Early course creators gave online courses a bad name. They were marketers shilling knowledge to maximize profit. Margins were monstrous. Business was good. But the rot was setting in. Ten percent completion rates were the norm, and the customer experience was broken. When courses work, students are transformed. And when students are transformed, they tell …
The currency of education is transformation Read More »
He fumbled with the soft flesh and skin, searching for a good grip. He found it. Slowly he raised it to his mouth, biting down into it, squishing the cinnamon-coated flesh between his gums and pulling it off the floppy skin. He grinned. We had a breakthrough. He loves cinnamon-baked apples. Teaching our son to …
My Beginner’s Mind for Creating Online Courses Read More »
“And then you start thinking like an octopus.” There is a moment in the captivating Netflix documentary, in between laughing and crying, that I had an epiphany. It was when filmmaker Craig Foster said, “I needed to learn everything.“ I make a living helping people create training courses, and as I watched the film, I …
The Octopus Whisperer Read More »
Lessons from Jefferson, Kant, and the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. “I have an aunt in Hamburg, but she is dead,” said Count Sagramoso in broken German. “Why didn’t you have her skinned and stuffed?” replied the schoolmaster. Wait, what? In our age of social media and soundbites, it’s not too hard to imagine this triggering …
How to Host a Dinner Party and Save Society Read More »
If you read Part 1 of this series on group learning you’ll know why learning with others is so powerful. Let’s recap where we left off. For group learning to deliver on the promise of transformation, you need two distinct kinds of groups for students to belong to – Journey Groups and Destination Groups. And …
How to Design Transformational Group Learning Read More »
My early writing for Curious Lion was terrible. I used to be a decent writer, back when I wrote about things that interested me. But I couldn’t find my voice writing about online training. Every other week I’d get a piece of content out that was as dry as the paper it was written on. …
Why You Need Two Kinds of Groups to Power Group Learning Read More »
There’s this concept in the movie Inception, that you never quite know how a dream started. You always just find yourself in the middle of it. It feels incredibly real, and you’re completely focused on what happens next. This makes me think about the decisions I’ve made in my life that have led me to …
Don’t Sweat the Big Decisions Read More »
Stories from the first 3 years leading Talent Development for a high-growth company This is a co-authored blog post between a passionate talent development professional (Phylicia Jones, “PJ”) and Curious Lion (told by founder, Andrew Barry, “AB”). Together we share our lessons and learnings on how to work together to create amazing learning experiences. Year …
What It’s Like to Work with Curious Lion Read More »
Writing is the iterative process, optimized by involving others, of adding detail to the pillars of a single idea. Romantic visions of writers depict them holed up in a cabin in the woods or sitting at a sun-soaked window in the top room of an old hotel where they seem to be the only guest. …
Writing is Not a Solo Pursuit, it’s a Process Read More »
As a team, we read and write a lot of scripts for training videos. If there is one thing I’ve learned it is that there is no perfect script (or essay or blog post or email). But there is a process for writing that you can use to approach perfection. Before that even, you need …
