The Super Specific How: How to make your cohort-based course more rigorous
Since launching my startup a few months ago and putting a name on the concept of “cohort-based courses”, there’s been growing excitement in the online education community about this new, more engaging way of learning.
But what makes cohort-based courses (CBCs) so engaging compared to other forms of online education?
In short: accountability. When you have nowhere to hide, you’re forced to climb out of your shell, put in the work, and show up to do the work. While accountability is usually a benefit for students, CBCs force instructors to be accountable too. CBCs have less room for instructors to hide. This is important because it forces instructors to consider whether their material has enough depth to fill a course--and how to make their material actionable for students. This, in turn, leads to higher quality educational experiences for everyone.
Another way to think about this is with what I call the Content Hierarchy of BS.
The Content Hierarchy of BS explains in a logical hierarchy why it’s easier to hide BS in some mediums vs. others. I got this idea after a conversation with my co-founder Gagan. We were giving feedback to one of our instructors because his workshop felt like a surface-level treatment, even though he’s usually a rigorous thinker. I work with instructors on a daily basis and I see this challenge all the time: what seems rigorous in one medium doesn’t necessarily translate into rigor in a cohort-based course because the bar is higher for CBCs.
Let’s start at the bottom where there is the most BS: Twitter. You can sound insightful on Twitter in 280 characters without much else to back up your idea. Given the short word count, the distracted nature of people scrolling, and ephemeral nature of tweets, there is a lot of bullshit.
Keynote talks, podcasts: This is the second highest form of bullshit. For keynote talks, the speaker focuses on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of their topic. The best keynote talks change the way you think, but most keynote talks leave the audience feeling temporarily inspired at best. The information flow is one-directional. The speaker controls the narrative so there’s more room to hear their perspective, which is good and bad for the audience. It’s good because you get a peek into their worldview and their argument. It’s bad because no one can question their story or logic while they’re on stage.
Same with podcasts--the podcast host asks questions and the guest gets to answer with as much depth (or lack thereof) as they want. In Clubhouse, you might get audience questions but there’s usually others waiting to talk so it's easier to evade.
Blog posts have a moderate level of BS. Writing out your ideas forces you to be cogent and articulate. It adds structure to your thinking. Weak arguments are a bit more exposed. Your audience only has cold, hard text to hear your idea. They’re not swept up in the excitement of sitting in a dark auditorium seeing a speaker on stage, which lends a halo effect and therefore lets the speaker get away with more BS. Blog posts provide room for arguments, counterpoints, nuances, scripts, visuals, screenshots, and concrete examples. Long form posts with 1,000+ words offer even more room to build your case.
Books have even less room for BS. You have to organize your thinking and have enough depth and nuance for your ideas to fill 250 pages. Of course, there are exceptions to the Content Hiearchy of BS. Every Tim Urban post is more rigorous than meandering books by one-idea wonders. But generally it’s harder to get away with BS with a traditional publisher.
Video-driven courses are starting to reach a high bar for lack of BS. MOOCs are still one-directional though, with information flowing from instructor to student. So there’s still room to hide.
Cohort-based courses have zero room for BS. If your content is basic or surface-level, you will be revealed and exposed.
The higher bar for CBCs is due to two main reasons:
First, cohort-based courses have a bi-directional relationship between the instructor and students.
Have you ever been in school and had a classmate ask a question, then realize you had the same question? You realized you didn’t understand a concept as well as you thought you did. This is a hugely valuable part of CBCs that isn’t present in books, articles, video-driven courses, podcasts, or other formats.
In one-directional formats, the instructor teaches students, but students can’t talk to each other or debate with the instructor. But cohort-based courses are bi-directional, meaning the instructor teaches students--but students get a microphone to teach back.
This matters because students can see what everyone else is asking, skepticism can spread, and students can see what questions other students have.
Second, heuristics and pattern-matching. The higher price points of CBCs mean categorically different expectations.
Books, articles, blog posts, and tweets all focus on ‘what’ and ‘why’. So if a course focuses on what/why, it feels light because it reminds students of content lower on the Content Hierarchy of BS. It comes across as a surface treatment on a topic instead of a deep dive because the student could have gotten most of what you taught via a blog post.
Blog posts are free. Udemy courses are $9 to $200, and some folks say Udemy students have been trained to expect deep discounting and will only buy courses for $10. By contrast, cohort-based courses are $500-$5,000/student.
When a student is paying so much more for a CBC, their expectations are a lot higher, which means their patience runs out quickly if your course is a blog post masquerading as something more.
The antidote to BS: The Super Specific How (SSH)
Cohort-based courses should focus on ‘how,’ not ‘what’ and ‘why.’ The reason students take a course is because they want to learn a skill or mindset, and ultimately to improve their work or lives. They’re looking for behavior change and transformation--but they can’t change if they only know the ‘what.’ They have to learn the ‘how.’
Most instructors spend 80% on the what and why, and 20% on the how.
In cohort-based courses, you want to spend 20% on the what and why, and 80% on the how.
My post could have stopped with the content above explaining the Content Hierarchy of BS, why it matters for course creators, and the fact that course creators should focus on explaining ‘how.’
But to be meta, I’ll show how to combat BS in your course. The antidote to BS is what I call the Super Specific How.
It’s ‘how,’ but on steroids.
Examples of BS vs Super Specific How:
💩 BS: Stating the importance of using warm yet authoritative language (Most of us are already convinced this is important. The problem is how to actually do it.)
✅ Super Specific How: Showing examples of texts/Slack messages you’ve sent to a direct report that shows how you gave constructive feedback that articulated why their work output was sloppy and what changes to make--with the person feeling glad for your feedback.
💩 BS: Explaining how to use Notion well (Hard to envision without seeing the actual set up)
✅ Super Specific How: Screen-sharing to show your own Notion setup.
💩 BS: Explaining the importance of setting boundaries (We already know this is important. The hard part is how to set boundaries if your family, friends, and coworkers are quite happy with you not having any.)
✅ Super Specific How: Sharing the actual word-for-word script you used to set boundaries with your coworker. Including the situation, your specific relationship dynamics, words you used, and what happened as a result.
💩 BS: Describing that you sent an email about X
✅ Super Specific How: Sharing a screenshot of your email copy or pasting a script of the copy.
💩 BS: Giving 3 bullet points on why it’s important to operationalize and optimize repetitive processes
✅ Super Specific How: Showing screenshots of a system for how you’ve optimized Calendly. Btw here’s my Calendly which I’ll write a post on in the future: I have separate events that allow me to easily triage calls based on importance and amount of time needed. Instead of hoping the recipient won’t want to do a Zoom call, I send them a calendar link that’s for phone calls only. I have an invite type that’s Fridays only for less urgent calls.
Student outcomes should be your North Star
Student outcomes lead to student transformation. If you want your students to transform, it’s not one leap. It’s a series of small steps hitting smaller student outcomes that add up to the eventual student transformation.
Clarify your student outcomes with this exercise. Fill in the blanks: “By the end of the course, you’ll be able to do X without Y (usual blocker or friction).”
Examples:
By the end of the course, you’ll be able to ship your first email to prospective clients.
By the end of the course, you’ll have a system for publishing weekly content.
By the end of the course, you’ll have a full cohort-based course ready to launch.
By the end of the course, you’ll be able to make your first angel investment.
By the end of the course, you’ll have a TV pilot script written and ready to pitch.
You can have a main student outcome, then mini student outcomes in each module. Look at the student outcome examples above. Try this exercise: How would you turn the student outcome into mini student outcomes that layer up to that?
Here are examples from Li Jin's Creator Economy course, David Perell's Write of Passage, and Suzy Batiz's AliveOS.
Focus on verbs
List 20 actions your student will be able to do after your course.
Does 20 feel like a lot? It should. You’re a rubber band and we have to stretch you further than you think is necessary, knowing you’ll eventually go back closer to where you started. With your list, don’t only mention the macro thing your students will be able to do. List items big and small that contribute to reaching their macro outcome too. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy of Verbs for Critical Thinking for inspiration on all the things your students should be able to do.
Now that you have your list of 20 things of various importance, think of the 3 most crucial actions your student should be able to do and that they want to do by the end of the course. This is useful on a few levels.
First, it informs your curriculum. Something doesn’t help your student reach their North Star? Put it in your content parking lot. This is the place you put all your brilliant insights that don’t belong in your course. Second, use this language for your landing page and marketing materials. When your students see these, you should see their eyes light up. “Yes, I definitely need to learn this.”
Screenshots, scripts, and examples
Examples are your secret weapon; examples give 10x more tactical information than what you can describe with words alone. Examples show students what “great” looks like.
What can you show screenshots of?
Emails
Calendar
iMessage/text messages
Paid ads
Tweets
Google Docs
Spreadsheets
Notion
Airtable
GitHub
Top down approach for what to share:
Go through your application responses or survey replies of what students said they wanted to learn. For example, in the altMBA, we had thousands of applications that served as data points and customer development for why our target students wanted to join the course. This allowed me to see throughlines and patterns, which allowed me to create better marketing to appeal to these students and improve our course.
Prospective students are literally telling you what they want to learn from you. This is why in your application or survey announcing your course, it’s worth adding a question like “What do you most want to learn in this course?”
Aside from applications, you can compile all the questions you get from Twitter DMs, emails, podcast interviews, etc. What patterns do you notice? What questions are coming up repeatedly? What’s surprising?
Bottom up approach for what to share:
With a bottom up approach, you gather and assemble examples, then put them in buckets. I like doing both top down and bottom up approaches because it helps me get a more comprehensive set of examples. Ask yourself:
What would your students find juicy?
What would they kill to see?
What are the best docs you’ve ever created?
What was the best email you’ve ever written?
What was a transformative moment and personal story you can share that will get students to see in a completely new way?
Reduce cognitive load
You want to give students the right type of cognitive load. Being confused by a poorly-worded question? That’s frustrating for students and they deserve to be angry if they see that. This is one of my pet peeves because you (the instructor) are 90% there… but the 10% with a poorly worded question means students won’t understand the prompt and therefore won’t get any value from your hard work. It’s a shame and a waste.
If your students read an assignment prompt, but have no idea how to answer, this is a bad question. It’s probably too vague so they don’t know where to start. One solution is to add helper text and examples that help anchor students so they learn via analogy.
Examples of questions with and without helper text:
😐 Vague: “What positive beliefs do you hold?”
When I read this, I don’t know where to start. What do you mean by positive beliefs? Do you want me to answer for specific categories in life? What counts as a positive belief? What type of positive beliefs are we talking about--macro optimistic views on life or ideas about my identity?
✅ With helper text: “What positive beliefs do you hold? Example: I believe I am a good leader; I believe I am an empathetic friend; I believe I am a critical thinker.”
Here we go. Now I see what you mean by positive beliefs. It’s much easier for me as a student to answer this question now--and therefore to get the lesson the instructor intended.
😐 Vague: “What do you complain about the most in your life?”
This one isn’t as bad. But per recall vs recognition, it’s much harder for people to recall things off the top of their head than it is to pick from a list. If I ask where you’ve gotten pizza from, it’s hard for you to come up with the list. But if I give you a list, it’s easier for you to pick Domino’s, the place 5 minutes away, and the place in Brooklyn a few years ago.
✅ With helper text: “What do you complain about the most in your life? It could be a person, a situation, a place... This will provide insight into what you need to face in order to change.”
Person? Awesome, I can think of people now. Situation? Yes there’s situations I can think of. Places? I wouldn’t have thought of places, but now that you share the example, I can think of the pile of receipts on my kitchen counter I’ve been wanting to figure out. I wouldn’t have thought of that without the example of ‘places.’
😐 Vague: “What tactics will you use to help bring students together and feel connected?”
This is a question I ask in the community building section of my course on how to build cohort-based courses. I literally created that course, and when I read this question, it still takes mental load to think of answers. Imagine how hard it would be for anyone else.
✅ With helper text: “What tactics will you use to help bring students together and feel connected? E.g., Slack, social media, in-person events, monthly newsletters, accountability groups, social events to get to know each other, 1:1 buddy calls, etc.”
There we go. Now the reader has an idea of what we mean by tactics. They can pick from our list then elaborate based on their situation, or think of tactics we haven’t mentioned here.
Go one step further than you think you have to
The ‘why’ is important because you want students to understand why they should pay attention. I always remind instructors: Describe what bad things will happen if students don’t learn this and what good things will happen if they do learn it. This convinces them to pay attention.
Beyond that, though, respect the intelligence of your audience. Especially if ‘what’ isn’t groundbreaking (example: “communication is important”--yes, we all know this already), you don’t need to spend very long explaining it. Assume your audience will understand the why quickly, so move on to the how.
The exception is when the ‘what’ or ‘why’ are new for your audience. Then it makes more sense to take your time unpacking the concept and its implications. This is why it pays to know your target student: For new grads, “communication is important” might actually be groundbreaking. For anyone who’s worked for more than a year or two, they probably already are convinced it’s important--and would rather have you either (a) show how to do it effectively or (b) introduce an idea that’s a spikier point of view around communication.
Whenever you teach anything, imagine Jiminy Cricket with my face standing on your shoulder saying “Great! How do I do this?”
Jiminy Cricket Wes doesn’t care about the what. Assume she already believes you about the why. Jiminy Cricket Wes cares about the HOW. Show the how.
Tactical, Actionable, Concrete, Specific (TACS)
Students should learn something they can immediately put into practice when they leave the Zoom room after your workshop is over. Print this list of questions to keep by your desk to remind yourself to constantly focus on how you can help your student get closer to their goals.
Ask yourself these questions as you edit your course (drafts, slides, interactive project prompts).
What are students learning to do?
Is it necessary?
Is it as hands-on as possible?
Is it as direct as possible?
Could this be turned into a visual?
Could this be turned into an interactive experience?
Where might students be confused and how can I proactively address that?
How can I be more tactical, actionable, concrete, and specific?
What screenshots, scripts, or examples can I share?
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