Four Ways to Make your Masterclass/Workshop ACTUALLY help people learn
Can you remember your favorite teacher? Or maybe the best lesson you ever learned?
It was probably full of excitement, fun and things that blew your mind.
(Yes, even if it was a Kindergarten lesson that is equally mind blowing)
Now that we are in adulthood and many of us are in entrepreneurship, we are enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks or as some say Google University.
You are just making do with the actions you take, research you find and making the best of it.
But, sometimes we are able to jump back into that student’s seat when we attend a workshop or masterclass, right?
We get to finally have someone who has mastered something we want to know about teaching us like Mrs. Smith did in 4th Grade Social Studies. (You didn’t have to know what the Bill of Rights was, she told you! Probably with a School House Rock Video from VHS).
But, raise your hand if you have ever been let down by a masterclass or virtual workshop?
(Raises Hand 🙋)
They promise the world in a 90 minute webinar and all you get is a sales pitch? I get it, I’ve sat through a fair few as well!
And I think there is one main ingredient missing from their masterclass recipe.
And it is a sprinkle of intentional learning design!
Now, before your eyes roll back in your head further than it did in Pre-Calc class, this is something that everyone can integrate into their masterclasses or workshop and no need to scour the internet or go back to school for an Education Degree.
At G&G we spend our days immersed in the world of learning (because we love it, spent over 20 years in traditional education and because it is part of all of the services we provide).
So we thought, “why don’t we take the top tips we wish entrepreneurs who are experts in their field knew about learners and help them elevate their next masterclass or workshop?”
And the reason we truly believe that this is the missing ingredient is because we believe this with our whole hearts… “information doesn’t guarantee transformation.”
Meaning that just because you are an expert in (insert your niche here) and can talk someone's ears off about it, doesn’t mean people are going to get it.
Think back to maybe a teacher you didn’t learn from. They might have even been a college professor, leader in the industry (cough My Chemistry Professor cough) but they just spewed high level information at you expecting you (the novice) to understand at their expert level.
We see this happen a lot with clients who have the biggest hearts in the world to give their clients the world only to get feedback like:
“I didn’t even watch the videos”
“I gave up on lesson 1”
“I didn’t get it”
HEARTBREAKING! 💔
A lot of times is it just a little learning intentionality that is needed to get those students to start saying:
“This was the best thing I’ve ever invested in”
“I got exactly what I needed”
“I absolutely loved learning from _____”
Four Ways to Make your Masterclass/Workshop ACTUALLY help people learn
(Note: These tips can also be used for your memberships, online courses and coaching cohorts)
This is not just Sarah & Hannah’s ideas. While we are familiar with rockstars in the learning world like Bloom, Kolb, and Gagne. We took some inspo from some of the most well known learning models to find what works for adult virtual learners!
1️⃣INFORMATION
Ok, so I said information doesn’t guarantee transformation, but it is still a VITAL component of your workshop or masterclass. The kicker here is making sure you don’t overload your learner.
This is where you strip away ANYTHING that the learner doesn’t need to know in order to get the transformation you are aiming for.
For example, if you are hosting a masterclass on how to start embroidery you might take out 80% of the stitches you know and just focus on the very beginner user friendly stitches. And heck, make sure you give them the simple step-by-step of the materials they need to get started and how to set up their embroidery hoop before they even touch needles and floss.
You have to get out of your expert head and remember you (most likely) are talking with someone with no experience in your area of expertise. It needs to be elementary!
The problem here is embodied by the quote from Mokokoma Mokhonoana “the more you know, the less you talk.”
This means you might assume people know the basics and skip right over them. Don’t fall into that trap!
TIP TO TAKE HOME
➡️ Have a friend who knows nothing about your expertise area watch your masterclass practice and give feedback
2️⃣ INTERACTION
People are made for community. I’ve zoned out in webinars that doesn’t allow chat or has no video more than I did back in that boring Chemistry class I mentioned before. People want to be a part of something. And closing off the opportunity for them to interact with you is often a mistake for masterclasses and workshops.
Can you imagine going through college or high school with no way to interact with your teacher? Like they just talked at you, provided you some slides, and you are expected to understand it perfectly.
I hope your answer is HECK NO.
When you are teaching others there needs to be interaction. Not only from the learner to the teacher, but also learner to learner.
Here is how we would suggest adding some interaction to your next masterclass or workshop:
First, you need to know this: ADULTS, I repeat, ADULTS have a 15 minute threshold for focus (and that's on the high side). That is why TEDTalks have a very strict rule about the length of presentations for their sometimes viral speakers.
Now, I get it, you might need more than 15 minutes. This just means you need to add some interaction to your workshop that breaks up the 15 minute “information heavy” parts.
This might look like:
Asking attendees to drop an emoji in the chat
Having attendees use the chat to share their experience with the problem you help solve
Sending attendees to breakout rooms to discuss a question/scenario
A silly action/movement (like raising hands, doing jumping jacks) to make a point
TIP TO TAKE HOME
➡️ Practice your workshop as is and time it. For every 15 minutes of your workshop add in at least 1 area of learner interaction
3️⃣ ACTION
Lemme hop up on my soapbox for a moment.
The call-to-action (CTA) of a workshop or a masterclass shouldn’t be for a sale.
I know the majority of the online entrepreneur influencer world stands directly opposed to my opinion. But, I am also here for the PEOPLE, not the benjamins and beach house.
The CTA for your workshop should be learners taking action on what they learned. Being able to get a learner to take what they heard and implement it into their life and get a win is the ultimate goal.
While yes, maybe that leads to a sale down the road, people aren’t going to buy into what you’re selling without them trusting that they can get transformation from you.
They are looking for transformation in an area you are an expert, your masterclass is the opportunity to give them that transformation. And not just a taste by sharing that other people have been transformed. But, by actually giving them something worthwhile.
This might look like:
Downloading your habit tracker and finally sticking with a workout routine
Taking your Photography tips and implementing it the next time they pick up their camera
Wearing more than the usual 20% of their closet because of the weekly color challenge you shared (like HOC West New Orleans)
Carving out space to write weekly so they can grow their blogs (I 👀see you Natty Writes)
Remember that sometimes learners need something tangible to help support them in their continued learning (hello the whole reason behind homework).
The learning shouldn’t stop the moment they select the “Leave” button on the Zoom Room. It should continue and stay in their mind more than Raygun did for Olympic Watchers worldwide.
TIP TO TAKE HOME
➡️ Ask yourself “What is a win I can help facilitate for attendees?”
➡️ This might look like a freebie, tracker, mantra, habit etc. that helps them continue their transformation after the masterclass ends
4️⃣ FEEDBACK
Ready to be vulnerable?
Your workshop or masterclass can be improved by just asking the learners what they thought about it!
Seriously, a simple Google Form can change everything with one little comment. We aren’t saying you need a lengthy survey with all of Kirkpatrick’s Model for Training Evaluation. Just a simple few questions you want some input from your learners.
For this we recommend open-ended questions so you can hear their thoughts versus trying to infer from a quantitative ranking. We aren’t trying to get “high marks” here, we are trying to find what we can tweak to improve!
To help you get started here are two questions we love asking when we are facilitating a workshop are:
What was your biggest takeaway from today?
What questions do you still have?
Why?
The biggest takeaway helps you see if they “got” the thing you were aiming for.
For example, if our goal for the workshop is for them to have a fully prioritized Quarterly Plan and their biggest takeaway is that color coding is important, I missed the mark and need to make sure I change the interaction they do in the planning portion of the workshop.
The questions question 🤪 can tell us two things:
1. What part of the workshop needs more work because they don’t fully understand that concept?
2. What another workshop topic could be! If they ask something like “How would I…..?” “What do I do next….” might be an opportunity to build something that helps answer that question!
TIP TO TAKE HOME
➡️ Make a Google Form and send it to the people who recently took a workshop with you BEFORE you plan your next one!
Need Help Planning Your Next Masterclass or Workshop?
I hope you realize that as someone who is hoping to help transform lives that you are TEACHING people. And teaching people is a noble profession that requires some specialized skills and techniques to really meet people where they are so they can see the transformation they are looking for.
If you are wishing you could get some help in this area, G&G would be happy to help (seriously we eat this stuff up). We can either help with the ideation of your next workshop with a strategy call or take all your content and do a whole audit.
Send us an email to hannah@greenandgrowingedu.com and we can help you you can get on the books for Q4!
