Between watching Neymar and Coutinho’s goals, we’ve been scoring our own wins here at Thinkific HQ. Our lineup this month includes some exciting new and updated training and features for course creators.
We’ve thrown in some sneak peaks at upcoming updates to Thinkific as well. The team’s been hard at work redefining the look and feel of the platform to make unlocking value in the most trusted online course platform even easier.
There’s a lot to cover, so let’s kick this update off!
New Free Training and Resources
Leverage Udemy to sell your Thinkific courses
In the past, commercial online education options were limited. You could custom build a solution or rely on emerging marketplaces like Udemy to get your course in front of potential students. Now, you can have your own course site easily, without compromising on time or control.
However, you can still use solutions like marketplaces as a middle funnel tactic for acquiring new students. The key is understanding Udemy’s pricing model. Get all the strategies you need in our updated blog post.
Beat the launch cycle with sales funnels
Getting locked into regular “launch” intervals can become a blocker for consistent, ongoing growth. If you’re successful with one campaign, you can easily lock yourself into a routine of worrying about the next one.
The trick is to set up a reliable path to your product for your target market. If you set up a sales funnel that automatically takes care of each stage of your buyer’s journey, you can spend more time on your most valuable activities. Watch our free training session on sales funnels to learn how.
Master the most trusted online course platform
Learn how to easily create, market, and sell online courses with Thinkific like the experts who are already scaling their online education businesses.
Explore the quickest way to set up and design your Thinkific course website so you can get started delivering superior educational experiences to your audience faster. This free online course fully covers creating a course in Thinkific, building and branding your website, selling courses, personalization, customization, and more.
What’s new to Thinkific?
Measure student’s success in achieving learning outcomes
Understanding how your students are finding success with the learning in your online course is difficult. Students will begin your online course with various outcomes in mind and if they don’t achieve them, they feel unsuccessful.
Understanding your students’ personal learning outcomes demands a direct approach. While one student may be experienced in your subject matter, the next may be a complete beginner. That means each student’s desired learning outcome is unique to them.
You have progress reports, but progress is a measure of completion versus a measure of individual success with learning content. (So you can fine tune your lessons or verify completion for certifications with progress reports, but you can’t test for success.)
That’s why we’re developing an automatic, low-commitment method for students to self-report their success in achieving their desired outcomes with your course. They’ll be prompted at the beginning of the course to submit what they’re desired learning outcome is, and then are re-prompted later to verify that they’re achieving or have already achieved that outcome.
Right now, the feature is only available as a part of a beta program. We’re working closely with course creators to make sure this feature is in line with their teaching style, and their student’s preferences when it comes to learning with online courses.
If you’d like to get early access and help form this new feature, sign up now:
Get early access to student success surveys »
Get a website designed for your online education business
We built Site Builder because other website builders lack cohesive, modern and effective sections and styles for sales pages, home pages, and everything else an educator needs to sell online courses.
So, you now have access to three purpose-built Themes designed from the ground up for online education businesses. Here’s an overview of each Theme:
Vision
Make your course website a sight to behold with Vision, a clean, modern theme that lets your visual content shine. Use this theme to show off your camera skills, action shots, or end results.
Vogue
Write your way into the hearts of your prospects and leads with Vogue, an elegant theme that’ll make your words pop off the page. Your sales letter is front and center with this look so make every sentence count.
Empire
If you’re not quite sure what theme to go with, but want a flexible choice for a range of multimedia, go with Empire, a modern theme designed to showcase any education business.
One less click for students to discover your course content
Students beginning a Thinkific online course saw what we called the ‘lightbulb’ screen – a simple prompt to begin exploring your online course. However, we heard from course creators, that they’d rather their student dive right into the lessons instead.
So we’ve removed this page from your online course completely!
Shape the future of Thinkific in an upcoming research session
One thing we’ve loved about the course creator community is how open to providing feedback you’ve been. Now, we’re looking to sit down more formally and get raw reactions to some experimental concepts we’ve been brewing up.
If you’re interested in helping us shape the future of the Thinkific platform, we’d love to have you join us for an upcoming research session.
Send an email to research@thinkific.com to get started!
What’s Happening at Thinkific HQ?
Dr. Chris gets us back into alignment
We hosted Dr. Chris, a practicing chiropractor and CrossFit trainer from Revolution Health Vancouver, to help us promote good posture in the office.
Join the team – we’re hiring!
If you’re looking for a career with a growing company that cares for your well being and professional growth, check out the Thinkific careers page and find a role we’re hiring for!
That’s it for June!
Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next month for another round-up of the best Thinkific has to offer.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we develop features, resources, or what we’ve been up to, don’t hesitate to drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you!
