I've been teaching for 20 years. Not continuously in a classroom—I've done a lot of other things—but it's the throughline. And in that time, I've learned something that most online course creators get spectacularly wrong.

They build courses like they're writing books.

A book is linear. You write chapter 1, then chapter 2, then chapter 3. The reader goes through in order and, if they're smart and paying attention, they understand something at the end that they didn't understand at the beginning. Done.

A course is not a book. It's a system designed to change behavior. And behavior doesn't change through information transfer. It changes through repeated practice, feedback, and seeing other people do the thing you're trying to do.

Most online course creators don't understand this. So they spend months creating beautiful, comprehensive video content—and then wonder why 93% of people who buy the course don't finish it.

What Actually Makes Learning Stick

Engagement requires action, not consumption. If I tell you a fact and you sit there watching a video, your brain does nothing. You're not learning—you're hearing. Learning is what happens when you try to do something, get it wrong, adjust, and try again.

This is why the best courses have projects built in. Not "here's a quiz at the end to test if you remember this." I mean: "here's a real problem. Try to solve it. Compare your solution to five other solutions. Here's why one approach works better in this context. Now try again with that approach."

The people who finish courses are the ones who have skin in the game—they've invested time in a project, they've sent you work, they've seen feedback on that work. They're not passive. They're making something.

People learn from other people more than from content. This is obvious if you think about it. How did you learn the most useful thing you know? Was it a video? Probably not. It was someone showing you, or you watching someone else do it, or asking a friend a stupid question and them explaining it without making you feel dumb.

Online courses often strip out the social component because it's "harder to scale." But here's the thing: a 100-person cohort where people are giving each other feedback and sharing work is worth way more than a 10,000-person course where everyone just watches videos.

So Here to Educate structures courses around cohorts, peer review, and example work. Not instead of video content—alongside it. The video teaches the framework. The cohort teaches you how to apply it.

Practical application has to come first. I used to teach philosophy. Classic mistake: start with theory, build up to application. What actually happens is students zone out during theory because they don't yet understand why any of it matters, and then when you finally get to application, they've forgotten the theory.

Reverse it. Show someone a real problem. Have them try to solve it—badly. Then teach them the theory as the tool that makes sense of why their solution didn't work. Now the theory sticks because they have a problem it actually solves.

Mindfulness courses should start with: "Close your eyes for two minutes and notice where your attention goes." Not: "Here's a 20-minute video on the neuroscience of attention." First, the experience. Then, the framework that explains it.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Completion Rates

If you're running a course and 93% of people don't finish it, that's not because the content wasn't good. It's because the structure wasn't designed for learning—it was designed for selling.

"Buy the course, get access to 40 hours of video, you can watch it anytime!" sounds great. It doesn't work. The people who finish are the people with deadlines, with other people doing the same thing, with someone reviewing their work and telling them what they got wrong.

So when I designed Here to Educate, we built in:

  • Cohort structure. You start on Mondays with 20 other people. There's a social dynamic and a deadline. You can't just buy it and watch it in 2027.
  • Live sessions. One hour a week, synchronous, where you can ask stupid questions and see other people struggling with the same thing.
  • Projects with feedback. Not "submit and we grade it." Actual feedback: "Here's what you got right. Here's where this breaks. Here's how to fix it."
  • Peer review. You review other people's work. You learn more from that than from anything else because you have to articulate why something does or doesn't work.

Why This Matters Now

There's a massive oversupply of low-quality online content. Anyone can record themselves talking for an hour and sell it as a course. The differentiation now is not "who has the best information"—it's "who can actually change someone's behavior."

The businesses that will win in online education are the ones that understand this. Not because the content is better, but because the system is actually designed to work.

Interested in learning differently? Explore Here to Educate and join a cohort where learning is about doing, not watching.