Course Lab: Lessons from Successful Online Course Creators

Do you want to create an engaging course that students will actually complete? Then join Danny and Abe when they talk to Gayle Van Gils about her course “Smart Tips: Wellness,” which teaches people how to infuse awareness into every aspect of wellness. In this episode, you’ll discover how Gayle created a binge-worthy course with a remarkable student retention rate.

Show Notes

Episode summary: How do you create an engaging course that students will actually finish? If that’s a question you constantly ask yourself, we’d like you to meet Gayle Van Gils. After spending 25 plus years teaching meditation to individuals and teams, and delving into the neuroscience behind habit change, Gail decided to take her expertise online and launched a hugely successful wellness course.

     On this episode of Course Lab, Danny and Abe discuss Gayle’s online course, “Smart Tips: Wellness,” which teaches people how to infuse awareness into every aspect of wellness through short and topic-focused standalone videos. Her unique course architecture and Smart Tips: Wellness format have proved remarkably successful, with a majority of students completing the whole course in one day. In this session, you’ll learn all the ins and outs of Gayle’s strategy for developing a course that students love to binge.

In this episode we discuss:

  • How the unique architecture of the course and the Smart Tips: Wellness format encourages students to consume in one day. 
  • What are the advantages and the trade-offs of going broad and wide as opposed to very narrow and deep? 
  • Why did Udemy reach out to her?
  • Danny and Abe’s debrief after the interview


“I learned to be quite succinct in what I was saying. I had to drill down to the core of the message. And then I drilled that even further to put it in the workbook for them.”  – Gayle Van Gils




Gayle Van Gils is an award-winning author, leadership consultant, life coach, and meditation teacher who aims to open both hearts and minds. 

     Gayle’s specialty brings together her extensive experience as a mindfulness teacher with the practical solutions and real-life work she has conducted as a business consultant and executive coach.

     Gayle has an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA and is a certified instructor of Search Inside Yourself, the mindfulness and emotional intelligence training developed and proven at Google. She is the founder of Transform Your Culture, a consulting, training, and coaching company, and is a senior meditation teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. In addition, millions of people have listened to her meditations on the Simple Habit meditation app.
 
     Through her in-person classes and online courses, Gayle has helped thousands of people find more peace, energy, inspiration, joy, and success in their lives and businesses.


Resources or websites mentioned in this episode:
  1. Mirasee
  2. Gayle’s TransformYourCulture website
  3. Gayle’s Twitter
  4. Gayle’s LinkedIn
  5. Gayle’s book Happier at Work.


Credits:
  • Guest - Gayle Van Gils
  • Hosts - Danny Iny & Abe Crystal 
  • Producer - Cynthia Lamb 
  • Executive producer - Danny Iny
  • Writer - Michi Lantz and Cynthia Lamb 
  • Assembled by - Geoff Govertsen
  • Audio Post Supervisor: Evan Miles, Christopher Martin
  • Audio Post Production by Post Office Sound
  • Music soundscape: Chad Michael Snavely


If you don't want to miss future episodes of Course  Lab, please subscribe to Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. And if you liked the show, please leave us a starred review. It's the best way to help us get these ideas to more people.

If you have a question for Course Lab, put the show title in the subject line and send it to podcasts@mirasee.com.


Music and SFX credits: 

• Track Title: Access
Artist Name(s): OBOY
Writer Name: Martin Hampton
Writer Name: Matej Djajkovski
Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION

• Track Title: Bossa BB
Artist Name(s): Marie
Writer Name: Chelsea McGough
Publisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONS

• Track Title: Carousel Lights
Artist Name(s): Chelsea McGough
Writer Name: Chelsea McGough
Writer Name: Matthew Wigton
Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION
Publisher Name: BOSS SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTIONS

• Track Title: Grace
Artist Name(s): Shimmer
Writer Name: Matthew Wigton
Publisher Name: A SOUNDSTRIPE PRODUCTION


Episode transcript: Bite-Sized Modules Create a Distilled and Actionable Course (Gayle Van Gils) coming soon


~~~~~

What is Course Lab: Lessons from Successful Online Course Creators?

Want to create a hugely successful online course, one that has a major impact on the lives of your students? If you want to learn how to create online courses from the best, you turn to Mirasee; and if you want to host that course, you can’t go wrong using the powerful platform, Ruzuku.

Ruzuku co-founder Abe Crystal and Mirasee founder and CEO Danny Iny know what it takes to stand out and be successful in the online courses industry. And now they’re teaming up to share this intel with you in their new Course Lab podcast.

In every episode, Course Lab showcases an entrepreneur/course creator who is nailing it with their online course -- and not because they’re teaching people how to make more money. In fact, most of these creators occupy unusual or overlooked niches, like music, writing for video games, overcoming inherent bias, and finding your life purpose.

Turns out, the key to their success all comes down to their online course design. In this podcast, Danny and Abe reveal the most important design tactics that are making all the difference for these online course creators -- and how you can implement them in your own online course. So if you want to create a successful online course that changes the lives of your students, this is your big chance to learn how it’s done from the best in the industry!