What It Means to Make Your Online Course “Engaging” And Why You Should Care

When dropping your course ideas in your Notes app or dreaming up your slide decks, the last thing you’re probably thinking about is how engaging your course is — at least, not often in the sense you should be.

An “engaging” course is one that focuses on adult learning and is designed to help provide your students with the transformation promised when they log in to start learning. It’s not just providing more content on top of more content on top of more content…it’s how you’re helping them apply that information to their everyday life.

It’s the key element in getting your students to actually complete your course and not leave it half-finished or untouched like 90% of the courses created in the early 2020s (don’t quote me, but as a professional in course creation — I’ve seen some things).

It’s not enough to have a big-name brand or flawless reputation within your community; your course has to create students who are excited to shout it from the rooftops who can’t stop sharing how good, amazing, and life-changing your course is.

And that only happens if it’s actively engaging your students.

What Do We Mean By “Engagment” or “Engaging” 

Unlike your Instagram account, where every like, follow, comment, share, or save is considered engagement — you’re not engaging followers to buy or connect; you’re engaging students to learn.

“Learn” is the key phrase here because just as a podcast is consumed differently than a blog post, a course is consumed differently than your social media. On socials, your goals are different, the layout is different, and even the type of engagement you can get is different.

With a course, your purpose is to teach — the goal is for your students to learn. So, how you deliver your content or information and encourage engagement is different.

For a course, engagement — aka student engagement — means your students are willing to participate and be successful in their learning process. Making a course engaging is how you help them apply the information through reflections, assessments, multiple learning modalities, worksheets, templates, etc…

How Do You Make an Online Course Engaging?

To make your online course engaging, you have to consider what your students need to learn. Yes, they need the information to achieve success (you should map this out in your curriculum), but it’s also how you present and follow up the information in your curriculum.

Here are a few good ways to make your online course more engaging:

• Focus on adult learning and breaking down learning. This means reducing cognitive overload and overwhelm (which causes students to “clock out” rather than engage) and using techniques like chunking, relating concepts to real-life context, and grouping like things.
• Provide learning materials like checklists, worksheets, and templates, along with reflection questions to guide students’ progress.
• Add assessments — please don’t skip assessments — to gauge student learning and progress and get valuable feedback on what works in your course (and what’s not).
• Mix up learning preferences (we cover this in Coaching to Curriculum) and make your course material more accessible. Use a mixture or combination of slide decks, audio, text, and outlines to connect with students in their preferred learning environment.

I could go on and on about how to make your course more engaging, but this list is a great place to start!

How to Know if Your Course is Engaging Enough

If your students are completing your course and getting the results or achieving the transformation you wanted them to, then congratulations! Your course is likely engaging enough — but that doesn’t mean you should “love it and leave it.” Keep checking it, and if you haven’t already done so, add assessments to help get insight into your student’s progress.

But, if you notice that students are dropping out or leaving your course incomplete, there’s likely a hiccup somewhere preventing them from engaging with your course content. It’s time to do a little self-audit (or hand it off and book a done-for-you course audit) and look for places where you can improve your course and make it more engaging.

If your course doesn’t exist yet or it’s a work-in-progress, but you want to make sure it’s created to keep your students engaged and provide them with the best experience and results possible, book a call for Office Hours for 1:1 support and take out the guesswork.