Creating a self paced course: testing and feedback
(Or why I re-recorded the whole course after I thought I was done!)
A few weeks ago I wrote about the investment of time and money I’ve made so far in developing the Facilitation 101 self paced course. In this newsletter, I’m going to explain why it took so much time. And why I think it was worth it.
How five people broke my course - and made it so much better
In January I thought I was almost ready to launch this course. I was sending it out to 5 people to test, and then I was pretty sure I would be pressing ‘‘go’ after making some minor tweaks.
If I’m honest, I very nearly skipped this stage altogether. I was in a rush, eager to launch, and figured I’d done enough already. I wanted to put it out into the world and move onto a new project. Maybe a part of me was also resistant to getting feedback, in case it meant going back to the drawing board.
Five people went through the course from start to finish. They included friends, colleagues and former course participants with expertise in L&D, change management, comms, coaching, facilitation, service design and marketing. They covered everything from video structure to content gaps and sent me detailed feedback covering every aspect of the course.
What I thought would happen
I assumed the feedback might involve small tweaks: options to tighten a few intros, clarify the instructions of an activity or fix the odd typo. I didn’t expect to feel like I needed to re-record the whole thing.
What actually happened
The feedback pointed to bigger questions about pacing, clarity, and real-world application. The testers wanted:
More real examples of facilitation in action
Clearer visual summaries and reference tools
Recordings which showed my face, rather than slides
Better signposting across the modules
A stronger sense of progression from one module to the next
It wasn’t just about editing. It meant going back and rethinking some of the structure, and adding a lot of entirely new content.
Gulp. Cue reviewing timescales, looking at my own capacity, and watching my looming sabbatical becoming dominated by re-working the course. A part of me felt daunted by the task, but I also knew it was the right thing, and then began to feel more energised by it, knowing that I would be creating something even better than I’d originally envisaged.
What changed … or rather, what didn’t!
Throughout the course of April I re-worked the whole course. Almost everything changed. This involved:
Re-recording each video, breaking down each module into shorter ‘classes’ which were easier to digest
Setting up and running two live sessions of me facilitating some of my favourite methods with groups, to record and include as examples / demos in the course
Introducing short expert interviews to offer more perspectives on facilitation (I’m still collecting and adding these to the course, so shout if you’re keen to contribute)
Developing a huge number of new facilitation templates, checklists and downloadable tools: this was one of the things I enjoyed the most, and found hugely creative.
Rewriting module summaries and reflection prompts
Creating quizzes for each section to help participants assess their learning
A new course layout to make it more intuitive to work through the course
New summary tables to get an overview of different facilitation methods at a glance
Example session plans from real sessions I’ve run with clients
It’s not a small update. It’s been a proper re-build. And yes, it’s pushed the timeline back by four months, but I hope the trade off will be worth it. It feels like an entirely different course - and one which is so much stronger than before. In some ways I think the feedback I got made me more ambitious for the course: I could see how version 1 was a starting point, and what was possible was so much more exciting. I feel so much prouder of it now - and I hope if you’re going to test it out you’ll now be able to see how far it’s come.
Next up: launch day (again)
Launch day to the waitlist is now just 8 days away. This week the team and I are going through our final checks, and then on Monday 16th June it will be GO time (again!).
If you’re interested to find out a bit more about what the course involves, you can sign up to the waitlist here and be first to sign up when it launches - and you’ll also get access to a free module!
Next time - we will have launched, and I’ll share a bit of a debrief on how it went.
This was really interesting, Julia. I've taken the plunge and subscribed but not yet started so it's interesting to know in advance how you adapted the course in response to feedback. Thank you for the early bird discount! I am looking forward both to reminders on the basics and some new ideas to energise something I already love. If it's any reassurance, some of the feedback points you raise replicate help I had when developing my own online courses on futures in government (chunking up content, more personal testimonies, changing format with quizzes/ personal reflection, etc. ,being videoed/ adding photos even it makes you CRINGE, providing downloadable templates etc). So it's consistent at least!
Ps - Just signed up for waitlist and watched your bonus module, which was brilliant! It made me reflect on how, in the absence of reflective spaces, it's easy to lose touch with some of this stuff, even having explored it at some point in the past. I really notice how that's more the case for me when there are additional pressures that decrease my threshold for reactivity/make it harder to feel calm and grounded through challenge. I found it so valuable, thanks for putting this together!