This week's challenge is to create a digital learning magazine. Mine pits 12-year-olds against sales and marketing executives. Read more...

This week’s challenge is to create an educational game for kids, so I gave you some money and took you to a cupcake shop. You're welcome. Read more...

(This post is part 1 of 2) Typically online courses see a completion rate of 7-14%. So, only 7-14% of students that sign up for a course actually finish it. MOOCs (massive open online courses) are often even worse. At Thinkific, our completion rates do vary from course to course, but we typically see completion rates in the 85-95% range, significantly higher than average. Should you care about completion rates for your online courses? The short answer is… of course you should! But why? And what if I’m just out to make a buck selling courses, should I still care about completion rates? Here’s a look at online course completion rates and why you should care. First, a few reasons why students do not complete online courses: the course was too time intensive the lectures were too long the course delivery software was old, clunky or delivered a poor user experience no encouragement to complete the course they just forgot about it after they signed up Why shorter lessons work better: shorter lectures (2-7 minutes) allow students to feel rewarded each time they complete a small part of the course, especially if your course software gives them feedback and encouragement along the way they can see their completion move slowly towards 100% as they tick off or complete each small item they have more control and can take courses on their own time and at their own pace learners will have a much better experience consuming short lessons and be less likely to become bored and leave the course all together What if I already have longer videos or lessons? Don’t worry if you’ve got longer content already produced. It’s easy to cut longer lectures up into bite size, digestible pieces. There’s plenty of free video editing software that will allow you to cut your longer lectures up into smaller pieces including iMovie (for Mac) and Movie Maker (for PC). Why should I care about online course completion rates? Regardless of your motivations for offering online courses, you should care about completion rates. But why? Regardless of your motivations for offering online courses, you should care about completion rates.Click To Tweet Higher completion rates mean happier learners that get more value out of your course. And that leads to a host of benefits including: students value your course more and are…. more likely to review it positively more likely to refer others to your course more likely to share it on social networks more likely to actually learn and retain information from your course more likely to apply the information from your course more likely to return to you for future learning When a learner completes a course, they are more likely to get more value out of the course and to value the course itself. This means higher ratings and reviews, which helps both if you’re tying to sell copies of your course and if you just want more students. Higher completion rates and happier students also increases referrals of new potential learners, which will drive up your student base, client list, and course sales. There’s also the obvious reason that if learners don’t complete your course they won’t have learned as much and you won’t get to share your knowledge with as many people as you would with better completion rates! We now understand the problem, but what can be done about it? Check out part 2 of our post where we share 6 online course completion tips to see completion, engagement and enrollment rise for your courses.  

This week's challenge is to share your top tips for freelancers. I wrote a few words, grabbed a few photos, and made it happen. Read more...

This week a reader asked me how to find work as a freelancer, so I've trotted out my 3-step secret formula to share it with the world. Read more...

I just spent a week of vacation doing photo challenges and it's time to share the results. Here's how you can do the same! Read more...

This week's challenge is to present data using interactive charts and graphs, so I decided to chart a popular Christmas carol. Read more...

Pantone chose marsala as their 2015 color of the year, and I chose the father of our country to help show off how good it can look. Read more...

In the wake of David Anderson's count of #ELHChallenge entries came the question "What's your favorite challenge?" Read more...

Ready for a fresh start? Kick off the new year by climbing Heroes Mountain: A game that leads straight to e-learning success!  Read more...

This challenge is to get creative with drag-and-drop interactions. Can you get this guy geared up for work? Read more...

This challenge is to make an infographic interactive, and I went with a graphics infographic. Read more...

This challenge is to take 3 disparate templates and create one peaceful template whose elements coexist in harmony.  Read more...

Here's an easy way to make money: Get into this week's invoice design challenge - then bill someone!  Read more...

This week it's time to reveal how I get instructional design stuff done - podcast-style! Read more...

This week's challenge is about creating a little bit of medical training. Good thing this elearning doctor is "in"! Read more...

This week's challenge is about Valentine's Day. Here's a chance to spin the wheel to find your perfect match! Read more...

Two challenges in one? I tackled this week's math challenge & added it to a recent football one. Score! Read more...

This challenge is to create e-learning images to share. I grabbed my camera and started shooting. Read more...

This week's challenge is to create an odd course title screen. Mine features some local talent. Read more...

Global Edmonton | Lynden Dorval weighs in on proposed school board policy. I’ve been following this story since Mr. Dorval was first suspended. I hope this passes.

This week's challenge is to use toys in e-learning, and mine took the opportunity seriously. Read more...

(Interested in why online course completion rates matter? Read part 1 here!) We’ve pulled together some of our best tips for improving your course completion rates. 6 tips to higher completion & engagement for your online coursesClick To Tweet Here’s how: Keep it short - Total course length should be between 30 minutes to 3 hours at most. If you have a longer course, split it up into pieces e.g. level 1, level 2, level 3 Split it up - create shorter lectures (2-7 minutes is ideal). If you currently have longer lectures it’s easy to cut them up into pieces and there’s no need to remake them. (Why shorter lessons work better) Modern software - use modern course delivery software that’s mobile accessible and gives a great customer experience. I may be biased, but Thinkific is a great option for this. Encouragement - Give students a little pat on the back as they move through the course. Let them know how they are doing and how much they have accomplished. This is part of gamification and can dramatically increase engagement and completion rates. Remind them - an automated reminder email campaign can have a profound effect on your completion rates. Simply reminding people regularly after they sign up will bring them back to finish the course. You can also consider dripping content to them over time. Drip content means that the actual course content is not all available when they first sign up, and is only released over time. Deadlines - depending on the nature of your relationship with your learners, you may want to establish a deadline for completion or offer a bonus or additional benefit for completion within a certain period of time. Try putting a few or all of the online course completion tips above into practice and you’ll see completion, engagement and enrollment rise for your courses!  I’d love to hear how this works for you, or if you have any tips of your own. Tweet at us, or drop a comment below!

At Thinkific, we’re constantly coming up with new ways to improve our platform and your user experience. This month, we’re excited to announce that our newest feature is Custom Fields! What are custom fields? Custom Fields are additional fields you can request in your sign up form to collect unique information about your users. Why would I want to create custom fields? You are no longer limited to merely name and email. Instead of having knowledge of the most basic information, you can ask for anything, such as phone, company, school, city, Twitter handle, or blog feed. You can have an increased level of organization of your user management system. By segmenting users based on a certain category, you can tailor marketing or communication specifically for them. For example, if you’re hosting a meet-up in your city, you can choose to email a segment of your users who are located near you. How do custom fields work? Create a custom field. Wait for someone to fill our your field. Get ready to learn details about your students. For step-by-step instructions, visit our support page here. I want to use custom fields! If you’re a Thinkific user, you already have access! Head to your dashboard to try it out. If you are not yet a Thinkific user, get Custom Fields (and all our other awesome features!) by creating an account on Thinkific The post New Feature: Custom Fields appeared first on Thinkific.