Since I last wrote, a host of new subscribers have joined us from my recent Circle masterclass. It's great to have you here, welcome!

The masterclass was a blast. It was exciting to be in conversation with course creators and community leaders, and share my latest thinking on how to unlock the power of community-powered learning to facilitate people's progress.

Here are some soundbites from those who joined us or checked out the recording:

Here’s an overview of what I covered in the masterclass:

Overview

To facilitate your people’s progress towards the transformation your course and/or community promises, engage your people to take action, so they get closer to where they want to be.

The course creator and/or community leader’s job is to:

Create an effective learning experience that’s easy to navigate and guides the learner towards where they want to be.

Invite and support each person and the community to:

• Use their motivation and agency.
• Take actions that progress the integration and application of their new knowledge.
• Take actions that enable peer-to-peer learning and increase their sense of connection and belonging.

Your learner/member will more likely achieve their goal when they can self-direct their learning AND feel a sense of connection and belonging to their learning community.

For a deeper dive on what I covered, keep reading.

Enrol now

When your people invest in your course or community, they are making a bold statement about their desire and commitment to transforming an aspect of their lives.

They see where they are, where they want to be, and how your course or membership can help them get there. They are willing to take the leap with you.

Yet, traditional or self-directed learning experiences rely solely on the individual’s personal motivation and willpower to achieve the desired transformation.

So, how can you uphold the transformation you promise them?

Before we dig into this question, let’s zoom out and take a moment to understand what learning actually is.

So often we jump to solutions or the ‘latest thing’. In the short-term it may feel like we’re making progress. But, if we don’t understand the principles behind how something works, when the initial momentum fades, it’s hard to stay consistent because your why isn’t clear.

What is learning?

From my experience and research, I’ve found learning consists of three pillars:

1. The individual who want wants to learn.
2. The learning experience itself.
3. The practice of the individual integrating and applying their new knowledge by taking action.

Let’s dig into each pillar in more detail:

The learning experience

Form

The learning experience can take multiple forms, like a course, a workshop, a book, an article, social media content, community, or coaching.

Community

The people in the learning experience form part of the learning too. From the person teaching and the sense of community they foster. To the learning between peers and the feedback, support and accountability between colleagues. The culture, network and sense of belonging in the community informs the learning experience. Often learning with and from others is where most of the learning takes place.

Navigate

For the individual to navigate the community, new information, and activities in the learning experience, overarching frameworks enable them to make sense of the structure of the learning experience and how best to focus their time and energy.

The three key overarching frameworks are:

• Subject framework ‘how to do X’ — a visual overview of how to achieve the desired transformation.
• Performance framework ‘what progress looks like’ — when learners can understand what poor practice, effective practice, and progression looks like in what they’re learning, this gives them helpful context.
• Personal framework ‘a personal map on how to achieve X’ — when learners self-reflect and benchmark themselves against the performance framework, they can identify where they’re at and plan their next actions to achieve their goal.

The individual

Motivation

The individual’s drive that keeps them going throughout their learning journey, including when things are challenging.

Ownership

The individual’s ownership of their learning through their values, sense of purpose, and agency.

Agency is a term from learning design, this is what it means:

• Knowledge of oneself as a learner.
• Taking the initiative to understand what they need to learn and do.
• Creating or asking for the conditions they need to meet their learning needs.
• Setting goals and finding resources they need.
• Seeking out and building relationships with those who can help them, including teachers, mentors, or peers.

Environment

The individual’s life experience and support around them inform the baseline and current skills and development they have. Having your learner’s environment in mind as you engage them will help you create an inclusive learning experience.

Practice

Practice involves four steps in a constant, iterative cycle:

1. Seeing The learner seeing the new knowledge, skills and mindsets required for their topic and learning goal.
2. Trying The learner experimenting with applying their new knowledge and skills.
3. Sharing The learner building greater understanding by learning with and from peers.
4. Reflecting The process of the learner being aware, assessing how they’re getting on, and adjusting how they approach their learning.

Learning

It is the individual and their motivation to learn that activates the learning experience.

The application of the learning experience when the individual practices, is where learning happens.

When the individual continues to practice what they are learning, they develop mastery.

Engage your people to take action, so they get closer to where they want to be.

To facilitate your people’s progress towards the transformation your course and/or community promises, engage your people to take action, so they get closer to where they want to be.

The course creator and/or community leader’s job is to:

Create an effective learning experience that’s easy to navigate and guides the learner towards where they want to be [Form + Navigate].

Invite and support each person and the community to:

• Use their motivation and agency [Individual].
• Take actions that progress the integration and application of their new knowledge [Practice].
• Take actions that enable peer-to-peer learning and increase their sense of connection and belonging [Community].

Why?

Because learning often looks like this:

We begin excited, but quickly go down a slippery slope of reality. Learning something new can be challenging. Before we know it, we can get stuck in a swamp of despair.

What get’s us out of the swamp is the individual’s belief and persistence AND family i.e. their community.

It’s also with our community with whom we celebrate our progress.

The mistake that is often made by course creators and/or community leaders is the polarisation of self-directed learning or community-powered learning.

You either have one or the other. But it’s possible to have both. It’s important to have both.

What get’s us out of the swamp is individual belief, persistence AND community.

Your people will more likely achieve their goal when they can self-direct their learning AND feel a sense of connection and belonging to their learning community.

The value of community-powered learning

Last year I asked on Twitter what people appreciated about their community-powered learning experience. The response was incredible.

Here is what people shared:

I hope the immense value of a community-powered learning approach is clear, and how it can supercharge your people’s experience and amplify their results.

Let’s now explore how to start thinking about what makes most sense for your learners, your goals, and your business.

The four types of community businesses

How we grow in online communities is mainly through connection and learning.

Connection is growth through building relationships with others.

Learning is growth through new information.

Different types of community have different ratios of connection and learning, which makes them feel very different as a member.

My friend and colleague Tatiana Figueiredo has created this useful overview of the four types of community businesses to help distinguish and describe the different experiences:

With greater awareness of the balance of learning and connection that can work for your community, the next step is to identify your unique approach to creating your learning community.

Your approach to creating your learning community

Before diving into setting up your course/community platform and sales page, it’s useful to take a moment to lay the foundations for its success.

We often have so many ideas, feedback from customer interviews, and insights from our research, but the information is spread out in many places.

I suggest to take a moment to download everything into a single page, map out your thoughts, and in the process consolidate your thinking and strategy.

​Grab a copy of your community-powered course map for the key questions to ask yourself. This is part based on Rob Fitzpatrick’s member context worksheet from his Outcome Oriented Communities approach - hear his walkthrough and see an example of it in action.

To make a copy of the map, click on File > Make a copy in the Google Slides menu bar and save the copy to your own Drive.

As you map out your learning community experience, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is there a variety of interaction depth in the actions you're encouraging?
• Is there something even "lurkers" will engage with?
• Are there invitations to connect and engage with more investment and depth?

Community-Powered Learning Activities

To give you a head start on curating and developing the activities you want to host in your learning community, you are welcome to duplicate this Notion database I’ve developed to figure out your balance of low, medium, and high touch interactions to support your people’s growth.

Go step-by-step to create success

Developing your community can take time. Guiding your members along their transformative journey is a fun and iterative process. Don’t give yourself a hard time over it. Keep going.

To give you a reference, here is Rob Fitzpatrick’s approach to developing his Outcome Oriented Community. The colour coordination indicates his four milestones for creating an outcome-oriented community: preparing, planting, nurturing, and growing. Listen to Rob’s walkthrough here.

I hope this has been helpful. I’d love to hear your experience and where you’re at!

Which 2-3 actions make the most sense for you and your course and/or community right now? How will you implement them?

Charlotte

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Let's do more together?

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Want a sounding board for developing your course or community framework?

If you'd like to work with me directly to create a course you love with a powerful framework or self-assessment which enables you to increase your impact and income, just reply to this email. Tell me a bit about your course and/or community, your business, and what you'd like to work on together and I'll get you all the details.

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