With all the buzz on this topic these days you may be wondering… What is an online learning center? In essence, an online learning center is a place online, where you invite your students and community to learn with you. You can offer free content (such as blog posts, articles, printables, and videos) and you can offer content that people pay for, in order to access it.
An online learning center is ideal for sharing online courses as well as access to other aspects of your business. Your online learning center can stand alone and feature one course or training or it can be a central hub, with spokes leading out to a variety of different types of content and resources. An online learning center can take various forms. It can be as simple as providing access to content via your blog or Facebook discussion group, or you can house your content on an online course platform such as: Teachable, Teachery or ThriveCart Learn.
On a broader scale, an online learning center can represent an “umbrella topic” which features content that fits under that umbrella. Think of this type of online learning center as a central “hub” which has spokes linking to all of your courses, programs, products, support desk, affiliate center, and more. In this case, your online learning center would serve as a hub, providing access to your learning center facets, from a central location.
An online learning center can provide a turnkey solution, which makes it easy for you to add content to and enroll students in. You can direct people to a central location to access all of your content. This can boil down to semantics, as you could call this location your “website” or you can call it your “learning center.” The term learning center can indicate that you are offering more than training as your learning center can provide ways for you to grow a relationship with your students.
While you can feature your learning center on your website, by housing your learning center on a platform that offers integration and functionality, you’ll be able to integrate your email correspondence, payment processor, interactive modules, an affiliate program and more.
A formal definition could be: “An online learning platform is a webspace or portal for educational content and resources that offers a student everything they need in one place: lectures, resources, opportunities to meet and chat with other students, and more.”
As you think about the type of learning center you’d like to create, you may find it helpful to write and dream and brainstorm about the possibilities and build from there. Start off with an idea. You might say, “I’ve always wanted a way to bring my subscribers together and grow a closer relationship with them.” That is a fabulous foundation for a learning center, which can grow into a full-time, six figure business.
As you begin to design your learning center, think about what your ideal audience is interested in? You can jot down some notes and you can survey your audience. You want to gather ideas and then you can look at how those ideas intersect with your areas of expertise? Is there a topic you’ve always wanted to teach, or is there a topic you love, that you’d like to develop content around.
Once you begin brainstorming, you may find that the ideas start to pop up like popcorn. Start by developing one idea or topic and grow from there. Because over time, the amount of content you have will grow. For example, you can create one article or handout or interactive webinar or a workshop or course each month and before you know it, you’ll have an amazing amount of content at your fingertips. And your online learning center can house all this content for you.
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What ideas and questions come to mind as you read this article? What would having your own online learning center mean for you?
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