Should Online Learning Stay or Go? Longevity in the Course Creator Industry

Should Online Learning Stay or Go? Longevity in the Course Creator Industry

By Manja Horner 

Women, why wouldn’t you be excited about getting into a 325 billion-dollar market?

Why wouldn’t you be excited about passive income? And when this market is accessible to anyone with a laptop and an area of expertise, why wouldn’t you jump in?

What market am I talking about? I’m talking about the course creator industry.

Online learning is a growing industry — and it’s here to stay. If women pay attention to what drives longevity in this industry, they’re best positioned to launch this industry into the future, leveraging what’s great and evolving what desperately needs to change.

Let’s break it down.

What will drive longevity for course creator industry?

Over the past decade, a lot has changed in the course creator industry. Still, some consistent elements have remained foundational to producing high-quality, effective learning.

• The psychology of learning — The basic psychology of learning, concepts like motivation, attention, and emotion, continue to remain essential.
• The learning design process — Course creation still requires a learning design process that focuses on understanding the learner’s environment and needs. This design process is heavily based on learner need and involves developing a variety of learning activities that encourage people to practice, reflect, and gain confidence all while measuring their success.
• The fundamentals of the way adults learn — Adults learn differently than children. We have busy environments, countless distractions, and limited time. Effective course creation incorporates these principles of adult learning. More about this topic in this article Six Adult Learning Principles to Boost Your Training.

These three elements will drive longevity in a course creators industry 

What needs to evolve?

Let’s face it: the course creation industry still has a long way to go. 

In courses, creators need to rethink the way we teach; we need to shorten our lessons, focus on community dimensions, and get people to learn by doing. Creators need to keep our technological savviness to deploy learning and engage students in new ways. Creators need to develop empathy for the student experience and allow this empathy to shape their courses. 

As our professional community, creators need to evaluate the way we sell learning to build trust with our prospective learners, not take advantage of them with disingenuous marketing tactics. Creators need to swap our information sharing culture with a culture that promotes transformational learning experiences.

As course creators, we need to constantly be learning, experimenting, and finding ways to deliver more and more effective courses for our learners.

Why are women the best positioned to excel?

I firmly believe that women are poised to transform the course creator industry with transformational offers, with less hustle, and with more passive income. Why? 

Women are collaborators. We rise and thrive by lifting each other up. We excel at collaborations that leverage each other’s expertise with creative partnerships and licensing models. 

Women want to hustle less and spend more time enjoying their families and enjoying the lifestyle they want. This leads us to build smarter sales models and passive income streams into our business approaches. 

Women don’t want insincere sales tactics and overhyped optics. We want to create high-quality interactions. We want to deliver on what we promise

But the main reason that I believe women are poised to transform this industry? Because we already are. 

For the past several years, I’ve seen women like Raimonda Jankunaite who are transforming what it means to empower and elevate women in business. I have seen women like Ali Brown who are paving new ways to run businesses successfully. Women like Amy Porterfield who are encouraging collaboration and genuinely authentic people like Haley Burkhead who are discouraging hustle culture and sleazy sales tactics.

Women have been transforming the course creator industry, and we won’t stop now.

Manja Horner

Education Consultant, Speaker & Facilitator

Manja is an ex-corporate learning experience designer with degrees in Business and Education. After almost 20 years showing up in some form as a teacher or curriculum designer, Manja has become a fun and friendly trusted advisor to entrepreneurs who are growing and adding educational offers and services to their business.

She gets big results for her clients with her innovative and collaborative idea generation. How? She gets her clients to think differently about their customer’s learning experience and helps entrepreneurs sell their content in the way that works best for THEM.

Manja is very curious and thinks outside the box. She absorbs information at an alarming rate and has an uncanny ability to make information accessible for entrepreneurs and their clients.

This mom of three thrives on the stage as a violinist, podcast host, facilitator and presenter.