BuddyBoss Expert Communities are Fuel for Getting Students Through Your Program

I’m sure anyone building any online course program believes in what they teach. They understand the potential value students can get from taking their course. They put hard work into building and writing and delivering their materials. It’s extremely frustrating that studies clearly say that only 10% of any one taking any course finishes it. This is a fact none of us can escape.

The other 90% don't finish. That is really bad news.

As a BuddyBoss expert with a lot of experience using it with Learndash for online course, we know the effort that goes into building a course. You have to organize your course materials, record videos, set up the website. etc.  It's plenty to do.

Well all that work is going to waste if your students don't get through your course materials. They head off into the sunset never to be seen again.

One sure fire way to address is this to add a BuddyBoss expert community to your program.

BuddyBoss Expert Discussion #1 - Learning In-Person vs. Learning Online

Let's think to when we were learning in school. From kindergarten to the end of your university studies, you have group of students attending class with an instructor. The students can interact with the instruction. They also interact with each other.

When you are building any course, you have to provide the course content. It typically gets organized with lessons teaching the basics first. Then you add materials that builds upon the one before it.  You repeat this over and over again. This is they way online and in-person course material work.

What's missing for online course is the interaction between the instructor and students and between the students doing the learning. When I taught classes, and I've done a lot of that, I make sure to task, “Does anyone have any questions?”  I do that to encourage students that aren't clear with the information I just presented to just ask.

In most classrooms I've taught, you have a bunch of quiet students that don't ask questions. They just don't. Then you have the vocal ones that ask the questions. (Sometimes they take over and ask too many, but I digress.)  This combination is good. The vocal ones ask questions that the quiet ones may have wanted to ask. They ask questions the quiet ones didn't think to ask. It tends to work out.

And it's not just getting questions asked. It's the support students get when they hear from another student struggling with the same thing that puzzles them. It's the formation of impromptu study groups. It's the commiseration about something an instructor is doing wrong.  It's even when one student tells another about another student's birthday. That interaction enhances the learning.

BuddyBoss Expert Discussion #2: How Do You Replicate In-Person Learning?

Students learning online need to have a way to ask questions. They typically expect access to the instructor. This can be via email, set office hours where they make themselves available on a Zoom call or some other mechanism. The problem instructors face is that they aren't always available. They also end up answer the same questions over and over again.

In the past, we have addressed with with private Facebook groups. All the students taking the online course subscribe and that's where conversations are held. The issue is that Facebook groups are linear. If something was answered weeks back, it's pretty much not available. You cannot organize them. You can't search them.

As my team and I have become BuddyBoss expert and LearnDash expert builders, we've discovered a much better way. BuddyBoss to build a community around LearnDash courses is priceless. You have a place where students can interact using a messenger style texting. You can set up discussion areas associated with a course, a lesson and groups that can be organized by the instructor ahead of time or by the students themselves.  The options are endless.

We have one BuddyBoss expert site with students that set up a support group and invited the owners of the site to participate. It was a place where common issues were raised to be addressed to improve the site.  Talk about a dynamic environment where things happen unexpectledy, but they are driven by students. That's a great and, maybe, unexpected feedback mechanism for the course builder.

Over time, many of our site owners notice that students will jump in and answer questions. A student farther along in the course can answer questions for a student that’s just starting. A student can point another student to the place in the forum where their question was discussed. This can leave a trial of valuable interaction between students that’s good for everyone including the instructor who is instructor offing answering questions to other students.

And all this can be set up so it's searchable.

Hope this helps.