Here’s how Ruzuku made it easy for Marlene Hielema, the Image Maven, to do just that for a photography course that she had been teaching for years.
Marlene Hielema is a photographer and educator. She has taught photography in the classroom for about 8 years and shot commercially for about 20. Currently she teaches photography and Photoshop in the continuing education department at SAIT Polytechnic in Calgary. Here’s what she says about Ruzuku:
I’m using Ruzuku to teach basic photography. My first Ruzuku course went on sale October 11th, and sold out in two days. I’m nearly finished with teaching that course and am planning my next.
Ruzuku has made life a lot easier.
Ruzuku has made life a lot easier because I don’t have to worry about all the backend set up of an online course. I love technology and I would love to do that part, but in all honesty, programming and those types of things, hurt my head. Plus, that was a huge barrier to me getting something started. Besides, creating content is hard enough — and is where I’d rather be spending my time.
My students only have to know one system.
With Ruzuku, my students can upload their assignment photos directly to the course. Most forums don’t even let you upload photos unless they are hosted somewhere and that’s just too complicated for the people in my course.
When you have a course that is drip fed like Ruzuku, you only have to stay one step ahead of your students
It’s just like a classroom that way. If you offer downloadable workshops your whole course needs to be finished before you can sell anything. Plus, using Ruzuku, you can change things on the fly: fix typos, add examples, clarify your message, update your material. That’s really handy!
I also like that I can see student progress.
We were in the second week of the course and I had this one student who hadn’t started yet. I was able to send her a quick note. She told me that she was just having a really busy time at work, and that she would be getting into it soon. That kind of interaction is much different than just dropping content on a membership site, or selling e-books. As a teacher you also need to be attentive. Students pay a premium to be in this type of course with this type of connection to the instructor.
Re-using my content is incredibly easy.
I just hit ‘Copy Course’ and I’m ready to run another session of my course. This lets me reach many students, and earn substantial revenue, while keeping each session relatively small so that my students have a great experience.
Overall I’m very happy with Ruzuku.
Without it I would still be still stuck trying to figure out how to get this all set up. I’m so happy I’ve had this opportunity to work with Rick, Abe and Jackson and their vision for online learning environments, and I look forward to future releases of Ruzuku.
Marlene’s next course starts November 18th and will be limited to 30 spots. Join her mailing list to get an early shot at snagging one of those slots.
