Creative Curation in Course Design

In this LMScast episode, Andy Jack from Candle Digital explores the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence in e-learning in the LMSCast episode.

AI-driven interview simulations that prepare users for real-life situations and scaffolded reflections that assist learners in articulating complicated ideas are just two examples of the useful use cases that Andy mentions that are now in place. For course developers, he presents the idea of creating a “Second Brain” a personalized AI driven by the voice and resources of an instructor.

He urges creators to use AI as a tool to expand their knowledge rather than as a replacement for it, emphasizing the value of concentrating on learner transformation rather than merely content delivery. Non-technical instructors may effectively incorporate AI with the use of tools like Google’s NotebookLM, custom GPTs, and the AI e-Learning Power Pack for WordPress. In the end, Andy promotes beginning small, getting to know your audience well, and utilizing AI to enhance high-impact, human-centered learning opportunities.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badget. I’m the co-founder of lifter LMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMS Cast. We’re joined by a special guest. His name is Andy Jack. He’s from Candle Digital and Training Spark. We’re gonna be talking about artificial intelligence and E-Learning Candle. Digital is an agency, but they also have. Some WordPress tools over at training Spark, and one of the ones that really caught my eye was the AI e-Learning Power Pack.

We’ll get into all that, but first, welcome to the show, Andy. Thanks. Really 

Andy Jack: excited to talk through the conversation, you know, see what we’ve got to talk about. I think, um, just some really good topics to dig into today. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, it’s a deep one. Tell us about the opportunity with artificial intelligence.

E-learning at a high level, like what’s going on? What’s the state of play and where are we going with all this? 

Andy Jack: Yeah. Well, I think back to when I started in All Things Web, so this was the late nineties and I dunno if it was the same in, uh, in the States as it was in the uk, but used to get these magazines.

They used to have the CDs, the CD ROMs on the front with like comper or a OL. I remember that first time when we got the, I think it was a 14 4K mode and plugged it into my 4 86 pc. And, and I got this, got this um, CD rom I installed, I think it was the CompuServe, um, browser system. I remember logging on for the first time, heard the, heard the mode were in a away, you know, that sound that, younger generations might not have a clue what is, and I just remember.

Being presented with the World Wide Web for the first time. It felt messy, but it felt new and it felt full of potential. I am, I think of where we are now in terms of the internet and, and AI and Gen AI specifically. And I feel like it’s, it’s a very similar vibe to me. It feels like there is a huge amount of opportunity to.

Learning terms to, to craft some of the opportunities that we’ve always wanted to, but never really had the chance to, or never had the tools to. So I’m really excited about things like personalization and for, um, scaffolded conversations and virtual tutors.

I just think we’ve finally been presented with a tool now, which we can do some really exciting stuff and actually create very high impactful experience led, master classes and courses and educational experiences. So I’m really excited by it. I think, I, I dunno if sometimes I’m in a bit of a bubble, so I’m a bit of a LinkedIn feed and if you, you look at my feed these days, it’s nothing but ai. So I wonder if I’m in a little bit of a bubble. Although the, the way I’m getting it at the moment is you could think about the, the, the Gartner height cycle.

I think over the last six months we’ve had this wow, this excitement. This is a really exciting place. I am starting to feel that. We’re starting to hit that, what was it called? The Tropper disillusionment, I think it’s called. We’re starting to hit that as some of the novelties wor off, some of the excitement’s wor off.

It’s actually, Hey, how can we, what are the actual use cases we need to drive out of this now to actually make this thing useful and work for us rather than it work for AI itself. So, yeah, I think really exciting times, but I think now it’s starting to really. Tease out where it actually adds value in educational experiences.

Chris Badgett: Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. It does feel like we’re kind of exiting the toddler years and we’re starting to grow up a little bit and, uh, well, which, which use case are you most excited about when it comes to e-learning and ai? 

Andy Jack: Yeah, there’s some really practical ones now that I, I’d say, I say in production and we can use straight away.

So I really like what we call scaffolded reflections. So some of the things that we believe are really important to an educational experience are practice feedback and reflection. Those are really important and we try and get away from knowledge acquisition. It’s all about transformation and practice.

Feedback and reflections are really, really important of that. I think the challenge with reflections is if you’re not from, if you’re not particularly academic or maybe education wasn’t your thing or maybe it’s just a new skill you’re trying to learn. So reflect on something can actually be quite hard, so if I know one of our clients is a, um, personal brand expert and she really wants her customers to really dig into their value set. Because that underpins what the, the personal brand that they’re gonna display. And if you ask people what their values are, you know, and you present them with a, with a, a blank screen, you know, it’s, it’s really hard to dig into that.

I really like the way that AI can prompt and cajole and provide a draft that can then be shaped. So it’s almost like, at the potter, at his wheel, it’s throwing the clay on the table. AI can throw that clay on the table and you can shape and mold it. For example, with the personal, the personal brand expert that we work with, Deborah Ogden, she asks several questions.

The way we’ve worked with her masterclass is it gets to understand that person and you know, their background, what their story is and it starts to squeeze out, well, given what you’ve already told us, here’s what we think your values may be. And then what they do is they take that, say, well, I don’t agree with this one.

I don’t agree with that one. Well actually this one’s really on point, and they can start to refine it. So that’s a very immediate, practical use of AI that we’re. We are baking with our client projects straight away and we’re just finding that it’s having a great impact. The other one as well for me that works very well is simulations of kind of virtual conversations.

So we work with a client who does a lot around, career development, and particularly around getting the job that you want. And a scary part of getting a job is the interview process. So we’ve created a tool that sits within her course that allows someone to knock the edges of that interview experience.

For example, we’re using chat GPT and well open AI specifically as a way of creating personas. The personas are almost sitting in and it’s just a chat interface at this stage. It’s not that it’s not using voice or anything like that, but each persona plays a different role in that interview context.

So one might be the interviewer, one might be the, you know, the head of hr. One of them might be the MD or the fd, something like that. And what it starts to do is it starts to pose questions and start to react based on what they’re. The user fires back now, it’s not perfect, it’s a little clunky, but it gets them to the goal a little bit.

It gets a little bit closer. It knocks off some of those edges. So I already think we’re starting to see some practical use cases that we can bake into our programs. 

Chris Badgett: I think that’s wonderful. I. Like, uh, the AI space, I feel like the course creator space is also growing up a little bit because you have these subject matter experts who have a lot of knowledge, but they’re not trained as teachers or instructional designers.

So like even something like the Socratic method in a, you know, asking questions and not just delivering videos or PDFs or slideshows, but getting people thinking and taking action is just as much a part of learning as the content, 

Andy Jack: right? Absolutely. It is something we fair, we rail against quite a bit, I think.

I think unfortunately you know, I’m a huge fan, you know, given what we do about online courses. But I think a lot of people and course creators fall into the trap of thinking an online course is just gated content.

And actually it’s not really, you know, a user wants to take. A person wants to take that online course because they’re looking for a shortcut to an outcome.

They’re in place, A, they want to be in place B and there’s something stopping them getting to place B and your online course should help them with that. And that’s often not just a case of firing content at people. It’s about. Taking ’em on the journey. Journey, you know, giving them opportunities to practice, reflect, and, and get feedback.

And I think that’s a, those are almost the, that’s the essence, that’s the experience that make, creates transformation. Not the content. The content is a key part of that, but it’s not at the center of it. It’s the experience that’s at the center of it. 

Chris Badgett: I love that. Yeah. I, I love, uh, explaining to people that, you know, there’s that website masterclass.

And it’s like $20 a month or something, and you have these, the best experts in the world. And if somebody asks like, well, why is that only $20? It’s like, well, if you learn how to become a comedian from Steve Martin, he’s not gonna help you tell your jokes. It’s just, yeah, that’s not like a $2,000 coaching program or something else.

Right? 

Andy Jack: Yeah. Yeah. I mean the, the only cost. Place is interesting as well. ’cause we found that we’ve moved as a digital studio to, to developing more cohort based courses, which has been a really interesting move. And I think it’s because it brings certain characteristics to a learning experience that perhaps on demand, struggles with, but I think, you know, on demand still has its place, you know, and I think for those that want to get somewhere fast and perhaps don’t need a community experience, it’s great. But we’re finding that cohort-based courses bring aspects such as accountability, you know, particularly where you’ve got, you’re part of a group or perhaps you have live workshops as well.

It brings that community aspect as well. So it’s, yeah, it’s, I think the online world, the online course world or online education world is, is ever changing. It’s a really kind of fluid dynamic and AI is a. Can I say a new grenade that’s been thrown into the mix? Yeah. And it’s, it’s shaking things up and I, I love that because I think there’s so much potential in online learning to transform people’s lives and to transform communities in the world.

But it’s not about gated content, it’s about transformative experiences and those need Designing well and delivering well. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. Well, what are, what are some of the benefits of AI or the opportunity with. You know, a course creator that wants to design a more robust learning experience in addition to content.

Obviously we have scale, like it’s gonna automate and scale, but what else, what’s the other benefits of using AI for reflections and tutoring and things like that? 

Andy Jack: Yeah, I think a lot of experts get into the online course game because they wanna scale themselves up. That’s, you know, so a lot of our clients are typically delivering their experiences, their, their training in person on virtual, and they, they hit a ceiling, you know, there’s only so much of them they can give.

And I think what online learning allows them to, sorry. What AI allows them to do is there’s new opportunities now to scale that up and bring the essence of them into it. So, we love the idea of, I dunno if you’ve read, um, Tia Forty’s Second Brain. It’s a, it’s a wonderful concept. It’s about.

Taking everything that’s in the brain and basically put it into notion. But I like the idea of that from an online learning perspective. And the challenge I always think about, can we do that from an online learning perspective? Can we ca, can we take this expert? Can we take their insights their knowledge, their stories, their scars and their spiky points of view?

And try and capture this into one brain, you know, a virtual brain that perhaps AI could power. This is something we’re trying to play around with and tease out with the work that we do at Campbell Digital. Um, I don’t think we’re there yet with it, but I, I love that as a concept of, so, um, almost bring, turn that and bring that into different forms.

So it could be a virtual tutor, so someone that accompanies or guides a person through the course without actually having to be there. Now I think there’s always the, there’s always. Importance of having some kind of human connection, whether with that, with peers or with the, the tutor or the course leader themselves.

But I love the idea of being able to use AI to distill the essence of that person and all their insights and use that in an online learning environment to, to scale it up. So I don’t think we’re there yet. We’re playing with a lot of tools. I dunno if you’ve come across the model context protocol, that’s a.

It’s a really interesting concept around, um, I think someone to told said it was the USBC of ai. So it, it sits in the middle, it allows it to interface with different things and I can just see that being part of this, this amazing second brain that allows it to, um, to scale someone up. So yeah, I think that’s the opportunity we’re looking at.

Again, I don’t think we’re there yet, but it’s exciting times for that. 

Chris Badgett: Help us understand, just like technically I think, um. Some people have this idea that, you know, maybe you’re gonna use chat GPT, but you can also train, you can put your own source material into that second brain. Tell us about that.

Like, ’cause maybe the, uh, you know, the branding expert might want both, some general branding help from the large language model of chat, GBT or open ai, but they also wanna load in like their unique secret sauce and take. So how do we. Should we do both? Should we really just focus on our unique Second Brain or like, how do we think about that?

Andy Jack: Yeah, I think what I would say at the moment is there isn’t really a playbook for AI for course creators yet. Yeah, I think, I think we’re still writing it as we go. You know, it’s almost like we’re, you know, the trains on the tracks and we’re putting the tracks on as actually, as the train is speed in the head.

So we’re still trying to figure it out. So I don’t think there’s any kind of reset path yet for this. But yeah, I’ve heard it called a rag corpus. So is it retrieval? Augmented generation. So it’s not just where it’s pulling from the LLM itself, it’s actually using source material to, to pull that in.

And we use that a lot within our own internal workflow at Candle Digital. So we have a, a custom GPT and that, that’s always something I would recommend any course creator to create, in tax three PT as an example, as a way of. We’ve got one at Came Digital called the Strategic Brand Partner.

And in that we’ve got, it’s pulling from the, um, the large corpus of chat gpt, but in there it’s got our mission and purpose and values. It’s got our tone of voice, it’s got our branding documents, and I, I live in this custom GPT, so I’m using it every day to test new business ideas, to help me write blog posts, all this kind of stuff.

And I think. Once we have this model context protocol in place, which, which can be done to a NA 10 and there are a few other things I think make.com as well has a a model context, protocol tool in it. You can start to pull in all these resources, whether that be sat within the tool itself or whether it’s pulling from Google and start to start to use this to overlay.

But I don’t think yet, I could be wrong that there’s actually a way to use that and present that back to an audience just yet, but I don’t think we’re far off at all. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, and I think subject matter experts, I mean, a lot of ’em have like books slide presentations, maybe a history of podcasting, a YouTube channel, a blog like creators are being set up to win super big here, I think.

Absolutely. 

Andy Jack: Absolutely. I mean, if you take yourself as an example, Chris, and your plethora of videos on Lifter LMS, I’m sure if I could turn, you know, use a transcription tool. Take all of those. I could probably create, quite a good version of Chris and, it, it’s, I’m sure it wouldn’t, you know, it might be 90% there.

You might have some of your quirks and some of your spiky points of view, but I’m sure it’d be a, a pretty good representation of what you’re all about. And I think that’s, you know, we talk about our subject experts are often sat on a mountain of value that they’re not making the most out of. So there’ll be so much of there.

Expertise setting. You know, as you said, PowerPoints, workbooks toolkits, books, they’ve written slides, they’ve designed all this kind of stuff, and they’ve got all this. And actually they’re not making the most out it. And that’s, those are often the clients that come to  us if they say, I want to have more impact.

I wanna leave a legacy. And I want to reach more people. I know there’s a huge amount of potential in what I have. How do I scale this up? And I think online learning so far has helped us do that. But I think AI is, fuel on the fire too. To make that go in further. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. And I just wanna throw out another tool recommendation.

You mentioned building a custom GPT. Everybody should try that. But what’s also cool is Google’s notebook, lm. Oh yeah. Which allows you to add like multiple sources, videos, documents, all kinds of stuff. So if you’re working on a, the problem with Chad GBT in my experience is like if you’re working on a big project.

You kind of get lost in the threads and you know, it just gets a little crazy. But you can also like create that corpus inside of a Google LM and stuff, which is, or notebook lm, which is super cool. 

Andy Jack: Absolutely. And you get the novelty of the podcast feature as well, which, you know, when everyone talks about, notebook, LLM, it’s, uh, it’s always the, the, the podcast feature agent.

And I’ve used that quite a lot. I remember taking, um, I think you can come across Mr. Beasts. Oh yeah. How we does production. I just looked at it and thought that’s quite a lot to consume. So what I’ll do is I’ll stick it through, you know, a notebook. I’ll take that podcast and when I’m out for a walk in the park, I’ll digest it that way.

So I love that It gives us lots of tools like that to, to see things in different ways. 

Chris Badgett: Let’s talk about, um, course creation like may maybe more on the content side. Like I see some people trying to take a shortcut and have like, chat, ask chat GBT to make me an outline and then make me the content for this.

And they’re not really adding any of their own stuff to it. And you can create some good stuff that way. But there’s also. I, I find it much easier. I just did a course on that, how to use chat GPT to create an online course. And I know that the, um, I have a section in there where you have to dump in your own human knowledge dump, I call it, to add your unique takes, sources, ideas.

But what, what’s your advice to creators like when they’re trying to flush out a like sort of an outline and an approach on a topic? How to leverage AI without just being like, here, chat, GBT, do it all for me. 

Andy Jack: Yeah. I, I think that’s coming at it from the wrong angle, isn’t it? It’s about what could you teach rather than what, who is your audience and what is the transformation they’re looking to achieve?

So, um. Yeah, lots. Un pick there. So we, we use a technique called, um, action mapping quite heavily by Kathy Moore. It’s a brilliant, it’s a brilliant book and it, but the, the, the key part of it is it focuses on the audience. You know, it’s, it’s all about who are you trying to serve, what are, what’s their desired outcome?

What are the challenges that getting away from achieving it themselves? So always starting with that point, because I think that’s the key. And it’s all about having a real understanding of your audience, but not only from a content or from a course creation perspective, but also from a marketing perspective.

You know, you need to be, you need to be, create experiences that resonate, that connect. That only not only needs to be reflected in the actual products, but in your positioning and in your marketing as well. And I think that’s, so I, I’d always start with that. So the way I would be using AI in that perspective is actually helping me to, before I even think about course structures and course over using course format is helping me get under the skin of my audience.

I’d actually be using it to scaffold that. Use it as your sparring partner to help you suss out the best approach to tackle that problem of understanding your users. So, which I do all the time. You know, ask, ask, ask it. You know, what’s the best way to do this if you’re unsure and it, you know, or come back with, the perfect places with interviews.

So get hold of you, you know, interview, like we’re having a chat now, transcribe it, get AI to distill it. What are the key themes through all of that and through, and, and get chat to. Provide a series of questions to scaffold those conversations as well. It can be our, it can be our partner throughout this whole this whole piece.

But only when you’ve got a strong understanding of the audience, that’s when you use it to dig into structures and overviews and outcomes. Because ultimately otherwise, it’s just gonna be based on what the rest of the world already has. You know, vanilla content, which isn’t gonna land from a product perspective.

It isn’t gonna have the transformative aspects you have you, or for transformative outcome you’re looking for. And it’s not gonna have any kind of marketing nuance or resonance that’s gonna capture anyone to actually purchase or enroll in it. So I think that’s the, that’s the key of it. I always think about it’s, I think subject experts are really in a really interesting place at the moment.

And depending on what day you wear up, it’s either AI is the, the greatest opportunity we’ve ever had. The dystopian, it’s gonna, you know, wipe my business out overnight. And it sometimes for me, when I wake up in the morning, it depends how I’ve got out of bed on which side I sit. But I think there’s a real opportunity for subject experts to stand out from that.

And that comes down to making sure that whatever you produce has the essence of you in it. It has your spiky points of view, it has your. And It has your context so you know how to marry the theory with the context of the audience. It has all lots of different aspects around tone of voice, how you deliver something.

It has all those kind of personality traits that AI being. The vanilla homogenous blurb of content, it just can’t provide. So I think that’s the place. I think that’s the a way to go. The only thing I would also add. To answer this and what you’ve been a prime example of Chris, is you’ve been prolific in your asset creation over the last, five to 10 years.

And you can tell by the YouTube and. All the blogs and all the interviews that you have, that corpus and material as a subject expert is absolutely invi and valuable because it takes forever to create. So if you’re not already doing that, start it today. ’cause that’s gonna form the foundation of whatever you want to create in 3, 6, 12 months time.

Just make that sure, that stuff cap. You know, as, much as possible captures the essence of you. ’cause that’s gonna be invaluable to that content creation process when you’re feeding it through ai. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I’m working on, uh, a framework right now. I call it well, the, the three, the Venn diagram is who?

You and then how, okay. So like how is like. The content and the, whatever the, the content of the course is. But the you is like, who is this? Or, sorry, the who is this for? And I think this question gets skipped all the time by subject matter experts. And then like you said, you what, what are your values?

Like, why are you doing this? What’s your unique point of views and stuff like, that’s where great courses come from. And uh, and if you make yourself available. I call it a, a support mechanism. So like group coaching calls, email support, one-on-one coaching online community that you participate in. That’s where the value comes from and the conversations, you know?

Andy Jack: Absolutely. I say I think, I mean there’s a couple of things there. I think subjects experts forward this rapid. They want to almost download their brain and Yeah, feed it to their eyes. It’s actually, they only need a fifth of that and they only need it in a certain context. And so that’s often that’s the education trap.

But I think there’s something around. What you said around designing that in a certain, certain way and delivering it. It makes sure it has the essence of you throughout it as well. Um, and again, I think all the AI can only support that process. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. And like you, I, you said, um. We’re not sure where we’re at on the timeline, but just start doing it.

Like, when I created my course on how to create an online course with chat, GBTI, I just went full in, used the tools as best I can. It has like tons of prompts, but I also built like a digital version of myself on Hey Jam. Okay. And I was 90% happy with it. And, uh. So like in my course, I actually created a real course that we give away for free just to show people what’s possible, but it’s not perfect like AI just get moving.

You know? Like don’t, don’t wait. Right. Just like you said, don’t wait to start creating public free content and sharpen your thoughts and build a audience and SEO and all that stuff.

Andy Jack: Just create motion. I think just take one step forward. And I think I, you know, I don’t think anyone has the, as I said, no one has the path yet, but there’s, we’d like to think we’re two steps in front and at the moment that’s okay.

You know, as long as we’re two steps in front, we can lead people that want to follow us. I think there’s an interesting thing about, there’s a lot of procrastination and perhaps a lot of head in the sand about, I don’t really wanna get involved this AI thing. I’m scared of it, or I just, I’m just nervous about it.

I do believe that you’re either gonna be, well, there’s a, there’s a chap in the UK called Daniel Priestland. He talks about you’re either gonna be, as with ai, you’re either gonna be a super consumer or you’re gonna be a super creator. Ah, I like, and that’s, that’s a chasm. That’s a chasm. So, and the longer it goes, the wider that chasm is getting.

So if you’re not, we, I mean, you know, in terms of our business, when ai, when Gen AI came along, it’s very much. Where do we fit in with this? This is quite interesting and, and, you know, in a good way. And we’re, we’re open to the challenge. We’re quite excited by that. But we are, we, let’s think about, we’re surfing in the shallows at the moment.

That’s the place to be because we know this big wave is coming. And again, ’cause we’re in this bubble, I suspect it might be a bit later than we think. But if we need to make sure that as a business we’re surfing in the shallows and playing with this stuff, because when that wave comes, we need to be able to ride it rather than get drowned by it.

So is there, you know, I think making sure that you are committing some time every week to have. Practical use, you know, just have a practical play with this stuff. And I always recommend to the people that aren’t really, perhaps just have to play around with chat GPT and you know that that’s the extent to many people’s experiences, or they’ve created a video avatar or done some stuff in free Pick, create that custom GPT as a starting point.

Just ’cause it get, it’s that I, I’ve just seen so many people do that and the light bulbs go, you go, oh, okay, this changes things. And I think once you’ve had that, then it’s like you can’t help but playing it. 

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Chris Badgett: Yeah. I think the human brain has a really hard time. Like we know this from, uh, like investing as an example of understanding exponential curves.

’cause we live in our brain is kind of linear. But I love that concept you said about the widening gap between the super consumers and super producers. Like our brain can’t even comprehend. Like I don’t even, I’ve done 500 podcast episodes.

I’ve been doing it for over 10 years and. I don’t remember every single episode, every word, but chatGPT can. Yeah, so you can like, get somebody’s 10 years worth of work.

And ask it a specific question based on all these experts and everything.

Then you can even go exponential off that. You’re like, well. I wanna ask Chris. GPT, Andy, GPT somebody else. Somebody else. And you can build like a tribe of mentors. I mean, that’s just like an exponential thing based on like hundreds of years of content that’s like, we can’t even fathom that. 

Andy Jack: And I think the key to that is to be, is to be prolific in your output.

You know, be, I dunno if it’s Gary, but be prolific not perfect. 

Chris Badgett: I think that’s 

Andy Jack: what he says. And I like that ’cause it’s. I think so many people have looked into ship, whether it be content or courses or, you know, different products. But I think now the half life of content, particularly social content, is so short.

You’ve just gotta get it out there because the more you know, we’re having this conversation now that can be used and recycled and repurposed and used to form these tone and essence of me that I can then use in loads of different products as that process to. Almost the world, you know, the creating digital products now is becoming almost permissionless.

There’s very little we can do, but we need to have that corpus and that understanding of ourselves and that, and to be fair, personal brand as well to be able to build from. 

Chris Badgett: I have a, a question for you that I see hangs up a lot, of course creators, educators, which is sometimes. And I would put myself in this category.

Like I have some expertise, but I am, have a skill in curating. I’m a voracious, lifelong learner, right? And I consume a lot of content. But I see some course creators perhaps like they’re really good at curating. They have all a lot of knowledge, but maybe they’re newer on their own personal expert journey, and they get into this trap of feeling like.

Well, it’s not my original content. Like the problem with AI and all this is like you can source all these awesome material. But then I see people get hung up and thinking about like plagiarism.

Or it’s not my original idea. But I mean, if you look at a book. It has an index full of sources and you can always give credit where credit is due.

But any thoughts there? And for as an instructional design perspective on how to get past like. The value of being a curator, it’s not like you’re stealing, you’re just good at learning yourself and you have a lot of sources. 

Andy Jack: So I 

Chris Badgett: see that a lot. 

Andy Jack: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lots, a lots there. I mean, the first one is, is there anything, any, is there anything original anymore with my, and the world has, you could almost argue there’s enough content in the world, do we need anymore?

But I think it’s, it’s, there’s that one, there’s also the fact that there’s that. You don’t have to be the expert, you just have to be two steps in front. Yeah. Because there’s people following in your footstep. They want to be where you are now that are just, two steps, six months, two years.

However, when you frame it just behind you, so provide them with the footsteps to get to where you are. And that’s not about in the sage or this, you know, the, the big thinker on this thing is actually just being, and actually that can be a benefit sometimes if it’s really big thoughts. It can be quite, it can feel quite inaccessible.

Remember, it’s all about transformation. People are looking for a roadmap to get to somewhere new, whether that be a new career or a change in themselves or and so you can provide those dots. I just think, I dunno, I think you know what they say, ideas are, ideas are worthless, execution is everything.

And I think that’s so important. Just, just get on with it and just shape. And I think we advocate curation. But I think to under, to do curation really well. And it comes back to one of the furthest. Earliest points is you have to understand the audience.

So if you can take all this stuff, this corpus and material and repurpose it to a, a niche that is perhaps underserved, isn’t having their problem, isn’t having their problem solved, then that’s the way to organize it.

So I, I believe there’s, I believe, with ai. Coming in and, uh, providing so much information and, making access to information. So, democratized is that I can see course creators going a lot more micro niche, almost drilling down. I just think it’s gonna be hard to market itself as the best in a certain field, but it’s a lot easier to market itself as the only.

So much. If you can define yourself as the only person in your go-to field, whatever that might be, and it can be so micro niche, that’s the way to start to build it. ’cause you know, it’s about, you know, it’s the power law or the explanation. It’s all about being number one now, I think, and being the only, so I think it’s, if you are going down the curation route again, just lasering on your audience and test it and speak to them and have conversations.

It’s amazing how much, how much can, how much value can just come from. Conversations with the target audience, and so many people want to skip that because it feels uncomfortable. And it might, it might list the lid on this thing, oh, that’s not what I was expecting. I didn’t wanna teach that, or I didn’t want to provide content on that.

So it’s having really good, solid conversations that are either going to reaffirm the path you’re on or they’re gonna change the path that you’re on. But the best about having conversations with that audience is you’re priming an audience to buy your product later on. So it’s, it’s, it’s just a no brainer.

So I always say to our, the people that come into us. Say, I’ve got this idea for X. Have you spoken to potential clients about this? And what have they said? And you go, oh, I don’t want to, I don’t want anyone stealing my ideas. It’s not about the ideas, it’s about execution. And you are in a prime position to deliver on that.

So go and speak to your audience and start to build demand for what you do and interest in what you’re doing, and frame it so that when you create the product, you’ve got an audience there ready and waiting. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah, I love that. And also, I just want to add another tip is like, and if you’re out there listening or watching and you’re worried about you know, what makes you unique, draw a Venn diagram, three circles and just combine three things.

And so like for example, if I was teaching some kind of entrepreneurship, I, okay, I’m not gonna make a general course about entrepreneurship. What if I’m gonna also talk about like personal development and how that fits into entrepreneurship and then what if I’m gonna talk about being a one person company Now that’s, that creates a unique kind of thing.

And when you do that, you don’t necessarily have to be the best at all three of those, but you may very well be the best at combining all three of those. 

Andy Jack: Absolutely. And that message will land and doesn’t it, if you can get that out there. People you, we always think with learning experiences, one of our kind of key things that, or one of our metrics is that someone does it and says, this feels like it was designed for me.

If you can get that at the essence of your course or your masterclass, then that’s the gold dust. ’cause then you can, you can market it on that and you know that the impact it’s gonna have, it’s just gonna have a, such a big ripple effect on them and their audience and their clients. And it’s all gonna feed upwards if they’re in an organization.

So that’s the, you know, design it as if it was built so they feel as if it was built for them. 

Chris Badgett: I had, I’ve experienced that personally. I was in a, um, software entrepreneur coaching program with Dan Martel, who’s kind of famous on YouTube now. He was, uh, it was called SAS Academy, and I got inside there and there were a bunch of weirdos just like me in this giant community.

Actually, it wasn’t that giant. I mean, it was, it was big, but it wasn’t like tons and tons of people, and it was almost like the content and Dan’s coaching and everything. It was like psychic, like, oh my God, I didn’t even know how to vocalize that problem I had. He just did and he gave me a solution. It was like I couldn’t get enough of it.

It was, uh, I was in there for two years just getting into all that. But it was definitely, that I know what that feels like on the other side and that’s what you want to create. Yeah, 

Andy Jack: absolutely. 

Chris Badgett: And you mentioned, I forget what aspect you were talking about, but, I like to think of writing as three things.

It’s research, writing and editing. And we’re not even talking about marketing and promotion or course creation or anything, but don’t skip the research and then don’t skip the editing. So like, creating a course isn’t just like course creation. There’s, I would spend equal time in all of that. Let’s say I spent two months on research, two months on building the program.

Two months on editing it. Ideally after I’ve gone through it over it with like a pilot group or something like that. Yeah. I feel like people get that wrong in social media too. It’s social media. It’s not just content. IE media. You gotta talk to people, get in the comments, be social. 

Andy Jack: Yeah. Research out loud.

Yeah, because if you’re research, you know, there’ll be other people that have perhaps researching similar things or are looking for the answers to similar things. And if you can provide them. If you can do your research and create your product, then you, you know, you served an audience there. I think, yeah, I think social media’s become, LinkedIn has changed quite dramatically for me in the last, well, ever since. Twitter became X there was a big exodus, people moved onto LinkedIn and it’s all, seems much more of a broadcast medium than it ever did, rather than networking medium.

But there’s still ripe opportunities there for it. But I think, yeah, to go back to your thing, I, the one thing that makes me nervous about AI is. Sometimes it takes out some of the writing process as well. Yeah. The writing process is so critical in terms of shaping your ideas and getting things wrong and framing it in different ways.

I guess my advice would be you could use the AI on all three of those research, writing and editing, but don’t let it do too much of it because I think it’s as much about that critical thinking and honing your craft and shaping it in the right way. And I think that’s the key part of it too.

Chris Badgett: I’ve trained myself, I, I can feel the pull to just be lazy and just, Hey, write this thing for me. Like yesterday I was doing some copywriting in an email. I was like, I’m just gonna ask ChatGPT to, to write this thing. And I’m like, no, do the first draft and then get it to look at it. So I’ve trained myself to always like, input first.

Like it’s, don’t be lazy with a prompt. 

Andy Jack: But you can see, you can see it as well. You can see the output. I mean, I, you know. I’ve not really published anything on that front. But when you do create it, you can just tell, you know.

You can see below it that it’s, you know, it’s, it’s vanilla homogenous kind of LLM slop, I think they call it, don’t they?

Slop. And I think that’s, uh, something that’s really important to push against. 

Chris Badgett: I wanna get your take on another issue that course creators face which is, especially in the AI world, where you can kind of create big content. There’s sort of two paths that course creators could take and maybe your branding expert might be a good example, but I could create like a signature course, a big course on like a, some kind of branding system.

Or I could create like mini courses and kind of have a membership of like logo design, values, definition, color schemes, whatever. And. kind of have like these little more bite-sized pieces. I know, uh, at least there’s a lot of claim that attention span is shrinking. So maybe the shorter ones make more sense, but at the same time, I will listen to a three hour podcast if I’m really into topic.

So what do you advise from an instructional design perspective? Like when to do like the mega course versus a membership side of like. Many problems and solutions. 

Andy Jack: Yeah, I mean, I mean it’s kind of, it’s kind of a boring answer, but it’s to go back to the user, and I know I keep on, I keep on hammering the same point, but just it’s all about creating products that resonate for the users that help ’em with their outcomes.

And it’s, I appreciate it’s a well trotted kind of answer, but that’s the place to start. ’cause ultimately, you know, there are so many courses out there in the world that are collecting digital dust. And that’s not because they’re terrible courses. They’re probably really fantastic. But they just don’t land.

Some reason, and it might not, it might be the product itself, it might be the marketing it might be the, um, productization of, you know, the container, how it’s wrapped up. So it kind of, I, it always starts with the user and it, and, but I think to add to that, um, we talk about something called a value ladder.

Start small. Like, like this is the lifter ML LMS experience or product. But it’s given away for free. So you’ve got something where people can allow you to, uh, engage with you in a very, um, passive distance led way. Um, understand what you are all about, Chris, what I’m about at Campbell Digital and work their way up the ladder.

So I almost think of it as that. To be fair. So think about the value that you can add any increments rather than don’t get hung up on the labels. So we find that sometimes. Clients come to us and say, but I really want a program. But the problem with I nailing it at that early stage is that becomes with assumptions about what a program is.

It comes with labels and checklists that you have to achieve to make it a program is actually, well, is actually that what people want. So I’d always find a way to. Try new stuff around. Designing out loud, I would create wait lists for stuff. I would just, again, have conversations with potential users and see what the challenges are and figure out what kind of products our experience is gonna help ’em overcome that challenge.

And it might be completely different to what you think, so I guess it’s kind of a boring answer, but it’s, talk to your audience and start with them and start with them and work backwards. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, at Candle Digital, you guys also have training Spark. Tell us about the AI e-Learning Power Pack.

Why’d you create it? What is it and how do people get it? Yeah, 

Andy Jack: absolutely. So,training Spark is a spinoff of Candle Digital. What we found is that we were creating, plugins for WordPress that fill some of the gaps that, um, weren’t being fulfilled elsewhere. So we, have this mantra internally within, uh, candle Digital to sell you sawdust.

And that’s, uh, you know, anything that we create, can we kind of commercialize and productize it in other ways? So with training Spark what we did is we started experimenting with AI very early on. It was about maybe about 18 months. 18 months ago. You know, being candid, when we launched it, it was right to crickets.

And I think that was because we were just so early with it that people couldn’t grasp their head. I think to be fair, a lot of people in the WordPress space, there may be cost creators, but they’re also agencies. The demand to, to involve AI in their projects you know, needs to come from the client rather than the agency.

So there’s something we learned a lot there. But what a, what the Ai e-Learning Power Pack, it works with any WordPress based. LMS like lifter, but it allows you to create AI based experiences and new shortcuts to insert them into, into pages or in various parts of your, um, your learning platform. So there are three things that it has.

The first one is conversations. So I mentioned this earlier. This was a way of creating almost like simulations. So if you want to create a persona, you can do that within this one interface, uh, within one screen. You can get that persona to play a different role. And what you can do is you can bring it in so that the user can, uh, interact with it in different ways.

So, um, it’s primarily a chat-based interface right now, we’re looking to voice quite soon. But it’s, it’s in essence what the AI Power Pack does is it breaches the gap for technical, for non-technical. WordPress people. So it allows them to bring AI using open ai, but without having to do all the, the APIs and all the recordings.

So the first one is, uh, conversations. The second one is the scaffold of reflections, which I, you know, referenced the example in the personal brand. So it’s where you basically, in essence, you click create generate suggestion, and based on the prompts in the background, it will create a response which they can then shape and mold and use in different ways.

And the final one is also virtual tutors. So virtual tutors, you can choose where it appears on the learning platform. But it’s based on large language model, but it also uses this from rag corpus, so your own materials, so to tailor it in a certain way. So it’s just in essence, the AI learning Power Pack is that bridge between bringing AI into your learning platform without having to go through all the complexities of manually, you know, getting knee deep in the code with, uh, open ai.

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. And I’ve played around with AI Power Pack, ai, e Learning Power Pack, and it is awesome. I’m super excited about it. When I saw that and started playing with it, I’m like, oh, wow, this is, this is really good. Tell us more about Candle Digital. Who’s your ideal client if somebody’s watching this or listening?

Who’s the best fit for Kendall Digital? 

Andy Jack: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we work with subject experts and expert businesses. So they are subject experts are usually authors, consultants, trainers, uh, speakers. We also work with training providers and we also work with some quite large organizations, which basically those that have really valuable knowledge and skills that they think they aren’t getting the most from.

Typically they will be delivering in person or on virtual, but they just know they’ve hit a ceiling. They know that if they create some fantastic high impact digital products, then they’ll be able to scale what they do. And so we take them through that whole process of helping them identify, tease out their ideas, keep the tires on that and make sure that what they’re creating is strategically sound.

Then we help them design, build, launch, and scale it all that way through. So we’re the, we’re the thread. So we want to work with people that are. Ambitious. They know their craft. And they have all the stories and stuff that they go with it. They have a, an audience already and what, but what they’ve done is they’ve hit a ceiling and they want to level up their game.

And we can help ’em through that whole process. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. We’re gonna have to do this a year from now. Andy, when and ’cause I know a lot’s gonna talk about the exponential curve. We’re gonna be in a different place, but also the same place, like some of the stuff we’re talking about here. It is just even easier to do.

People understand better. It’s gonna be interesting times you out there watching and listening. I would encourage you to go get the AI e-learning power pack and also check out Candle Digital. That’s candle Do Digital. You said you’re big on LinkedIn. Where else can people connect with you or is, is there anything else you want people to check out?

Andy Jack: LinkedIn is the best way to find me. Andy, Jack, Kendall Digital LinkedIn. I have a very, a fledgling YouTube channel, but I’m following in your footsteps, Chris. I need to be more prolific and less worried about being perfect, but that’s a, that’s a journey I’m going on myself, Chris. Awesome, 

Chris Badgett: Andy. Well, thank you cope for coming on the show.

Really appreciate it. That was a fun conversation and uh, man, it’s, it’s just an interesting world and uh, just get out there and take action and start playing with the tools and put your customer at the C center of your business, not your product and the world changes. But thank you for coming, Andy.

I really appreciate it. 

Andy Jack: Thanks, Chris.

Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMS Cast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over@lifterlms.com slash gift. Go to lifter lms.com/gift. Keep learning. Keep taking action, and I’ll see you. In the next episode.

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