What do professors and influencers have in common?

This is not an insult to either professors or influencers, but it is something to consider when you're spending your money.

I’ve worked in higher education for over a decade. I have also, unfortunately, existed on social media for even longer than that. Over the last five years especially, I’ve noticed a trend among social media influencer that really reminds me of my work in instructional design.

Both professors and influencers are trying to enroll you in courses, while many of them do not have any experience in course or curriculum design.

Why does this matter?

Our society tends to assume that if someone is an expert in something, that means they can also teach the thing.

This, my friends, is not true. It turns out experts can often be the worst teachers.

But we regularly put subject matter experts in front of students at universities. This is the position influencers take, too: they sell courses based on an expertise in something (although perhaps with less evidence to show for it). If you’re not familiar with the world of influencer courses, they really run the gamut: you can find influencer courses on understanding the stock market, learning a musical instrument, nutrition, navigating healthcare with specific chronic conditions–there’s a lot out there.

One could argue that nonprofit universities and influencer courses are entirely different beasts, and that’s not wrong. There are a lot of differences here. But at the end of the day, both charge you for learning, and you might leave unsure whether you've gained anything useful.

That often comes down to the similarity I mentioned at the top of this newsletter: most professors and influencers aren’t explicitly taught how to design their curriculum or courses.¹ This can lead to confusing, unclear, and poorly structured content, leaving participants justifiably frustrated.

Common challenges and how I’d fix them

For context, I’m coming at you with the following experience:

• A Master’s degree in instructional design and technology

• A decade of experience working with higher education instructors (I also adjunct in higher ed myself)

• A purchaser of said influencer courses (yes, I have purchased more than one)

These challenges reflect what I’ve seen in my experience.

Unclear goals and direction

Challenge: Unclear goals and direction. When I’m learning something new, these are the questions I usually want answered. I’ve found providing answers to them when designing instruction to be helpful in setting up learners for success as well.

1. What will we learn in this course or section?

2. Why is it important?

3. What will you do with this knowledge?

4. How is it connected to what we just learned/what we are about to learn?

Oftentimes, I see folks dive into teaching something without answering these questions. When they aren’t answered, for adult learners especially, you’re missing an opportunity to connect the knowledge they’re about to learn to what they already know (this is called activating prior knowledge). This will help them anchor the new knowledge and remember it later (schemas, baby).

How to Fix It: Answer those questions before you start teaching a topic. In the college course I teach, I have a slide to start each short video of the module with these questions and the answers. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Really long videos

Oh hey, I just mentioned video lectures. That brings me to my second challenge.

Challenge: Instructors post really long videos. This can be problematic for a number of reasons.

1. It’s hard to stay focused on a topic (see above four questions–we want to provide a concise focus around answering those.)

2. It’s hard for people to pay attention to long videos. The sweet spot is 7-9 minutes.

3. It’s difficult to find or reference information from the video later.

How to Fix It: Chunk your videos. I mentioned that 7-9 minutes is a sweet spot. Recording shorter videos and interspersing them with other types of assignments or content can keep learners better engaged and provide opportunities for reinforcement. If you really can’t be bothered to chunk your videos into shorter pieces, at least chapter them so that learners can skip to different sections as needed.

Unclear structure

I wrote a post on LinkedIn yesterday about external barriers to learning. Although I’d argue a long video might be an external barrier to learning, unclear structure is the biggest one I’ve seen professors and influencers commit, although likely unintentionally.

Challenge: A learner might have difficulty finding or identifying important information in, or simply successfully navigating through, a course. The most frequent examples of this I see have included:

1. Vague content names: for example, “Week 1 Concepts.” Initially, this may not be problematic, but if a learner is trying to find something related to this document in far into the course, they may have difficulty identifying it without further context.

2. Confusing structure/navigation: learners don’t know how to start or what comes next.

How to Fix It: When naming content, use more descriptive titles to provide context. For instance, instead of “Week 1 Concepts,” “Week 1 Concepts: Types of Savings Accounts” might be more helpful to trigger learner memory later on.

When considering course navigation, the most common suggestion is to provide learners with a “Start here!” area that is obvious upon beginning the course. Adding an infographic or screencast to the “Start Here” section that explains how to navigate the course, where to find important activities and important information, and how to get help can clarify the next steps for learners.

It can also be helpful to keep your content structured consistently across learning modules. If your LMS structures content linearly, it may be helpful to start each module with an Overview page and end each module with a Checklist page to indicate the beginning and end. Otherwise, learners may get “lost” in the modules.

Have you ever encountered these challenges in a course?

I honestly have even more challenges I could include, but I think that’s enough from me today. I’d like to hear from you–have you ever encountered these challenges in a course? Have you ever, like me (lolsob), purchased an influencer course and then regretted it? Tell me more.

1. I said MOST here. There are universities that offer PhD students and faculty programs on pedagogy and curriculum design. Some instructors do learn these things! But many do not. I think even fewer influencers.