Most adult ‘learning’ is designed to fail.
(That’s my so-called provocative ‘hook’.. How did I do?)
If you’re a course buff like me, you’ve probably paid for dozens of online courses that sat unfinished. And if you’re the expert, coach or trainer on the other side, you’ve probably built programs and courses that learners, like myself, ghosted by Week 3 so hard it would take the Scooby Gang a whole season to crack the case.
Here’s an all‑too‑common scene I’m sure you’re familiar with: You’re a passionate coach or an expert in your field. You know your stuff. You love what you do, and share your knowledge with the audience you've built a decent size around. You launch a beautiful 10‑week course with slick videos, workbooks, and a private Facebook group. But mid‑way through, you’re the only one still posting, completion rates are plummeting, and only one person is engaged — and it’s your Dad.
What happened? We could try to blame motivation. But if we’re honest, we know it’s most likely a program design problem.
P.s. Your program doesn’t have to suck.
Most courses are built for information delivery, not behaviour change.
I help coaches and experts fix the structure.
No boring videos. No fake engagement. Just learning that works.
Why most adult learning experiences suck
85% of online course enrollees never finish1 . But this isn’t unique to digital learning. Completion rates for university courses hover around 5–15% 2 and in‑person workshops often see a sharp drop‑off after the first session. Even corporate compliance training – mandatory, paid for, and job‑critical – struggles with low engagement and poor retention 3.
The main reasons learning experiences go down the toilet faster than a crypto scam-coin after a celebrity tweet, all boil down to a handful of culprits:
Passive content. Videos to watch, PDFs to skim. Learners are spectators, not participants.
No clear destination. You don’t know what “done” looks like or what you’ll be able to do at the end.
Busywork instead of real work. Journals, hypotheticals, and worksheets that go nowhere.
Lonely. No peers, feedback, or accountability.
One size fits all. No scaffolding, no support curve – just a firehose of information.
Learners become passive spectators. They watch, read, and nod but they don’t do. You end up with low completion rates, weak outcomes, and creators more burnt‑out than a car hoon’s back tyres.
This is the biggest difference between a program that works and one that flops: learning must lead to action. In other words, it needs to be functional – not just informational.
Contrast that with declarative knowledge: knowing that something is true because someone told you. (Think highlighted textbook passages or a lecture you half‑listened to.) Functional learning is different. It’s about demonstrating – knowing how to actually do something, in the right context, when it matters.
Most courses stop at “here are the facts – good luck.” And that’s exactly where learners check out.
So what we see are learning programs built for information delivery, not behaviour change. Though, this is not easy to accomplish. It requires an understanding of adult motivation, cognitive load, feedback loops, and social dynamics. And to be honest, it’s not the job of a subject matter expert, trainer or coach (let’s not forget the content creator masquerading as a ‘course creator’) to design behaviour change within a course format – that’s a specialised skill.
The best learning experiences don't happen by accident. They're engineered through a rigorous process and backed by ‘andragogy’ – the study of adult learning, made popular by Malcolm Knowles back in the 80s. The best programs, whether a course, workshop, or training, are authentic and intentionally designed with the learner at the centre.
And that’s not the job of a subject matter expert. That’s the job of a trained instructional designer or learning & development professional.
Adult learning shouldn’t have to suck
It just needs to be understood better.
Adult learning research by the likes of Knowles, Herrington and Biggs & Tang show that adults learn best when they are active, when tasks mirror real‑world challenges, and when they receive feedback along the way. Yet most “courses” ignore all three. The gap between what research says and what program deliver is huge — and that gap is where learning goes to die (cue: tiny violin).
So how can you make sure you’re designing for authentic learning? Before your next course, audit it against these three questions as a basic guide:
Do learners do something every week? (not just watch and complete a quiz at the end)
Will they produce something they can use outside the course? (I’m not talking about that PDF certificate you banged up in Canva in 5 minutes)
Do they hear from peers or get feedback before the final week? (Giphy memes don’t count)
If you answer “no” to any, that’s your first fix.
The Solution?
Designing experience matters.
It’s what will separate a eye-drying, drool‑inducing Udemy “course” from a true learning experience — one that’s been designed with learners and their most important needs in mind.
My career has been forged in the field of Experience Design. Whether that’s designing User Experiences — making sure products like apps and websites are useful, frictionless and provide joy in daily interactions.
Or designing Learning Experiences – making sure learners obtain the right kind of knowledge, skills, or behaviours relevant to their real‑world needs.
My exposure to the world of experiential design has brought me to six core principles that will turn an ordinary content‑dumped course into a strategically designed, holistic, intentionally crafted learner journey. Here they are in a nutshell for you to crack open and nibble on:
Start with the destination, not the content: In learning academia this is called “backward design”; in business it’s “building for the desired state”
Every activity serves an outcome: We call this “constructive alignment”, where assessments, tasks and activities all line up with the well defined Learning Outcomes.
Do real work for the real world: The core of “authentic learning” and what makes a learning experience useful and memorable.
Build week by week, from supported to independent: The idea is that you apply “scaffolding” so learners learn to spread their own wings and leave the nest – unlike most teenagers today.
Learners learn from each other, not just from you : Social learning without the memes and rage bait.
Feedback is low‑stakes: Grades come at the end. Integrate “formative assessments” or small, manageable and relevant assessments, that reinforce learning and build confidence rather than fear of the final assessment.
In the coming weeks I’ll be diving deeper into these core principles and helping you apply them to your learning products. Whether you’re turning your 1:1 coaching into a one‑to‑many offering, or you’re currently delivering a program at your job, they will no doubt help you turn them into more authentic and intentionally designed experiences.
And I’ll leave you with something to think about:
Think of the last program you bought (or built). What was the moment you (or your learners) stopped showing up?
1 Coursera internal data reported in 2014; similar completion rates observed across edX, Udemy, and other MOOC platforms.
2 Jordan, K. (2015). Massive open online course completion rates revisited: Assessment, length and attrition. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning,
3 Willis, J. (2019). Designing for learning: Creating effective learning experiences for corporate training. Association for Talent Development