Well hello! Fancy seeing you here. We just talked about platforms, so what’s next?
Well, whatever platform you choose for your beta, you’ll need a process for getting your students safely “inside” your program.
And that’s where the concept of “onboarding” comes in. It’s all about getting students set up on your platform and ready to make the most of your course.
And this lesson gives you a toolkit for doing that as smoothly as possible.
So let’s get going.
What is Onboarding?
Getting enough people enrolled in your program will feel like a big victory, and it is, but there’s a difference between people being enrolled and being ready.
And you don’t want students’ excitement quickly turning to frustration because they don’t understand how everything is supposed to work.
That’s why you need a solid onboarding process.
Conceptually, it’s a bit like starting a new job.
During your first week you’re mostly just finding your bearings rather than doing any real work.
You’re learning the layout of the office, like where your desk is, where the toilets are, and how to find the restaurant or break room.
You’re getting yourself set up in the company’s core systems for things like email, booking time off, and so on.
And you’re probably attending a meeting or two, like an induction session with HR or a welcome chat with your new boss.
Whatever the exact process, the idea is that within a few days, you can start being productive instead of just learning how everything works.
Onboarding is this same process but for your course.
It shows students where everything is, gets them set up on your core systems (i.e., your beta platform), and it tells them about any meetings they need to attend.
So when does it happen?
When Does Onboarding Happen?
Well, the glib answer is: “onboarding happens after people pay but before the course starts”.
However, this gap will vary from student to student. One might enrol the first chance they get, another might wait until the last possible moment.
Ideally though, you want to create a consistent onboarding experience for everyone. So here’s how I like to run things…
I add an orientation week immediately before the start of the main program.
So you have your enrollment window where people can sign up and pay. That might be one or two weeks.
Then you have your orientation week where students get set up on your platform, meet their fellow members and attend their first meetup.
After that you have the main program itself. Four weeks, eight weeks, whatever you’ve decided.
And then I like to “bookend” everything with a final week to wrap everything up.
It’s a bit like doing a workout. First, you do a quick warm-up. Then you do the exercise itself; that’s where the work happens. And then you do a cool down with a few final stretches.
Make sense?
How Does Onboarding Happen?
We’ve got this far without even mentioning the onboarding toolkit in the lesson title, so let’s talk about that now.
There are three tools in the toolkit: the welcome email, the programme instructions, and the orientation meetup.
The Welcome Email
The welcome email is sent right at the start of orientation week, let’s say first thing on Monday morning.
Its job is to welcome people to your course, obviously, but also to give them the essential information to get inside your program, i.e., get set up on whatever systems you’re using for your platform.
A good welcome email will also give some specific actions students are expected to complete before the course starts. Like an onboarding checklist.
Importantly though, your welcome email isn’t trying to tell students everything they need to know about your course. That would be too much information too soon.
It’s just enough information to get them inside the program. Think of it as a bookmarkable resource they’ll refer to a few times in orientation week and then forget about.
It’s like the booster rocket that gets the astronauts out of the Earth’s atmosphere then falls away because it’s done its job.
The Programme Instructions
Your programme instructions pick up where the welcome email left off. They are a “one-stop shop” for learning how everything works once you’re inside the program and the course is in full flow.
If your beta platform is basic, your program instructions might just be a shared document. If you’re running things on an online course platform, then they might be a members-only page or a series of pinned posts in your community.
Either way, the program instructions cover most of the same areas as the welcome email but go deeper. For instance, they don’t just tell you how to access the content, but how to navigate it.
And they have one big advantage over the welcome email: you can keep them up to date as the program moves along.
The Orientation Meetup
The final tool in your onboarding toolkit is the orientation meetup.
This happens during orientation week and it’s a chance for members to get together as a group and for you to set the scene for the upcoming course.
(Practically speaking, it’s also a way to make sure everyone is able to access the meetup, i.e., they have the right software, right link, etc.)
You’re not trying to cover any new ground in this meeting; it’s still about orientation. But repetition helps the information bed in and it gives students a chance to ask questions too.
You could share your screen and give a little tour of the course platform and the materials to whet their appetites.
You want to cover roughly the same areas covered in the program instructions.
Ready to Move On?
Okay, that’s your onboarding toolkit. Everything you need to get your students ready and raring to go.
By the way, you’ll find templates for all three tools in the resource section.
See you in the next lesson!