How It's Like to Teach a Cohort-Based Course as a First-Time Instructor
So much goes behind the scenes
It was my first-time teaching an entirely-online, Zoom-based cohort-based course on Edify platform from 13 October - 11 November.
Course Title: 1to10Scaleup
Course Dates: 13 October - 11 November
No. of Sessions: 8 * 1.5 hours
Paid Participants: 18 (course fee: S$49 / pax)
It has been 1 month since the course has ended, and I finally had the time & mind space to sit down to write my experiences and reflection.
How Did It All Start?
To preface how it all started, I believe it was both push and pull factors. Cohort-based courses weren’t new to me, since I have been learning Bahasa Indonesia for ~1 year every Saturday morning entirely on Zoom. This is another article by itself - which I will remember to post. However, it’s not strictly in the startup/tech cohort-based course. I also recently took Rocket Academy’s Bootcamp Basics course to learn the basics of Javascript.
Taking this Bootcamp Basics course was a great experience for me. I never thought learning coding can be done entirely online - I always assumed learning such a technical subject has to be done offline, face-to-face. However, Rocket Academy had great pre-class materials, in-class exercises and post-class follow-ups. This structure gave me inspiration to craft my own curriculum.
So, I was really inspired (and intrigued) by the concept of cohort-based courses.
One fine day, I received a message from Sritam Patnaik, the founder of Edify. Sritam is a good friend of mine and a fellow alumnus from NUS & NOC:
I’m someone who loves to try new experiences and hopefully courageous enough to go through all of them. When Sritam sent me that message, my first thought was: “Sure, why not?” This falls within the roadmap for 1to10scaleup as well:
Step 1: Curate good content
Step 2: Produce good content
Step 3: Start a Course
Step 4: Continue building the brand
Step 5: Do freelance consulting
However, at the back of my head, I knew that it was going to be a very time-consuming activity. Prepare all the content, that will take hours and hours? How do you structure a course, if it’s your first time? What can you even teach? Will there even be participants? What’s the follow up like?
Validating the Market First
Thankfully, lean startup theory teaches us to validate the market first, before actually producing all the work for it.
If there’s no actual demand for it, I will not spend 100+ hours preparing for the course. We want to make sure people actually want this course (and pay for the course). I quickly drafted out a curriculum, sent the content to Sritam, who then created the marketing page for the course:
This course page then goes “live”, and is available to accept payment via Stripe.
I marketed this page via a few channels:
my personal LinkedIn page
my personal socials
My own “internal KPI” is 10 paying participants. As long as I hit 10 paying participants, I will continue with the course and not refund. Next, I give it a ~month for participants to register.
Thankfully, there were about ~20 paid participants. It is time to start prepping the materials properly.
My Vision for the Course
I started thinking about the vision and intended outcomes for the course. There are some guiding principles for how this course will be:
Practical and actionable, with actual examples
Covers sufficient scope, yet enough depth
Of a certain quality (up to my own standard)
Ideally, participants should:
Get exposed to core startup concepts
Do hands-on exercises
Network with other participants
More importantly, I have my own set of standards to adhere to and I want my participants to feel that this course is worth both their time and money.
Pre-Course: 50+ hours of Prep
It is so important to track pre-course standards and post-course standards, to see if my course has helped participants improve in certain quantifiable metrics. I set up a pre-course survey to gauge the level of proficiency and familiarity of the participants:
While creating the pre-course survey, I made sure to use the same quantifiers for both before-and-after. There are also both quantitative questions and qualitative questions, so the participants can tell me what they really wish to get out of this course and I can make it even more tailored & useful for them.
With this pre-course survey, I managed to get a rough sense of my participants, their rough gaps in knowledge and what they aim to get out of the course.
Structuring the Course
Since it is an entirely online course for participants for different experiences and skillsets and familiarity with startups, I decide to go with this structure:
Pre-Class: Read materials and attempt exercises
During-Class: Listen to content; participate in in-class exercises
Post-Class: Attempt exercises again
The “narrative” for the course also follow a fictional startup as they expanded their company beyond product-market-fit, got angel funding and eventually got institutional venture capital.
Pre-Class Materials:
Before each class, I sent a pre-class pack to all participants:
Narrative
Actual Exercises
A sample weekly narrative for Week 1:
Weekly Narrative for Week 2:
Likewise, they will also receive the actual data pack before each session.
Before the start of Session #1, I have prepared all the content for Sessions 1 - 5. I did not want to do Session #6, #7 and #8 yet because these will change later.
During-Class:
Bulk of the class time is spent on slides that I have prepared. Some excerpts:
An online cohort relies heavily on visual guidance, instead of just through verbal - so I made sure to add more words onto my guiding slides.
Preparing slides for every session took way longer than I expected:
For each session - there were ~50 slides
I estimated I spent at least ~10 hours compiling content, drafting the in-class exercises per session
Time well spent though, since I have this repository of startup notes now
After I’ve prepared the pre-class narrative + exercises, the in-class content slides, it’s time for the first session.
First Session
Truth be told, I was excited yet nervous for the first session to start. Different questions ran through my head: what if the course is too simple for the participants? Will it be really helpful and relevant for them? What if I suck at ‘teaching’? What if too many participants drop out?
Nevertheless, class started.
In the first session, we went through some basic course admin:
and… ended with a (rather lengthy) self-introduction session:
My vision for the course also includes building a startup community amongst all the course participants for different cohorts, so I made sure to spend more time on the self-introductions. Participants were encouraged to share more about themselves, their past professional experiences, what they wish to get out of this course and ultimately, if they wish to be in the tech/startup industry as well.
Thankfully, the first session went well!
Second & Third Sessions:
they wish to be in the tech/startup industry as well.
The second and third sessions are the ones where I really start to accelerate the pace (and where I learnt to slow it down). In the second session, we went through:
A quantitative approach to product-market fit
Retention and cohort analysis
Calculating CAC-LTV
We also did an in-class discussion where we broke into smaller groups to discuss:
For the third session, we went through another relatively-complicated topic: financial modelling for startups.
It was tough teaching a relatively technical topic using Zoom, without F2F interactions. I struggled to go through step-by-step in a live setting, due to some technical challenges and I could tell that most participants were struggling to follow.
Something has to change.
Teaching Pedagogy
After Session #3, I had a discussion with Sritam on how to improve the course so far. Sritam is an online coding bootcamp instructor as well, so he shared some tips on how to make the class more interactive and participant-friendly:
(1) Recap the previous session first
Before the start of each class, make sure to go through the previous class’s materials first, even if it’s only a summary.
(2) Share the learning outcomes for this session
Outline the specific learning outcomes before the start of a new session, so participants have a mental model of what to expect for this 1.5 hours session.
(3) I DO, WE DO, YOU DO
This is an interesting framework I learnt:
It basically follows:
I Do: the student watches the teacher perform an example live or teach content
We Do: the student does together with the teacher
You Do: the student does the practice (guided by the teacher)
You Do Alone: the student does the practice independently (ideally)
This is an interesting framework for me to think about.
Apart from Sritam, I also discussed about teaching pedagogies with some others. For instance, I adopted some examples from my Bahasa Indonesia course: to use Kahoot for previous class’s revision.
Post-Course: Feedback & Reviews
What’s Good:
1. Feedback was good
Thankfully, I received good feedback with 100% 5-star reviews and 100% “will refer other friends” for this course!
Here are some specific feedback:
"Albert is an excellent instructor who spent a copious amount of effort preparing for each class. He ensures everyone understands the class content and does not mind sharing more resources and taking more time to answer further doubts by students in the class. Overall, I felt it was a safe environment to learn, and I did learn a lot."
"Albert's knowledge and expertise on the startup ecosystem, coupled with his passion to share and guide others, has made the 1to10 scale up course a thoroughly comprehensive and enjoyable experience. He creates and actively encourages a conducive environment for optimal learning by all participants, regardless of their prior experience. Albert is also competent in breaking down complex concepts in a coherent and digestible way for participants to absorb. "
I’m thankful that reception is good and participants see the effort behind the preparation. More importantly, I’m glad that everyone has learnt!
2. Taking the MVP-startup approach to teaching this course
Given that this is my first time officially teaching a startup-related course, I wanted to measure and test every aspect. I know that my approach has to be iterative as well, given how diverse participants’ skillsets and knowledge are. Taking this MVP-iterative approach helps me to tweak my approach and content to what I think will suit participants even more.
3. A structured approach to consolidate all my content
I have all these different materials, articles, exercises and thoughts scattered across everywhere. Teaching this course finally forces me to consolidate all my materials in one hopefully digestible narrative. Likewise, I get to “test” the materials with actual users and participants, to make sure it is really useful.
What Can Be Improved?
While most feedback points to the quality of content, I am very thankful to have received many recommendations and suggestions from my participants and other friends to improve the course.
1. A lot of behind-the-scene logistics have to be improved
I placed a lot of emphasis on the quality of the course content, pre-class exercises but fail to think much about the actual logistics of the course. This includes calendar invites, having a repository for shared materials, communicating with participants pre-class as well. As a result, there were quite a few miscommunications and confusions.
2. Too much content, and too difficult content sometimes
I want to make the course worth it for participants, as a result I packed tons of content for the course. However, the feedback I’ve received is that this course can be further split into different detailed courses for everyone.
Also, I should not assume that everyone has the same basics as well. It is more important to go through the basics for everyone.
3. Participants are busy working adults
I mis-underestimate how busy everyone will be. Most participants did not have the time to complete the pre-class exercises. Instead, pre-class exercises should simply be a collection of articles and materials, so that everyone has the content for what in-class should be like.
4. Step-by-step is important, especially if it’s virtually-conducted
Teaching technically detailed exercises like financial modelling is tough in real life in face-to-face sessions, but it is doubly challenging over Zoom. Sometimes, the screen is not big enough, sometimes the internet connection is not good enough. Sometimes, the clarity of my voice is not good enough.
It is more important to go really slowly and upload an step-by-step video, so participants can re-visit the video anytime they want.
5. Add in interactive exercises (like Kahoot) as pre-class revisions
It is very easy to be distracted in virtual classes. Adding Kahoot as a pre-class revision tool help to make online classes more fun and interactive.
My participants specifically mentioned that the use of Kahoot is good and should be continued.
What I’ve Learnt
1. The real product is not the teaching platform, one half of the real product is the teaching pedagogy…
Previously, I hypothesized that the teaching platform is key. By teaching platform, I mean the platform for instructor to manage their class:
schedule and send class invites
communicate with participants
upload exercises and materials
This way, there is a more “professional” and “structured” platform for both instructors and participants. However, I learnt that the real “product” for an edutech/cohort-based platform is actually the teaching pedagogy. More specifically, it is the teaching pedagogy for teaching online. Pedagogy is defined as the “art, science, or profession of teaching.” This broad definition covers various aspects of teaching, and there are many moving parts to pedagogy that include teaching styles, feedback, and assessment. The term pedagogy boils down to the study of different teaching methods.
Most MOOC courses score low in student satisfaction and retention, but cohort-based courses aim to solve it through the course community, in-class interactions and live participation.
2. … the other half is onboarding package for prospective instructors
Having a “teaching pedagogy” alone in insufficient. Another important element is finding good qualified instructors. Instructors need to be actual startup practitioners, but most startup folks are busy and do not have any formal training on how to teach. How do you best teach someone how to teach? How do you help prospective instructors learn how to teach and craft a curriculum on their own? These are the tougher questions instead.
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Overall, I’ve had a great experience starting my own cohort-based startup course, preparing and consolidating 50+ hours worth of materials, structuring the curriculum, learning about teaching pedagogies and how to make online teaching more engaging.