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Designing a Top-Rated Course

Create engaging, transformative courses by balancing expert guidance, hands-on projects, interactive sessions, and quality resources

Chelsea Wilson avatar
Written by Chelsea Wilson
Updated over 7 months ago

Summary

  • Offer expert guidance through personalized feedback and reflection tools.

  • Create applied projects that let students practice and showcase skills.

  • Design interactive sessions and asynchronous content that complement each other.

Building & delivering a top-rated course experience

Cohort-based courses stand out by offering what self-paced learning can't: hands-on projects with expert guidance that transforms theoretical knowledge into practical skills.

As you design your course on Maven, anchor on the dimensions most critical to student satisfaction - expert guidance, projects, and live interaction.

How can I offer personalized, expert guidance to my students?

Personalized feedback on student work is essential for premium courses. Even brief responses to projects and questions significantly boost engagement and satisfaction. Share feedback via Loom, comment on documents, or provide public responses to project submissions. If you're teaching solo, consider scaling your impact by hiring a Teaching Assistant (perhaps a past student) to help with feedback as your course grows.

In addition to providing feedback on student work, use Maven's Reflections feature to understand your students' goals and challenges at key moments (pre, mid, and post-course). These insights help you tailor content, prepare resources, and adjust Q&A time as needed.

👉 Check out our guide on Reflections here.

How can I deliver value through practical, applied projects?

Projects let students apply new skills and create tangible results they can showcase and receive feedback on. Provide projects that directly support your learning objectives. Some examples:

  1. Synthesizing learning: Have students explore "aha moments" through writing, discussions, or video shares to transform surface knowledge into lasting insights. For discussion prompt ideas, review Maven's resource here.

  2. Templates and Frameworks: Provide practical tools students can apply immediately, like product launch frameworks or research templates.

  3. Practice Projects: Build mastery through repetition with activities like mock interviews or code practice.

  4. Creation Projects: Empower students to build something relevant, like marketing campaigns or portfolio pieces.

  5. Presentation Projects: Allow students to demonstrate their work through live demos or recordings, reinforcing learning and gathering feedback.

👉 For more project guidance including examples from real Maven courses, check out our guide here.

What's the right mix of lecture, discussion, and hands-on practice in a live session?

Design live sessions as high-impact learning experiences with less presenting and more doing. Rather than elaborate slides packed with information, focus on interactive workshops. Build sessions around 1-2 key objectives using the "I do, We do, You do" framework:

  1. Demonstrate a concept

  2. Practice it together

  3. Let students apply it themselves

This approach helps students internalize what they're learning. In a 90-minute workshop, you might cycle through this framework multiple times. Here's a timing breakdown with teaching ideas:

👉 For more guidance on building your lessons using “I do, We do, You do,” including a video that explains each section, check out our guide here.

What's the best way to include high-quality asynchronous content?

In Maven, asynchronous content is called a lesson. The number and type of lessons depend on your course format. Choose your format based on what best supports the course's intended learning outcomes.

  • Workshop-based courses: Use lessons as supplements to enhance live teaching, prime students for discussions, and help them get maximum value from each session.

  • Hybrid courses: Create rich self-paced content as the cornerstone of learning. These materials replace traditional lectures and should spark "aha!" moments with immediately applicable frameworks and templates.

In both formats, your lessons might include:

  • Articles that unpack complex concepts

  • Frameworks that guide decision-making

  • Real-world case studies that illustrate principles in action

  • Templates that streamline implementation

  • Curated resource collections for deeper exploration

  • Video content that demonstrates techniques in action

👉 For real lesson examples from top-rated Maven courses, review our lesson and asynchronous content guide.

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