Creator Science

#90: Wes Kao – Should you teach a cohort-based course?

Feb 8, 2022

Wes Kao, co-founder of Maven, shares her expertise in building engaging cohort-based courses. She discusses the evolution of online learning, emphasizing the advantages of CBCs, such as higher engagement and accountability. Wes explores creative strategies for course design and the importance of rigorous thinking in problem-solving. She also helps creators evaluate if a cohort-based model suits their content style, highlighting its scalability and community-building potential. Tune in for insights on crafting impactful educational experiences!

56:01

Creator website

Episode guests

Wes Kao

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Building a Cohort Base Course

00:44

Just Works Can Help Your Business

00:50

Intro

3min

The Rise of Cohort-Based Courses

12min

Balancing Creativity and Structure

12min

The Art of Effective Problem-Solving

8min

Evaluating the Fit for Cohort-Based Courses

3min

Cohorts vs. Coaching: Structuring Learning

6min

Building Successful Cohort-Based Courses

5min

Wes Kao is co-founder of Maven, the first platform for cohort-based courses. Maven helps creators build a cohort-based course and deliver an incredible student experience at scale.

She helped build cohort-based courses for Outlier.org (from the co-founder of MasterClass), David Perell’s Write of Passage, Tiago Forte’s Build a Second Brain, Section4/Professor Scott Galloway, and Morning Brew.

Previously, Wes was the co-founder of the altMBA. Under her leadership, the altMBA grew from zero to 550 cities in 45 countries in three years. She designed the altMBA's beloved coaching system, grew the global community, built the marketing engine, and built a team of 40 people to support rapid scaling.

In this episode, we talk about Wes’s early experiences building cohort-based courses, how you can decide whether teaching a CBC is right for you, the frameworks you can use to design your course curriculum, and why Rigorous Thinking helps her to build quickly without wasting time on failed experiments.

Learn more about Wes Kao

Learn more about Maven

Wes's piece on Spiky Points of View

Follow Wes on Twitter

Follow Jay on Twitter

Follow Creative Elements on Instagram

Full transcript and show notes

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