3 Ways to Absorb Student Feedback By Creating Win-Win Dynamics

How you and your students can sponge off each other in a GOOD way

Today was a HUGE day for me. I launched my first course as a one-woman show.

After two months of condensing the best of what I’ve learned in the online course space over the past three years—combined with what I did as a project and events manager before that—I’m overjoyed about this new venture.

Very few people have the insights I have about this space given how new it is. So it feels cool to be at the “frontier of online education” as Write of Passage Founder David Perell described it in the testimonial he provided for my landing page.

I thought my launch would be the start of a new chapter but it’s the start of a new book. One where I get to work more strategically with course creators. It’s exciting.

But before my enthusiasm gets the best of me, I have two things I want to share:

1. Why being a sponge for feedback is especially crucial in your pilot cohort

2. Info on my course-building sprint starting February 1st

Without further ado, let’s get into them.

Why being a sponge for feedback is especially crucial in your pilot cohort

If you’ve ever created an online product, you’ll smile at the graphic below. If you haven’t, you’ll still get the gist: your customers will use your product (ex. online course) in unimaginable ways.

Image source: Twitter

It can be intimidating to acknowledge the fact that you can’t predict or control how people will use your course. And it’s something I pondered several times in the process of creating my own. Obviously, I would’ve loved to produce a course that addresses every customer need and more. But that would be impossible.

So instead of stressing about shortcomings, I accepted it’s not possible to anticipate everything and instead I converted what felt like a kneecap into a prompter to ship my product faster. Because I knew the sooner I shipped version one of my course, the sooner I’d get feedback, and the sooner I could begin iterating to refine it over time.

I ended up in a strong spot with version one of my course. Particularly after hiring a former colleague who I consider to be “The Godfather” of instructional design to vet it. Her combined expertise in startup principles prompted me to double down on the customer feedback aspects of the course (which I’ll get to in the next section).

I’m proud of the course I’ve launched and I know it’ll have a huge impact on transforming experts, coaches, and consultants into confident online teachers and course managers—two roles that are increasingly in demand as remote work and remote learning continue to boom.

Now, back to what I was saying about customer feedback.

One course and two types of sponges

The key to getting valuable feedback is extracting it from students. But if you’re not careful, you can rapidly become annoying by constantly asking for it. Think of it as being a needy friend who constantly seeks reassurance. That gets exhausting fast, right?

Instead, you want to tee up your feedback process as a win-win dynamic. Meaning you want students to feel like they’re getting something and not just giving you stuff. That’s where the sponge analogy comes in.

In the same way you want to absorb feedback, students want to absorb what they’re learning. So by integrating your feedback prompts into reflection exercises that boost student learning and retention, you create a win-win dynamic.

Here are three ways you can do that in your course:

1. Add reflection exercises at the end of each phase or module

Reflection is a great prompt for students to absorb actionable takeaways. On top of that, the following two questions provide you with valuable insights on what aspects of the course are working well and worth doubling down on, versus what needs to be changed or eliminated to prevent students from struggling:

• What worked well for you?

• What didn’t work well?

Note: Use your discretion about ‘good’ struggles versus ‘bad’ ones.

For instance, if multiple people report struggling to use the workbook you provided for an exercise, then you probably need to change it based on their suggestions. By contrast, if someone’s complaining about having to put in effort or not being spoon-fed enough, you might disregard that as a legitimate struggle that students can and should work through to learn. After all, you’re a teacher, not a personal assistant.

When it comes to capturing reflections, use a tool that sends submissions to both you and your students. That way you can help people in real-time if you see they’re struggling, and they have a record of their progress moving forward.

For example, in my course, I’ve embedded Google forms into Teachable so students don’t need to click out of the platform to complete them.

2. Use Loom videos if you can

Loom can be a great tool to collect feedback because students can react to specific parts of a video. They can use emojis and add comments. Both of which are great intel to pinpoint which parts are most valuable to them. By contrast, when you embed videos from other sources you miss out on that feedback.

I talk about this in my course: until you test your content and workshops on students, there’s no way of knowing how it will land. It’s similar to posting online. You can’t predict what will take off versus what will tank.

I’ve run workshops where I ended up spending way more time than I anticipated on stuff I took for granted as not particularly interesting. But when students dug into it enthusiastically, I adapted and made a note to dedicate more time to it in the future.

Use Loom if it makes sense and give students a prompt to respond (ex. add emojis and comments to anything that stands out to you). That also kicks them into active learning versus passively consuming your videos.

3. Have a suggestions process

Most course creators torture themselves unnecessarily by trying to guess what their students want more or less of going forward. They either exhaust themselves by overthinking the decisions they need to make, or they assume they know what’s best and power ahead without validating their choices.

Meanwhile, students have the information they need. It’s just a matter of getting it from them in a meaningful way. One-to-one conversations are the most valuable way to get suggestions (again, I cover this in my course under Customer Discovery interviews), but I also suggest formalizing a suggestions process in your course so students can share golden nuggets as they think of them.

Having a process in place also signals to students from the start that they should be vocal about what they want. And that’s win-win since you get the intel you need to plug holes or smooth out ruffles in your course, and they get better support as a result.

Here’s an example of how I've structured the suggestions process for my course using a Discord channel:

You can set up your suggestions process any way you like. Just make it prominent and easy so students can flood it with gems.

Info on my course-building sprint starting February 1st

If you’re keen to run a cohort-based course in April but lack the structure and momentum to go it alone, join my course-building sprint beginning February 1st.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up for my course (self-paced with live elements)

2. Follow the sprint schedule from February 1st to May 3rd

3. Leverage the Discord community, office hours & accountability check-ins

Here’s a high-level overview of my course framework:

Jump to the course landing page to view the full curriculum

Given this will be my first sprint—and as I’ve mentioned I’m going to be sponging up as much feedback as I can—you’re guaranteed to get extra TLC this time around.

So capitalize on the chance to get in early by joining below:

Thank You & Join The Conversation

Thank you for supporting my writing and solopreneur ventures. I appreciate every like, comment, and heartfelt reply more than you know.

I would also love to hear how you’re sponging up customer feedback to refine your course or product. So comment below with anything you would like to share.

You can also like and share this post to help me expand my reach.

Wishing you a wonder-full week.

All the best,

Alexandra

---

💻 Buy my course and share it with others to support my work.

⏩ Promote my newsletter by forwarding this edition to a friend.

☕ Reach out if you pass through Montreal and want to grab coffee.