Free Resources to Grow and Improve Your Learning Business

On this page you will find a range of free resources to help you grow and improve your learning business. If you find mistakes or bad links as you use this page, please let us know. Note that we have also created dedicated resource pages for:

Virtual Conferences and Events
Learning Management System Selection (on ReviewMyLMS)

You can also find out about our Presenting for Impact Course here.

Executive Briefings

We’ve a range of briefings to help leaders and their teams make decisions about perennial and emerging issues important to learning businesses.

“Practice Makes Profit: The Business and Learning Case for Practice”
This briefing lays out how the right types of practice dramatically boost learning and long-term retention; how practice opportunities can increase your reach, revenue, and impact; and how to integrate more practice opportunities into your portfolio of offerings.
“Why and How to Build Your Blended Learning Playbook”
An overview of the opportunity of blended learning for learning businesses with examples of how others have implemented blended learning and a framework for creating effective blended experiences.
“Content, Practice, and Credentials: Building a Virtuous Learning Cycle”
Learning is a process, not an event—and that process is rarely linear. This briefing explores how to support learning’s recurring nature and strengthen its outcomes by connecting content with practice and validation, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits both your learning business and your learners.
“Conquering the Confusion: The Role of the LMS in the Evolving Learntech Landscape”
Inisghts and examples to help learning businesses understand the current learning technology landscape and the role of the learning management system in relation to other key learning platform technologies.

Tool Talks

This is a series of Leading Learning Podcast episodes in which we highlight free tools and concepts that can help you grow and improve your learning business. All of these include visuals that can be very useful as points of reference for group discussions or simply for your own reflection and thinking.

Key Topics

Below you will find selected resources related to topics essential to managing a thriving learning business. These topics derive from the Tagoras Learning Business Maturity Model.

Strategy

The Learning Business Maturity Model (Blog Post | PDFs)
The Tagoras Learning Business Maturity Model^TM provides a framework for assessing the maturity of your learning and education business across five domains and determining where to focus your efforts going forward.
Four Keys to Profitable Learning Products  for Your Association (White Paper)
A look at four keys that can help your organization develop learning products that the market values and buys. Sponsored by Digital Ignite.
6 Paths for Leading Your Education Business to Blue Ocean (Blog Post Series)
A six-part series that examines how a “Blue Ocean” approach to strategy can help you stand out from the competition and deliver unique value. This link is to the first post in the series. Links to other installments in the series can be found at the end of each post.

Portfolio

An Essential Guide to Andragogy for Learning Businesses (Blog Post | PDF)
A detailed look at the key principles articulated by Malcom Knowles.
On Learning Well: A Practical Look at Metalearning for Learning Businesses (Blog Post | PDF)
How to use metalearning to support effective learning, impact the field or industry you serve, and grow your learning business.
Learner Engagement for Learning Businesses (PDF)
A detailed discussion of what learner engagement actually is and effective approaches to achieving it.
A Why-To and How-To on Hot Seats, AKA Collaborative Coaching (Blog Post)
A detailed overview of a simple approach that can make your learning events – whether face-to-face or online – more interactive and effective.
A Why-To and How-To on Rethinking Panels: Dynamic Panels (Blog Post)
Traditional panel discussions are often not very engaging or effective. This post provides details on an approach to breathing new life into them.
A Why-To and How-To on a Structured Approach to Networking: Curated Connections (Blog Post)
Curated Connections is a way to structure some of the networking time that occurs at conferences to provide more focused learning value.

Capacity

Cost to Create E-learning (ReviewMyLMS Blog Post)
Research on how much it costs to create e-learning and give factors that impact it. And, be sure to see the complementary Leading Learning post on pricing online learning.
The Capacity Continuum (Article)
Thoughts on how to understand and impact the process of capacity building across individuals, organizations, and communities.

Marketing

Marketing for continuing education, professional development, and lifelong learning programs very often does not get the attention it deserves. To help you in your efforts, we’ve compiled a number of the resources – all organized according the classic “4Ps” of marketing: product, pricing, promotion, and placement (distribution).

Product

The Value Ramp (Tagoras article | PDF)
The Value Ramp is a simple yet amazingly powerful tool when it comes to developing and assessing your product strategy. We’d go so far as to argue that the Ramp, along with a page or two of notes, can form the basis for your entire strategy.
The Market Insight Matrix (Tagoras article | PDF)
The Market Insight Matrix is a tool for helping you better understand and assess your market for continuing education and professional development.

Pricing

Pricing Online Learning (Blog post)
A discussion of some of the fundamental principles of pricing as they apply to sales of e-learning products and services. And, be sure to check out our related article on how much it costs to create e-learning.
3 Axioms of Pricing for Your Education Products (Video)
A brief overview of some essential concepts that it pays to have in mind when developing a pricing strategy.
Effective Pricing Practices for Your Educational Offerings (Video)
Video of one of the Content Pods™ at the 2015 Leading Learning Symposium

Promotion

Selling E-learning to Members: Basic Success Factors (Article)
An overview of five imperatives that successful organizations tend to follow when planning and implementing their e-learning initiatives.
3 Tips for Selling More E-learning (Article)
Three areas to focus on if increasing sales of online learning is one of your goals.
Making use of testimonials (multiple)
“Social proof” in the form of testimonials is one of the most powerful promotional tools that organizations in the business of lifelong learning have at their disposal. See the following:

Placement (Distribution)

The Market Maker Business Model
Market Makers do the work of aggregating enough expertise and cultivating enough of an audience to provide subject matter experts (SMEs) with a built in marketplace. It’s a distribution model many association may want to consider providing for their SMEs.

Leading Learning

Leading Learning started out as the name for our monthly newsletter and has expanded to encompass our Webinars, live events, and podcast. All in all, it represents an ongoing source of content and connections for leaders in the business of lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development.

If you have questions or comments concerning any of the resources here, please contact us and let us know your thoughts.