren’t successful, their life doesn’t change and we aren’t having the impact we wanted to have with our course.
Reason 3: Reduce Overwhelm and Freeze
Finally, let’s talk about a third reason that prerequisites are helpful for creating better impact with your digital course. When a student gets into your course and you do not have prerequisites, they are more likely to experience overwhelm and freeze or flee.
The classic concept of fight, flight, or freeze tells us that when we are threatened we are hard-wired to react in a certain way. Some people will stay and fight. In the case of a digital course, this means that a student would stick it out and try to figure it out against all odds. It doesn’t mean they will be successful, but they will likely push through the course. Others, who are not ready for your course may get through the first few videos, maybe the first module and then freeze. The overwhelm sets in and they are unable to make a decision so they do nothing, they get stuck, and feel isolated. Still other students might take one look at Module 1, realize they are in over their heads and just flee, never to open the course again.
Obviously none of these options is ideal. By creating and talking about prerequisites, students know what to expect and that automatically reduces their overwhelm. Think about a time when you didn’t know what to expect, someone told you the details, and then you could breathe a little easier. It is like the nurse at the pediatrician’s office taking blood pressure of a kid for the first time and they explain the cuff is going to give their arm a tight hug and then let go. The kiddo now has an understanding of what will happen and doesn’t get scared when the cuff tightens. The expectations reduce the overwhelm.
This is what we want for our students. We want them to know what to expect, what level of content they will be learning, and overall how this will fit into their current level of expertise. A clear understanding doesn’t necessarily get rid of the overwhelm, because let’s face it, learning something new is tough, but it will help them to stick around, ask for help when needed, or wait to purchase your course until they are ready to succeed.
And if you are thinking but that means I’ve lost a sale, stick around for the Sixty-Second Solution today where I’ll share with you the simple solution that doesn’t delay your payday and helps your students to succeed.
Action Item
And that brings us to my favorite part of the episode, the part where I ask you to take action. One of the things that we need to consider when creating a course is whether or not you’ll identify and share prerequisites that your students need in order to be successful with your course content.
Although this might seem like an action that belongs in high school and college classes, the reality is that prerequisites allow your students to make an informed decision about when they are ready for your course, create a realistic understanding of what will be expected, and reduce their overwhelm from the outset.
This week, I would like you to consider what prerequisites your students will need to be successful in your course. To give you an overview, you’ll want to identify what success looks like for your digital course students, and then work backward. What type of skills, knowledge, and mindset do your students who are most successful have when they come to your course. Or, if you are creating a new course, what did you need to be successful before you learned what your course teaches? Then you can start to list out what steps a student should take to be ready for your course. You’ll want to keep this in mind when we get to today’s Sixty-Second Solution because you’ll need to use this list.
When you have these concepts outlined you can begin to clarify the prerequisites that a potential student will need to be successful. Remember, a good digital course creation business is one that is built upon student success. It isn’t enough to get students in the doors to your course, they need to complete the course, implement what they’ve learned in a way that makes a difference in their life. This holds true whether you are teaching a hobby like crocheting or a job skill like creating PowerPoint presentations and delivering that presentation with confidence.
Sixty-Second Solution
Now let’s talk about what to do when you have potential students who aren’t ready for your course, but you don’t necessarily want to bar the doors. After all, they need to become ready for your course AND it is always nice to be able to support our potential students in their journey to success and change. You might also be worried about what happens if they have to complete other work before taking your course and you slip out of their mind. Do you lose that potential income?
The answer is no. Even if your potential course students do not meet your course prerequisites, that doesn’t mean that you have to turn them away. Be sure that you are keeping track of the common challenges that your students face that make them unprepared for your course. Then you can create workshops and resources designed to bridge the gap between where they are and where they will be ready for your digital course.
By creating this bridge you are opening the door to support your potential students now AND when they are ready to be a standout student in your full-fledged digital course. What could be better? You get to create a long-term relationship with that student, they are loyal, they thrive with your guidance, and you are making a difference.
Where to Go Next?
Prerequisites are probably not something that you’ve given a lot of thought to if it has been awhile since you registered for courses, but they are something that we need to talk about if we want to make sure our students are successful with our digital course.
By outlining prerequisites you are not barring the door to your course, but instead raising potential students’ awareness of what the level of content will look like, help them set realistic expectations, reduce their overwhelm, and create a realistic pathway to success.
You can even take that a step further and provide resources that bridge the gap between where they are now and where they need to be to be successful with your digital course.
But this is just one piece of creating a successful digital course that not only brings in income, but truly changes your students’ lives. You might also have course bonuses on your mind. If you have been struggling and wrestling with the concept of course bonuses, check out Episode 207: Online Course Bonuses: Do they make a difference?
And if you are struggling at all with perfectionism as you work through your digital course creation, take 20 minutes to listen to Episode 192: Perfectionism is the Fastest Way to Digital Course Creation Failure because I don’t want you to get stuck in perfectionism and never see your digital course launched.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode and if you learned even one thing, grab a screenshot of this episode and share it on your social media stories. Be sure to tag me at Digital Course Creator Guide on Instagram and Facebook so that I can reply back to your story!
Until next time, happy creating!
