🗣️ Transcript
Hello again! This lesson is called Adding Your Exercises and Resources, and we’re continuing to evolve your cascade into a finished blueprint.
So here’s what you’ll learn:
- 4 places where exercises and resources can go
- How the next two steps of the process work
- 4 quick distinctions around exercises and resources
Ready? Let’s go!
So let’s see where we are in the process that we started in the last lesson.
Previously, after an overview of the whole process, we went deeper on Step 1, where we turned LEARN and DO chunks into lessons and assignments.
Next, we’ll go deeper on the middle two steps, adding exercises and resources.
And we’ll wrap things up with a separate lesson on Step 4, where we’ll finalise your course modules.
But before we jump back into the email newsletter example, let’s remember why we’re adding those remaining building blocks – exercises and resources.
Exercises help students deepen their understanding of a topic, or build practical skills.
As an example, in the last module I got you to create a sample cascade for a familiar task to give you some practice in creating cascades.
Resources make it easier or faster to learn something or do something. And they can be added to lessons, exercises or assignments.
So where do exercises and resources go in your blueprint?
Well, exercises can go immediately after a lesson, to help students deepen their understanding by putting the theory into practice.
Or immediately before an assignment, to develop skills they’ll need to complete that assignment successfully.
And add them sparingly. You don’t need many.
Resources can be attached to any lesson, exercise or assignment where they would be helpful.
They’re particularly good for rounding out lessons with extra examples and details.
Again, don’t overdo it. One or two resources per module is usually enough.
Make sure you check out the resources section for lists of exercise and resource ideas.
Okay, let’s unpause the process we started in the previous lesson.
Remember, our example course helps business owners start their own email newsletter and the main result breaks down into these five different achievements.
And we focused on that second achievement: creating a 3-month content calendar where the work broke down into these five learning and doing chunks.
We’ll work through the first three of these, reviewing the lessons and assignments we added before, and seeing what exercises and resources we can add.
Ready?
Let’s start with LEARN: What subtopics are and how to choose them.
We’d turned this into a single lesson. I can’t think of a useful exercise to add, but how about a resource?
Like a list of example topics with their subtopics already broken out. That would help students better understand the lesson, right?
Next we have this DO: Make a list of your newsletter subtopics.
This became a single assignment and I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.
So I’m not going to add any exercises or assignments here.
Then we had LEARN: how to generate enough newsletter ideas.
This turned into two lessons, and here I can see opportunities for adding both exercises and resources.
For instance, if we want students to get good at generating newsletter ideas, how about giving them some practice with an example subtopic?
So I’ll add an exercise.
Now let’s think about resources.
Since there’s a lesson about 7 angles to approach any subtopic, what about a printable resource students can use to help brainstorm those different angles?
And since there’s a lesson on using AI, what about a resource with a handy list of ChatGPT prompts?
Okay, I know that was a lightning tour, you should be starting to see how this works.
Before we wrap up, I want to draw four quick distinctions around exercises and resources for clarity.
The first relates to exercises.
From a course design perspectiveI teach that exercises and assignments are separate. But from a student perspective they’re both places where I ask them to do something, so I refer to them both as “assignments” in my curriculum, which is simpelr for them but potentially confusing for you.
If you want to keep the separate names, that’s fine. Or call them both something neutral like “Homework” or “Action Steps”.
Moving to resources, let’s talk about “essential” resources.
Mostly I think of resources as being extra content that’s helpful but not essential. Your course still works without them.
But sometimes students say to me: no, this resource is essential! It’s central to my process. So here’s my take on that.
If a resource is truly vital to your overall process, I believe it should already be reflected in the lessons and assignments in your blueprint.
Let’s say you have a questionnaire that tells students what type of entrepreneur they are. For fun, maybe it’s called The Sorting Hat for Entrepreneurs.
If it’s an essential resource, it deserves a lesson explaining it. And probably also an assignment for completing it too. In other words, give it the prominence it deserves.
“Derived” resources are things like lesson transcripts, lesson audios, downloadable slide decks, and so on. They’re not new content, just existing content repackaged.
At some point you can add those to your course, but you don’t need to add them to your blueprint. It can get kind of repetitive.
“External” resources are resources that live outside of your course, instead of being created and uploaded by you.
Because if there’s a useful asset like an article or video that already exists somewhere on the public internet, you can just link to it as a reference.
Just remember, a resource doesn’t have to be created by you to be useful!
Okay, we’re almost there. One more lesson and you’ll have everything you need to create your blueprint.
See you there!