Looking to take your online course from good to unforgettable? Thinkific’s community feature might just be the secret sauce you’ve been missing. Let’s dive into how you can transform passive learners into active community members who stick around long after the final lesson.
The Power of Community in Online Learning
Let’s face it, online learning can sometimes feel like shouting into the void. You’ve poured your heart and soul into creating killer content, but without that human connection, students might not stick around long enough to experience all your wisdom. That’s where Thinkific’s community feature comes in – it’s not just a fancy add-on, it’s the difference between students who complete your course and those who don’t.
According to a study by the Online Learning Consortium, courses with strong community elements see completion rates up to 5 times higher than those without. Yep, you read that right – FIVE times higher! When students feel connected to their peers and instructor, they’re more likely to push through challenging material rather than ghost your course at the first sign of difficulty.
Getting Started with Thinkific’s Community Feature
Before you can build the next great online learning community, you’ll need to get your ducks in a row with the technical setup. Don’t worry – it’s easier than assembling IKEA furniture, I promise!
Thinkific’s community feature isn’t just tacked on as an afterthought – it’s baked right into their platform architecture. To activate it, head over to your Thinkific dashboard, click on “Manage Learning Products,” select your course, and navigate to the “Community” tab. From there, you’ll have options to customize everything from the community name to the welcome message your students will see. You can even decide whether you want your community to be course-specific or span across your entire school.
Once you’ve got the basics configured, take some time to spruce up the place! Add your branding, create a few starter discussion topics, and maybe even post a welcome video. First impressions matter, and you want your students to walk into a lively party, not an empty room with the lights off.
Creating Engagement-Driving Community Activities
Alright, so you’ve built this beautiful community space – but how do you make sure it doesn’t turn into a digital ghost town? The key is planning activities that actually get people talking!
One of the biggest mistakes course creators make is thinking that students will automatically jump into discussions without prompting. In reality, your community needs careful nurturing, especially in those early days. Here are some tried-and-true activities to kickstart engagement:
- Weekly challenges that encourage students to apply what they’ve learned
- Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions where you or guest experts answer questions in real-time
- Peer feedback rounds where students share their work and give constructive criticism
- Celebration threads where wins (big or small) get the spotlight they deserve
- Study buddies or accountability groups to foster deeper connections
Remember, engagement begets engagement. As community psychology expert Dr. David McMillan notes, “Communities thrive when members feel a sense of belonging, influence, integration, and shared emotional connection”.
Don’t just throw these activities out there and disappear, though. Your presence as the community leader is crucial, especially in the beginning. Jump into discussions, acknowledge contributions, and be the engagement you want to see in your community!
Leveraging User-Generated Content for Community Growth
Here’s a little secret that savvy community builders know: your students can create some of your best content! User-generated content (UGC) is pure gold – it takes pressure off you to constantly produce new material, showcases real-world applications of your teachings, and helps students learn from diverse perspectives.
When Maria Johnson launched her “Digital Marketing Mastery” course on Thinkific, she was struggling to keep up with creating fresh content while managing her growing business. Her solution? A weekly “Implementation Showcase” where students shared how they applied the week’s lessons to their own projects. Before long, these showcases became the most anticipated community events, with students eagerly waiting to share their work and receive feedback.
To encourage quality UGC in your own community, try:
- Creating clear guidelines for submissions
- Highlighting exceptional contributions as “featured posts”
- Developing a recognition system for regular contributors
- Asking thought-provoking questions that inspire detailed responses
- Using student success stories (with permission) in your marketing materials
The beauty of UGC is that it creates a virtuous cycle – students feel valued when their contributions are recognized, which encourages them to participate more, which in turn inspires others to join the conversation.
Measuring Community Engagement and Success
You can’t improve what you don’t measure, so keeping tabs on your community’s health is crucial. But what metrics actually matter when it comes to community engagement?
It’s tempting to focus solely on vanity metrics like total membership or number of posts, but these don’t tell the whole story. Sure, having 1,000 members sounds impressive, but if only 15 of them are actually participating, you’ve got a problem!
Instead, track these more meaningful metrics:
- Active membership rate – what percentage of your total members posted or commented in the last 30 days?
- Average response time – how long does it take for questions to receive responses?
- User retention – are members coming back day after day, week after week?
- Topic diversity – are conversations happening across different subject areas or only in a few topics?
- Conversion impact – are community members more likely to purchase additional courses or products?
Thinkific provides basic analytics for your community, but you might want to supplement these with surveys or interviews to get qualitative feedback. As community expert Richard Millington explains in his book “Buzzing Communities,” “The most successful communities focus on depth of participation rather than breadth”.
Integrating Community with Course Content
Your community shouldn’t exist in a parallel universe to your course content – the two should be deeply intertwined, creating a seamless learning experience. Think of your course as the textbook and your community as the classroom where ideas get discussed, questioned, and expanded upon.
One effective strategy is to end each course module with a prompt or activity that directs students to the community. For example, after teaching a lesson on email marketing, you might ask students to share their draft subject lines in a dedicated community thread for peer review. This creates natural movement between the course and community spaces.
Advanced Thinkific users might also explore using the API to create more sophisticated integrations. Imagine automatically creating a personalized community welcome thread when a student completes their course registration, or sending community achievement badges when students reach certain milestones.
The goal here isn’t just to drive traffic to your community – it’s to create meaningful connections between what students are learning and how they can apply it with support from peers. When done right, this integration creates a powerful learning loop that reinforces course concepts and improves outcomes.
Handling Community Management Challenges
Let’s be honest – running a thriving online community isn’t always sunshine and roses. Even the best communities face challenges like conflict between members, periods of low engagement, or the occasional difficult participant. How you handle these situations can make or break your community.
When Sophie Chen launched her “Mindful Leadership Academy” on Thinkific, she wasn’t prepared for heated debates that sometimes erupted between students with different perspectives. Rather than shutting down these conversations, she created community guidelines that emphasized respectful disagreement and modeled this behavior herself. The result? Her community became known for thoughtful discourse where diverse viewpoints were welcomed rather than silenced.
Some practical approaches to common challenges include:
- Developing clear community guidelines from day one
- Training volunteer moderators from your most engaged students
- Creating an escalation process for serious issues
- Planning engagement campaigns for predictable slow periods
- Regularly soliciting feedback on how the community could better serve members
Remember that healthy communities evolve over time. What worked in your early days might need adjustment as your community grows. Stay flexible and responsive to your members’ changing needs.
Scaling Your Community as Your Course Business Grows
When you’re just starting out with a handful of enthusiastic students, community management feels manageable. But what happens when your course takes off and suddenly you’re dealing with hundreds or even thousands of community members? Without a scaling strategy, you might find yourself overwhelmed or watching engagement quality decline.
Successful scaling isn’t just about handling more people – it’s about maintaining or even improving the quality of interactions as your numbers grow. Online education pioneer Kevin Kelly of Techlearning suggests that “the community experience should get better, not worse, as more people join”.
Consider these approaches for scaling effectively:
- Implementing a sub-group structure around specific interests or experience levels
- Developing a community leadership program to train and empower volunteer moderators
- Creating self-serve resources that answer common questions
- Using automation thoughtfully for administrative tasks (while keeping human touches for meaningful interactions)
- Revisiting your community platform’s capabilities as you outgrow basic features
One particularly effective strategy is creating “micro-communities” within your larger group. These smaller units help maintain the intimate feel that made your community special in the first place, while allowing for sustainable growth.
FAQs About Thinkific’s Community Feature
Is Thinkific’s community feature included in all pricing plans? No, the community feature is available on Thinkific’s Growth plan and higher. If you’re on the Basic plan, you’ll need to upgrade to access this functionality. However, many course creators find that the engagement benefits quickly outweigh the additional cost.
Can students access the community from mobile devices? Absolutely! Thinkific’s community feature is fully responsive, allowing students to participate from smartphones and tablets. This is crucial since many online learners squeeze in study time during commutes or other “in-between” moments of their day.
How does Thinkific’s community compare to using a Facebook group? While Facebook groups are free and familiar to many users, Thinkific’s built-in community offers several advantages: it keeps students in your learning environment (reducing distractions), gives you more customization options, provides better integration with course content, and doesn’t subject your students to Facebook’s algorithm and privacy concerns.
Can I have multiple separate communities for different courses? Yes, Thinkific allows you to create separate communities for individual courses or product bundles. You can also create a school-wide community that brings together students from all your offerings.
What kind of moderation tools does Thinkific’s community feature offer? Thinkific provides essential moderation tools including the ability to remove inappropriate content, mute or ban users if necessary, pin important announcements, and assign moderator roles to trusted team members or students.
Bringing It All Together: Your Community Success Roadmap
We’ve covered a lot of ground, from setting up your community to scaling it as your course business grows. Now it’s time to wrap this all up into an actionable roadmap you can follow.
Building a thriving learning community isn’t something that happens overnight – it’s a continuous process of cultivation and refinement. The most successful course creators approach community building with the same care and attention they give to their core content. After all, in today’s connected world, the relationships formed in your community might be the most valuable part of the student experience.
Start small with clearly defined goals for your community. Maybe in the first three months, you’re focusing simply on getting 50% of your students to post at least once. As you hit these milestones, you can gradually expand your ambitions and features.
Remember that at its heart, community building is about human connection. All the fancy features in the world can’t replace genuine care for your students’ success. As learning experience designer Marjorie Vai puts it, “Technology enables community, but people create it”.
So go ahead – use these strategies to build something special with Thinkific’s community feature. Your students (and your course completion rates) will thank you!
