When we create digital resources for our audience, we want to move away from "How much can I give them?" and into "How can I make things more accessible and digestible so they can reach their goals as soon as possible?"

Alissa McDonald is here today to share all about small learning experiences. She gives plenty of examples of what this could look like for you and the first steps you can take to create one. And if you're a TPT seller, definitely stick around because she gives a really cool way to create learning experiences around TPT products that you already have.

⭐️ Resources Mentioned:

• PopPD
• ReesaTeesa on TikTok
• Follow me on Instagram @podcastingforeducators 

🔗 Connect with Alissa: 

• Check out her website
• Sign up for free PD
• Follow her on Instagram @alissaamcdonald

🎤 Recommended Podcasting Resources:

• Hosting: Captivate.fm (Get a free 7-day trial!)
• Transcription: Otter.ai
• Project Management: ClickUp
• Private Podcasting: Hello Audio
• Podcast Playlist Toolkit - use code PODCAST to grab it for $17!
• Launch Your Podcast: Free Podcast Launch Guide & Podcasting for Educators Prep School
• Level Up Your Podcast: Podcast Like You Mean It
• Leverage Podcast Guesting: Guesting for Educators Mini-Course

Show Notes: https://podcastingforeducators.com/episode150

Some links mentioned are affiliate links. This helps to support this podcast at no additional cost to you. 

Topics in this episode: tips for podcasters, educational strategies, marketing tips for TPT sellers, online educator tips

Mentioned in this episode:

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Sara Whittaker 0:00

Alissa McDonald 2:10

Hi. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So

Sara Whittaker 2:13

I took one of your programs, probably like two years ago now. And it helped me launch my very first segment, well, my only signature course and totally changed my business. So I love following you for all kinds of marketing tips and all of that good stuff. And lately, I have been hearing you talk about these learning experiences that we can create, and how we can really make these more digestible for our audience for our students. And I thought it'd be a really cool thing to talk about here on the podcast. So I'd love to jump right in and just kind of start off by having you share, like exactly what a learning experience is. Yeah,

Alissa McDonald 2:57

I'm so glad we're talking about this topic, because I started posting about it on Instagram, and it kind of blew up. And people were really interested in this concept of building a learning experience, which it's interesting because I work with teachers. So you would think that we would just automatically as we're creating an online course for our business, that we would just automatically think about how do I create the best learning experience, but there are so many decisions to be made? Like, you have to figure out? Where am I going to put my course videos? How am I going to teach on this topic that I know a lot about, but how am I going to break it down for somebody else? Where am I going to have a community and then we start mixing in marketing, because to be clear, marketing and building your online course, are two very separate and very complicated processes. So then marketing starts to sort of take over our minds, and we're like, Well, how much is it going to be? Well, if I do my signature course, it's going to be this price. But then maybe I'll do like, membership after it's going to be this price. And I'll do like a mini course, it's going to be this price that offer stuff gunks up, like what could potentially be a really great learning experience. So if you take away like peel back all the layers of marketing, peel back all the layers of technology and systems and just think about what how can I best present my ideas to a variety of different learners across the screen? So I encourage people to start with the question like, if I were putting on a professional development in real life, or I was sitting down to Coffee with another teacher who's asking you to help them with whatever topic this is, what would what would I do? How would that look? Because I wouldn't just talk at them. I wouldn't just be a talking head, right? Like I would probably have some interactive activities. And I would have them you know, like I do we do you do sort of thing. And so building a learning experience online is possible. It's a little bit trickier, because obviously you have the screen in the way but it's entirely possible if you spend some time thinking about how to make it unique. Yeah,

Sara Whittaker 5:01

I love all of that. And you're so right like as as educators, because that's the majority of people who are listening, that comes naturally to us in the classroom. But then I think just being in the online space, we think, if we want to teach something, or we want to create some kind, of course, and sell it, it has to be this like, really big thing just with slides and videos. And that's our only option. And you're really showing people that there's lots of other types of options. Can you give us some examples of like what some different learning experiences might look like?

Alissa McDonald 5:38

Yeah, to give a little context, I've been spending the past two years on a deep dive into adult learning theory, how that translates into the online space. I founded a company called Pop PD where once I started working with educators who were creating online PD, I was like, We need one place for this all to live, so that schools and teachers can access it really easily. Teachers were doing amazing online professional developments in silos. So my goal was to bring that together, it led me to this journey where I'm doing a deep dive on how to create great online learning experiences. In my research, I found that bite size experiences win every single time. And especially when you're talking about creating an online PD, this is a very different audience. So if you were going to teach somebody, I don't know how to play guitar, or like how to train their dog. That's one audience type. But when we're thinking about educators, first of all, we're short on time, we are probably watching this, like during our prep periods, or really quickly after school, we are like having to implement it the next day. And then when we need feedback, so it needs to be the cycle. Bite Size wins every time when it comes to that we don't want to sit down and consume hours of content and then go try it, we need to be continuously interacting with the content. My favorite learning experience that we've tested, has been a challenge. And there are you know, lots of different names for different learning experiences. And a challenge is really focused on action. It's bite sized information. With attached tasks, you need to do XY and Z in a timeline. So now you've got bite sized content was my action plan in a set period of time, those things make it really easy for teachers to let me like check out this PDF, and this quick five to seven minute video for this one task, then I'm gonna go do it in this amount of time, and then I can come back and do another one. And we can think outside the box with what that content looks like, I'm not somebody who I really stink at pre recording. video content is like my nemesis, I can't be a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And it takes like hours of time and you have to be showered and dressed. And

Sara Whittaker 7:55

that's why I love podcasting, because I like the slides. And oh my gosh, it's just so much easier to just show

Alissa McDonald 8:01

up exactly when you have kids and stuff recording, like a nightmare. So we don't have to do that like a PDF. With a video that you recorded on your phone in the same style, you would record an Instagram real is just as impactful and takes you far less time. And it's easier to change. So I envision a challenge being a series of tools with short form video content, maybe walking you through or even like a PDF, ebook, to supplement and then action steps in a time period. My other favorite one just to give you one more example for especially for TPT sellers, we know that teachers pay teacher's is a great solution for people, teachers who are looking for an immediate solution a quick fix, I need a math activity for today. And that's awesome. But we also know that honing your craft and becoming the educator you are meant to be means also picking up on instructional strategies. So what are the notes on the side of that math activity that you personally use? In your own lessons? Do you break people into small groups, kids into small groups here? Do you? I don't know, like, pull something up on an anchor chart here. So they have that to look at those like post it notes that you would personally put on the side of that activity? If you were teaching it? What if we added that layer and turn your TPT product into a learning experience that way? So begin with the activity in mind that you already have on TPT but think to yourself, if I were helping a teacher if I were sitting next to a teacher who was about to implement this, what would my post it notes on the side be? Then think about how could you transfer that information? Could you record a quick tic tac style video? Could you actually make annotations off to the size of that PDF? Is there a way you could present the instructional strategy piece to create a learning experience with an I like to call these toolkits so toolkits would have the activity At the center of it, or the tool, with your notes, or whatever your play by play off to the side, also an example of you. Sorry, I get like really excited about this stuff. No, I love this. Yeah, you're in the classroom, like, take your cell phone, if you can point it at you, obviously not your kids. And take a video of you actually doing the lesson and then do like a little play by play for your audience have this. Notice this, look how I said this, or did this. This like nuanced stuff is really hard to capture in your teaching, but it's the gold. It's the real gold. The math activity is cool, but it's replaceable. The real goal is how do I actually implement this? So toolkits on my other favorite?

Yes. Oh, my gosh, I love both of those examples. And as you're talking, I mean, of course, I'm like podcast obsessed. So I'm thinking, you know, if you have a TPT resource, like you're talking about even creating like a private podcast series, yeah, to go along with it to like, explain the reasoning behind it or give a step by step of how you would actually implement it. Yes, there's so many cool options, which is really fun to think about, because it really is, like, sky's the limit in terms of how many products you can create, how many toolkits you can create? Yes, how many, how many of these experiences you can create for people? Yeah, and

I think that if we bring marketing back into it, we in like 2020, and 2021, people were buying $300 $400 signature courses, because it was like a big boom of courses, people were excited to learn something. And in an often, in the case of teachers, like we were just desperate for information on how to quickly pivot to a virtual environment, that has completely dropped off. And my theory is because some of those courses were really bad. And people spent money on things that didn't give them the solution they were looking for. So they're burned. And you know, that's, that's not your fault. But it's harder to sell a big Signature Course in 2024, I think it will continue to be because of that reason. And because people didn't finish them. Even if it weren't good, they didn't finish them, because they weren't built into these learning experiences that are meant for adults to succeed with. I think if you have a signature course that you've been trying to sell, and you've been struggling, if you break it up into these smaller learning experiences, and on the marketing side, put a different offer behind it, you're going to sell it much more easily.

Yeah, totally. And I'm thinking like, as you're, as you're talking about these big signature courses, I think people are just getting busier, they're just getting more distracted. And now it's like, as a consumer when I see because I'll see people marketing their courses. And they're, it's like, it's a 20 module course. And it's like, they're saying that, like, it's a good thing. But to me, as a consumer, I'm like, I'm never gonna have time to get through all of that. So I know like for me and my own behaviors, and I know this is the case for so many people, I'm looking for things that can give me that immediate win that immediate solution that I'm looking for. So a big question that I have is, I know a lot of people do have a signature course already. So if somebody is listening, and they're thinking, and maybe their signature courses is still doing well. But I still think this is something that we should really think about. How could they break that signature course down into smaller learning experiences? Like where could they start without completely starting from scratch?

Yeah, I love this question. Start with the piece of your signature course that in the past, you have realized has really given your learners a light bulb. I'll give an example. So I have a course called Course Creators intensive, which is about creating your course and marketing your course and I mentioned earlier, those are two very different things. The really popular part of the course comes and it's kind of a heftier part two, when we get to the marketing of your course. So in 2024, although I sell plenty of course creators intensive, you know seats, I decided to peel apart some of the marketing templates that I had in there. Some of the tools I had, I had a like a sales page template, email sequence template for launch, some launch calculators, trying to think like launch calendars with the videos to go with them, peeled that off and made it into a toolkit, and then made an option for people to buy. I sell the toolkit individually. So I sell it all the time on my Instagram and into my email list. But also you can add it on when you're buying the rest of the course that was an easy when I had all the materials, I just reformatted it chopped up the price a bit which made course creators intensive, the course much easier for people to jump into because now that's a lower price. And if you want to add the launch toolkit on you can or you can buy it later down the road when you're Ready. So it was just by understanding what was the part that gave people the most light bulb moments? How could I peel that away and let more people access it?

I think that that's so smart and so doable. I'm thinking of like my own course about logic and podcasts. Like, there are definitely pieces that I can take out of that too. For those people who are like, I want to take action now, like, just give me the really juicy stuff like a launch checklist or

exactly what it was like, a lot of people didn't need that whole beginning part, they just needed the launch. So you're just making it more accessible by separating it. And one other thing I want to mention is, if you're new, and you haven't yet created your course, and you're like, What can I do to make these learning experiences more digestible? Don't start with three videos introducing your topic and why it's important. Because people already know if they bought your course on how to start a podcast, they're already bought in, they already literally bought into the solution. So don't bother with that. I know you feel it's important for people to have the why understanding but I would rather you did a two minute intro video to your course. That was like, congratulations on being here. You did the right thing you already know podcasting is a great tool for your business. Now let's dive in. Because people are gonna skip those videos anyway. It's a great heel back on the time, like let's just if you have those, like go just delete that every record your first two to three minutes to get people pumped and excited and help them move through that beginning content. Yes, I

actually heard somebody talked about this, I don't know last year or something. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, that is so true. I think it's like a natural for us to start there. But it's so unnecessary. Because just like you said, people already bought the thing they already know they want to do it. So just jump right in.

Exactly. Exactly.

I have a quick question about something you were talking about before you were talking about doing challenges as a type of learning experience? Do those need to be something that you're like running live? Yeah.

So there are two schools of thought on live. And when I started pop, PT and started really researching, you know, live cohorts, one of the problems about running anything live is we're teachers were teaching for the majority of the day, and we're in a million different time zones, it's really hard for us to do something synchronously with a group of teachers around the world yet, there's something really cool about doing something synchronously with teachers around the world. How do we capture that live feeling without actually having a bunch of live calls, if you've done live calls, you know, everybody comes to the first one, some people come to the second one, nobody comes to the third one, and then you're literally crickets. Yeah. And it's nobody's fault. It's just really hard. We're teachers, we need asynchronous stuff, too. So I love to combine asynchronous with synchronous and giving that feeling of live. For example, if I had a challenge, I would have a bunch of materials that were static, that we're living in, you know, my my course platform, and then I would run cohorts of that. So I do this with course creators intensive to keep using that as the example. You can join anytime the material is paced. So it's eight weeks of material. And there are eight weeks worth of tasks to go with it. But I run a live cohort of it a couple times a year. And by live I mean, there's a community, it's open all the time. But during these cohorts, like we had one in January, I'm posting weekly, to help them move through the content, not more content, you don't have to give people more, you just need to help them get through the existing content, challenging them, I'm reminding them, I'm asking them questions, and I go live twice, in the eight weeks. It doesn't have to be every week, it doesn't have to be every month until the end of time. Just during that eight week sprint, I'm gonna go live a couple times push you forward to answer your questions, walk you through some of the content. We're doing this together. So it's a nice way to combine both.

Yeah, that's a good balance for sure. And something you just said is gold, which is like people don't need more and more and more content. They need that accountability and that kind of like guidance to push through and actually accomplish what they came to you for. Yeah, exactly. So the different learning experiences that you've given examples for are you able to give us like a ballpark of what you might price these things out. Because I would imagine they're like, you know, a lower price than Yeah, typical course.

This is the number one question I get. And there are so many determining so we're talking now about offers. Yeah, an offer is really the value that you've created in that learning experience. It's made up of a lot of different things. It's made up of not the length of the course or how many videos you have. That's not what makes your course valuable like you just mentioned. Well it makes your your learning experience valuable is like How quickly can I get my solution? I obviously am purchasing this because I have a problem. How quickly can you give me the solution? Nobody wants a million videos, they want the solution. So it depends how quickly can you get them the solution? If it's eight weeks, and you give them the support they need, and most people are going to come out of the other side, would that solution, then you've got something really valuable. I could give you a number like it should be $40. Or it should be $400. But I don't hold the answer as to what price point it should be. So there are a couple of considerations I want you to think about. One is the value what we just talked about how quickly can you get them the result? To how in demand is your topic? If it is something like just to give an example if it's up, I just talked about this in my email, but I went on vacation last week, and there was a poolside Cabana, that was selling like sunscreen, right? And I'm from New York, and I was burning up quickly and forgot my sunscreen. I literally pay you $80 For that sunscreen. Yes, it's a big problem. It's painful. Literally, it is pressing, and I need it now. Okay, great, you can have a higher price. You'll look at your competitors. And I know that's hard. But like you do need to understand like don't go down a spiral with it. But you do need to understand what else is out there. And I'm not saying undercut your competitors. But look at what are the price points that people have to choose from? And what is the value assigned to those price points? And where do I fit in there? Look up people with similar learning experiences in different niches. What are they charging? And does it appear that they're selling are people engaging with it, and then test it, it's an experiment, throw a price out there, do your thing live, do not record pre record all the videos, put the whole thing together and then sell it, try to pre sell it if you can, so that you have some security that your price that you picked is correct. Run it live do it in person or or just kind of make it up as you go. So that you're not putting a ton of time in ahead. And then you'll get the answer you need. The only way to get an answer about a price is to have somebody take out their wallet and pay for it.

Oh my gosh, yes. Mic drop. So true. You have to just be willing to try and be flexible. And it's all an experiment, especially the first couple times that you do it.

Yeah. And I think one thing I forgot there's consider your audience. So we're selling to teachers, this is a whole other topic. But don't go at it like, oh, I should price this really low because teachers don't have any money. Although that's you know, that's really ethical of you. That's great. But I don't want you to undervalue yourself because schools have money, schools have lots of money. That's why I started pa PD. It's like, Could we just start funneling the school money toward these things rather than having teachers pay for it themselves? I know that's a tricky topic. But instead of thinking, Okay, gotta price is really low. So teachers can buy it think how can I empower teachers to get the funding from their school to buy this? Can I give them a letter they can share with their admin? You know, can I give them a one pager they can that will be more geared toward their school? Can I help walk them through the potential steps of getting into contact with somebody at their school to ask for the funds, it's not going to work 100% of the time. But I think I would rather you try to empower your teachers to get the money from the place that should be paying for it, then lower the price. And just hope for the best?

Yes, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad that you brought that up, I have several clients who will, you know, talk about their their resources on their podcast, and a lot of them have, like a templated letter that they provide to their listeners that they can kind of just plug and play fill in hand to their admin to ask for these funds. And I think that's probably something that not enough people are doing and like making clear to their audience that this is an option. And it's worth a shot to at least ask for the funding, because a lot of times it will be a yes. So I think that's something important to consider for sure. So if somebody just to kind of like start wrapping up here, you've given us so much good information. And I know my wheels are turning. Again, like I said earlier, I just think it's this a really fun conversation, because there's just so much opportunity. And it just shows how you can, in a lot of cases, take what you already have to and turn them and just maybe tweak them a little bit and make them even more accessible for your audience. So to kind of leave people today what would be maybe like a first step that somebody could take if they are wanting to try creating one of these more digestible learning experiences.

I would run an experiment I would take take a look at what you already have, whether that's an existing course or maybe it's a TPT product, start with your best sellers or like your most popular the thing that you know, and you know, like the thing that people are like, Oh my gosh, yes, that's so amazing. And then think about how you could remix it. How could you and go back To that instructional strategy question for a lot of you as educators, how can I take this and really make it so that a teacher can turn around and do it successfully tomorrow, this week, next week, and then test it. So you this doesn't have to be complicated pull up notion, pull up a Google Doc, start typing out what that learning experience could look like. And then share it with people don't go make the learning experience, go give it to your audience and say, you know, pre sell it or get on a waiting list for this thing. And then if you get people on the waiting list, definitely, if you get people to buy it, you have the validation, you need to move forward, keep it light, keep it simple, and then sell it to your beta group, give them maybe some additional support, or some some incentive for being like a founding person or beta person to try this learning experience. Go through it with them live, get feedback on that learning experience, like do it together, so that you can get the feedback, you need to then remix it again, and put sort of a final version out there. But the really cool thing about these smaller learning experiences, they sell better on evergreen. So once you've perfected that learning experience, then you can put it on evergreen, and you can have it available all the time, it's gonna be much easier to sell and not need as much like live launching as a larger priced product. Hmm,

I love it. And we all love to hear advice on what's easier to sell on evergreen. So yes. And that's when I actually learned that from you when I first started creating my resources is to do that pre sell and create that waitlist, get that validation that yes, people are buying and then kind of create as you go, that was a really, really good decision. It made the process a lot easier. Awesome, Melissa, well, thank you so much for everything today. Can you tell everybody if they're not already familiar with you where they can find you online?

Yeah, so I'd love to connect on Instagram, feel free to send me a DM I also love reality TV. So you can I'd love to talk about whatever reality TV shows on feel free to DM me Alyssa a McDonald on Instagram, my website, if you are looking for a marketing support, or course creation support, whether that's in the form of a learning experience, or a toolkit, or even I have services, you can go to teacher hustle university.com. And then I would love for you to try out pop PD it is you know, a new platform, we're always improving it, we're looking for feedback, and it's free. So go and try it out. It's pop pd.co. It's a collection of professional development courses for other educators. And we're building out learning tools that are making it easier for you to create these experiences. For example, we have a challenge template, you can just plug your stuff in and have a challenge ready to go with annotations off to the side of your resources and places for you to sort of earmark your video, like let's say you're at the two minute mark, you want to leave an annotation you can do that. So lots of different things that we're experimenting with. And we'd love to get your feedback. So pa pd.com You can sign up for free and start playing around with it.

Matt is so awesome. I love that you have all of that available for people. Definitely go check that out. I will put all of that in the show notes. And speaking of reality TV today, at the time of this recording, there's new love as blind episodes out now.

Like right now or do I have to wait till seven tonight? I

haven't checked yet. I haven't checked yet either. I was kind of hoping they're already available. Hold on. Let me go through my whole workday and say I'm literally going to check right now.

At the time of this recording I'm also stuck on Risa TISA on tick tock Have you done that yet? There goes all night if you have oh no wait, what

did you just say?

Risa TISA on tick tock, okay. It's a reality show. Basically, on tick tock. This woman is the best storyteller. She has a 50 part series on is called a Hu TF did I marry? And it's a it's basically like a cat fish episode. But very, like, long I've been watching it every night streaming it to my TV. My husband's been watching it. It is so wild. You're gonna love it. So go.

Oh my god, wait, spell that out for me. What is it? E

S A. U S A?

Okay, well, I know what I'll be doing for the rest of the day. Not that I don't have a million other things to do. I really, and it doesn't okay, it doesn't look like episodes are up yet. So maybe we do have to wait until tonight. But we'll get some work done today. More hours. Yeah. Probably for the best. Awesome. Well, listen, thank you so so much. This was a lot of fun. And I know I learned a lot. So thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks again to Alyssa for sharing all about learning experiences. I hope this gives you some really good ideas on how you could try this in your business. And if you're a podcaster looking for ways to improve and grow your show, I have several smaller resources that you can get through quickly and take action on right away. You can check those out at podcasting for Educator dot com. Thanks so much for being here today and I'll catch you here next week. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode to keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.