🗣️ Transcript
You’re back! And that’s great news because I have another lesson for you and it’s called: Deciding How “Granular” to Go.
So here’s what you’ll learn:
- Why size matters when creating your blueprint
- The three factors affecting the granularity of your course
- Setting limits on your lessons and assignments
Let’s start by tackling the first of those bullet points.
Back when we were building out your cascade, we were only interested in capturing the chunks of work required to make those essential achievements happen.
We weren’t really thinking about the relative size of those different chunks. And that’s fine. In fact, it would have been a distraction at that point.
But we do need to start thinking about size now, because the size of your average lesson and assignment will affect how those chunks of work break down into the building blocks in your blueprint.
Imagine you have a course that’s destined to have around 5 hours of video content. And you have to decide how to break up all that content for your students.
Now, at one extreme you could decide to deliver that content as a single video lesson that’s five hours long. The user experience would suck but you could do it that way.
At the other extreme, you could choose to deliver the same content in 300 one-minute video clips.
It would probably be a form of digital torture to consume it like that. Like eating a bowl of rice one grain at a time. But you could do it that way.
Logically though, the sweet spot will be somewhere in the middle.
And picking a spot in the middle means deciding how finely or coarsely to break up your learning and doing chunks into lessons and assignments.
Looking at it another way, it means deciding how much student effort each lesson “container” in your course platform represents on average.
So if it’s not 5 hours and it’s not one minute, what is it?
Well, there are actually three factors that affect the ideal granularity for your course. And you’ll need to weigh them all up before making a decision.
The first is what’s the best granularity for your students.
Because in most cases they aren’t studying your course full-time or anything close to it. Instead, they’re probably using pockets of time here and there spread out over their week.
Sometimes they may have a couple of hours to work on it. Other times they might only have 15 or 20 minutes spare.
So if your lessons are 30 minutes each, students will struggle to make use of those smaller pockets of time. Watching half a lesson and then remembering to pick up where you left off is not the best learning experience.
Likewise, if the assignments are too big it’s hard to build momentum and get a sense of progress.
But what’s actually best in practice depends on your typical student.
If they’re fitting your course around their job and everything else in their lives, a bite-sized course with a larger number of shorter lessons and assignments will usually be better.
But if your course is aimed at a more corporate crowd who can do it at work and legitimately block out an hour or two each day, you can safely create a course with longer lessons and assignments.
So that’s one factor: what’s best for your students.
The next factor is what’s the best granularity for your result.
If your course result requires going deep on a relatively small number of topics, it may not suit a bite-sized course with lots of shorter lessons.
Instead it’ll be better for students to immerse themselves in each topic and explore the nuances before moving onto the next.
That’s because breaking meatier topics into too many separate lessons can lead to a frustratingly fragmented experience.
However, if your course result requires that you cover a lot of topics in a shallower way, a larger number of shorter lessons may be just the ticket.
Because if the alternative is compiling several independent topics into a single lesson, you risk leaving students feeling breathless and unsure of the key takeaways.
The final factor is what’s the best granularity for you.
Do you want to create a breezy, bite-sized course or something more serious and substantial?
In other words, what’s most consistent with your personal style and brand?
I personally prefer bite-sized courses because that suits my style and because I think shorter lessons and assignments help create a sense of momentum.
Also, there’s some research to say that videos under six minutes are best for engagement.
On the downside, with larger courses it can be disheartening for students to see they have “120 lessons” still to complete, even if they know they’re relatively short.
But if you lean towards more substantial lessons and assignments, that’s fine. It may be what people will expect from you. Just don’t ignore those other two factors we talked about.
Whatever you decide, students like consistency. So it’s a good idea to set some limits or norms for your lessons and assignments.
For instance, you might decide that your lessons should take no more than 10 minutes to consume (whether that’s watching a video or reading a page of text) and your assignments should take no longer than 30 minutes to complete.
If you have a good reason to opt for longer lessons, that’s fine too. But I recommend capping your lessons at a maximum of 30 minutes and your assignments at two hours if possible.
Otherwise people may find the prospect of jumping back into your course after a break to be a rather daunting experience!
Once you’ve got a rough idea of your average lesson and assignment size, you can start the process of translating your cascade into a blueprint.
And that’s exactly what we’ll look at next.
So once you’re ready, I’ll see you in the next lesson!