Hey, everybody. Welcome to a bonus episode of how I built it. This episode is a bonus episode because it's actually most of the replay of a live stream I did over on YouTube. I'll link it in the show notes. Uh, in the description for this video. I did clean it up a little bit. You know, I removed like the shout outs to commenters and things like that. But, uh, this is a conversation between Ronnie Bert of automatic and myself. On understanding AI's role in online course creation.
Ronnie has a background in education. So much Southern. He mentioned MOOCs, which is I think cool. Uh, I've obviously been a long time educator across a number of mediums. And, uh, Ronnie is also a, the business lead, a business leader, automatic who oversees development of the sensei LMS plugin. This episode is brought to you this live stream as well was brought to you by sensei.
Uh, so if you are looking for a great LMS plugin for WordPress, That gives you quizzes and direct integration with woo commerce and heavy use of the block editor. I there's not another plugin I can recommend. So check out sensei, you can get 20% off at Halle belt slash sensei. That's S E N S E I, but the topics that we cover managing emails for your online courses, AI's role in assisting with online course creation. Sensei's upcoming AI quiz generator. And a few other things around.
Uh, AI, philosophically and what it means for the future. Of online course creation. So I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and Ronnie Bert. And without further ado, let's get to the intro. And then the interview
Hey everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast where you get free coaching calls from successful creators. Each week you get actionable advice on how you can build a better creator business to increase revenue and establish yourself as an authority in your field. I'm your host, Joe Casabona. Now let's get to it. So, so let's get into managing emails. And this is, this is something that. I don't think enough people think about until it becomes a problem.
So like for me, um, I had, uh, a membership site set up with, uh, I think it was WooCommerce memberships that would, um, automatically register new members in all of my Learn dash courses. And I was like, yeah, this is exactly what I want. But what I also had was, uh, an automation, um, inside of Learn Dash called Follow Up. It was like an add-on called follow up emails at the time where you can send emails to, uh, students based on actions they take, right?
So when they register, when they complete after this lesson, if they haven't logged in for a week or whatever, right? So any, any of these things can kick off an email. And so I had one welcoming them to the course, except I had it for every course. And so when they got registered for every course, they got an email, a discreet email for every course. Um, I had about 10 courses on the site at the time, and I also, they also got their, uh, receipt and they got their welcome to the membership.
And so their first experience was getting 12 emails by making one purchase. Uh, and I just never thought about it, right, because I, I plugged and played a few things and things work as I tested them. Except, you know, the secret is that my user was already registered for every course. Uh, so I just tested the payment gateway.
So, um, let's, let's talk a little bit about this and uh, and email reminders and things like that, because again, I think like an online course is, um, you can have horror stories like mine, but you can also create a really good experience for the learner if you have those set up the right way.
I mean, some things that come to mind is, first, I think we all think that there's email fatigue, right? I mean, email fatigue is real. We are inundated by most of us, probably hundreds of emails a day. And, um, you know, as a result we're seeing open rates on email, like mass marketing email list, maybe going down, um, and things like that. But if someone's interested in your course, or like, we do actually read a lot of the emails that are sent to us, right?
And so I, I just, what I'm getting at is like, I caution people again saying like, well, emails don't matter because no one's gonna open them. Or I, I'm afraid of sending too, too many emails. Like if they're engaged in your. They're gonna wanna see that email, see what's next. It, it's like the best way really, that we have the best tool that we have of communicating directly with those people that have enrolled in real time. Like when, when they need some information.
So things that we've done is, um, first of all, like, you know, I've been around WordPress long enough to know WordPress isn't built to be an email management tool. Right?
And depending on when your host and the configurations there, like the deliverability of emails sent via WordPress can, can vary a ton, you know, on if you're in a shared environment, that IP might be flagged and more likely to end up in spam folders or just the way that the email is written more likely to be flagged to spam or not be received.
We also have just recently added some pretty big integrations with Mail Poet and with Automate Wu, which both in different ways can help with customizing the emails. Mail poet works really well to help with deliver deliverability issues with email.
Um, also, like you mentioned, you know, S M T P, depending on your host, they might have things in place that can help help there, but it's something to look into if you're relying on these emails, you know, making sure that they're delivered and not showing up in spam. And so when we are adding email tools in, we're trying to add in in ways that we can like, Do everything that we can to make the spam Gods happy.
And also don't feel bad about like, um, not being able to keep your emails outta spam. I'm a big Google, like fanboy, I guess, for lack of a better word. Mm-hmm. I'm in all the Google groups and, uh, like only use Android products and everything. Pretty much. I get emails all the time from Google itself that end up in my spam folder in Gmail, which is like a Google service. So if Google can't figure out how to send me emails that don't get marked by spam, you know, I don't feel so bad.
It's, it's a complex issue, but,
um, yeah. That's such, that's such a good point, right. It's it's worth looking into though. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And you mentioned male poet. Male poet came into the automatic fold a couple years ago, I think. Right.
Yeah, I don't remember exactly when. And it also, you know, is, uh, works really closely with, with WooCommerce and automating all your store purchases and stuff there, and just making those, those look better. Um, so what we've done is now you can, um, you automatically get a mail poet list for everyone that's in a course or that's in a sensei group mm-hmm.
So that you can send out mass emails or you can use some of their automation tools, like, uh, I mean, just a whole bunch of different possibilities that it opens up. You can send an email based on if they purchased a specific product in the past or something like that to a course. Yeah. You, you can get pretty creative.
That's, that's awesome. And I mean, that makes perfect sense, right? Because I think, again, one of the things that, you know, I mean, I've been in the WordPress space since like 2004. So like before WordPress had pages, like, it was ju it was literally just a blog when I first started using WordPress. Um, and you know, and, and, and the people in the WordPress space and, and developers and agencies, like they would do this piece mill thing.
But I think especially moving into the creator economy, which is who I'm talking to mostly now, um, they're not hiring an agency to set up their online store. Right. And they're not, and so these are integrations that they need to think about. And I mean, to woo commerce's credit, especially like the onboarding process is really good.
I think it's really good, at least, um, someone who's used a lot of WordPress plugins and most are just like, if there's nothing when you install the plugin, I either think like, well, there's nothing to do with just doing its thing, or like, now I've gotta hunt down the settings page. But like WooCommerce I think does a really good job of like putting things front and center and, and like, you know, you probably need this like tax calculation, whatever.
Um, and so, Having tools that integrate like that are, um, I think super important and male poet, full disclosure, they years ago sponsored my podcast. Um, but uh, you know, I think they were, they're doing a really good job of that.
Yeah. And I think it's this connection piece of getting all these tools, like we want to play nicely with, with everything we can, with membership plugins, with other mail services besides mail poet and all that too. Cuz that's the beauty of the ecosystem that we're in is that, you know, you get to choose what you need and what works for you at that time and not pigeonholed into one thing.
Yeah, absolutely. You get to, you get to choose your service. Um, so let's, uh, let's move into the, the main event here, right? There's, uh, you know, enough dilly dialing. Um, let's talk about ai. Let's talk about AI a little bit. First from like a, a philosophical standpoint, right? And then we'll get into kind of the practical applications of course creation.
Uh, you know, thinking about it for a couple minutes, I think probably what I use it for in podcasting is very similar to how it could be used in course creation. But I'm really curious to hear what, what you have to say about that. But again, um, what is your personal philosophy? I mean, that, that's
kinda why I reached out to you, because this is why I'm developing it, and that's like the first thing off the bat, I have done nothing but listened to dozens and dozens of podcasts from experts on this right? Over the last couple of months. And I, I don't, um, I mean, none of us are experts because this doesn't exist yet. We don't really know what the potential is gonna be. We don't really know, you know, where this is ending up.
But I have to say what I want instead of a philosophy, what I hope we get out of this is, I don't want us to get to a place where the robots, the AI, is writing our entire course for us, writing an entire blog post for us, and we just blindly like hit, publish and run students through that course or something like that. I think I've already seen, we have people doing that.
They're like, oh, I can go create 10 courses this weekend, copy paste it in, sell it, and you know, try to make a quick buck. Um, you know, the downside of that is, well, first of all, AI is still sometimes giving you, you know, bad information. Um, it's hallucinating. It's, you know, telling you things that are not necessarily true. So we first, you know, we need to be mindful of that, but that's not gonna be an engaging course.
I, I, I think a lot about course creators and I believe a million percent that like, Putting people through courses, you know, having a bunch of courses available for people to sign up for, learn on their own pace, at their own time, things they're excited about and interesting in like, that's not going anywhere. It's a good industry to be in. It's, it's really a needed thing for the world really.
And, but if we have a whole bunch of really bad, low quality courses out there, and that's someone's first experience as a student mm-hmm. Like, they're way less likely to ever go try again. And, um, I think we saw that with MOOCs like 10 years ago. The massive online open courses or whatever they were called. Right. The universities were rolling out left and right.
They were not good learning experiences for the most part because they were thrown together quickly and they just tried to like convert a textbook into the course. Millions of people signed up for these things. The completion rate was like sometimes like 1% or something. Right. Like really low. No one signed up for 'em, A second one. Right. Cuz they didn't have a great first experience.
Yeah. And gosh, that's such, that's such a throwback that we, we talked about that when I worked in higher ed like two years ago. Yeah. Um, first of all, I'm a New York Italian and MOOC is like a derogatory term. The first time I heard the VP of IT at the University of Scranton, St. Moo, I was like, Hey, who are you talking to Over, like, I just got very like, um, can he say, is he allowed to say that? But, uh, I mean, to our credit, like we never like rushed to roll out one. Right?
Like we really, and like by the time, well, I left before this, but like again, by the time we were kinda like ready, we kind of saw the, the pitfalls of it. Right. Um, because like, if you're gonna just. Throw. Like if I wanna learn something short, I can go read an academic paper on it. But like you said, it's gonna be an awful experience. Like I'm, when I have questions, it's gonna be so boring. Um, and that's almost like what I think about when I think of like AI generated courses.
You're basically just saying like, take all of this information and spit it out on a page. Put it into lessons you think it should be in. Right, which is not thinking about the learning experience. No. Um, because like AI can't possibly know that, like how each individual will learn. And so, you know, that's, that's kind of what I thought about as you were talking there. But I'm sorry, I like I interrupted your
philosophy. No, I like that. Yeah, I like that. And what, so where I hope we're going is that, well on a couple of fronts, you can now like have some of that boring stuff though, that research. Like writing the textbook for you almost, right? Mm-hmm.
Now, your job as the course creator is to put all of that extra stuff, the extra elements into the course that make it interactive, make it engaging, building a community around the course, possibly, you know, adding some collaborative elements, one-on-one coaching with the instructor, or group coaching with the instructor. Those sorts of things are gonna be really what set courses apart.
So this idea of like evergreen courses that are text based and like hands off automated, I think we're gonna have a handful of people maybe in, in certain niches, like be somewhat successful with that. But by and large, like the real value from this is gonna be if we can help put tools in the hands of creators that, that go way above and beyond that, right? And make that accessible. Um, So AI can help us build the foundation, which we can talk more about like specifics and prompts and all that.
But, um, I don't know. I mean, what do you think about, about that? I, I'm developing this like, you know, in real time, constantly evolving in my thoughts,
so, right. Well cuz I mean, it's like, I mean, this is maybe recency effect, but I can't think of another technology. And again, I've been in technology for over 20 years at this point. Um, you know, and I can't think of something that evolved as rapidly as like generative AI tools.
Um, and so like, I've talked about it a little bit on, on the podcast and like, I had to like, put a disclaimer like, hey, we were talking about this in January and it's like March now, and it things, everything's totally different. All and so, um, you know, and so like it's, it is that constant evaluation. The other thing I think, again, as you were talking, what made me. What, where my brain went was the idea of the flipped classroom, right?
So like anybody who's unfamiliar with the idea of the flipped classroom, it was that, um, the student would essentially like read the lectures at home and then do the assignments in class. And when I first heard about this, I was like, oh, this is brilliant, right? Like, this is, this makes so much sense. You read the material and then like you work through the comprehension with your fellow students and teacher.
But, but then I actually started talking to my students about, uh, those, like who had experience with the flipped classroom. They're like, oh, they would just make us like watch YouTube videos. And I'm like, that's not okay. Y that's not a learning experience, right? Again, all of this information is out there and, and I, part of the educator's job is to curate and filter it.
Um, and put it into a lens that works best for the people you're talking to and not just throw a bunch of information at them. And so like, totally AI tools can help us do that, right? You can write a prompt for chat, G p t, that's like, uh, I wanna teach a group of 10 year olds, uh, how to make their first HTML page, um, right. As an expert web developer talking to a group of 10 year olds.
Um, and like, yeah, maybe you'd get something, but like, maybe not, you know, or like, certainly they're gonna have questions. Um, certainly they're gonna have questions that AI can't possibly anticipate. And so, um, I think that it's a very good assistive tool. It's a good research tool. I remember when like Wikipedia was first emerging and every teacher wanted to ban that because it wasn't a good research tool, but like you had to. It's a good first.
I think it's a good first step, but it's not gonna give you your first draft or your final draft, rather. Right. It's, it's gonna give you some prompts. It's gonna give you some prompts to then go and look for more information.
Yeah. And look for like, how to make it relevant, how to tell stories that are personal to you as the educator, or maybe that connect specifically with the, with the learner. Um, then you, you're gonna wanna, I mean, to me, my, my whole like education philosophy is learning is doing, not getting. Mm-hmm. Right.
Yeah. And so, um, you know, will have to build ways into the courses to have the students do something that demonstrates that they've explored that new content to whatever it is, or, or played around with it, or created something or built something. Um, or maybe it's in a traditional sense, a quiz or something like that. But, Um, you know, that's really what makes the course, the course or those, those experiences.
And so, you know, anyone that might be listening that is creating learning experiences, like always be thinking about, um, what can you have the, the student do well, AI's not giving you that. Maybe you could ask what could the student do to demonstrate that they've done this or, and I've tried that a little bit. Like, what's an activity that I could do when I want to teach this concept? And it, depending on what it is, it gives some decent ideas that can get you unstuck.
Um, but then, you know, like how much time you have, what resources are available, all that, that you would have to then tailor it and, and put it into your course. But the course shouldn't be about the content because as of now, the content is trivial. It's everywhere. Like your content's not unique. Mm-hmm. The actual words on the page are not unique. Um, So it's gotta be the experiences that are, that are the
uniqueness. Yeah, I like that. I, I always say learn by doing, uh, by doing as well. Um, I, you know, I want my courses, I want people to have tangible experiences after they take my courses. I want them to walk away from my course and have something virtually in their hands, right? Cuz I'm usually teaching people how to do things online, but like, Hey, I took this course and I made that. The average student retention rates, when they learn something, it's like lecture reading is 10%.
Um, and then practice doing is up to 75, right? And like 90% is teaching others. But, um, if you are, if, if you are just giving to Ronnie's point, right? If you're just giving people something to read, uh, as their course, they're not gonna retain that. They're not gonna remember that. Um, you probably, I mean, if you're watching on the livestream now, if you're listening, maybe you don't even remember what I just said, right?
Um, but like practical doing is gonna give you a 75% retention rate because you're at your, your. Forging new memories of, of, you know, like for forming new pathways for like actually doing the thing. Right. That, and that was probably the idea of the flipped classroom, right? In theory it was,
and, and I, I don't have it in front of me and it's been a while. And I think it depends on the topic, you know, the content, the age of the learners, but I think there was some research that showed, especially younger kids, where a lot of this was used mm-hmm. That actually didn't show gains in instruc, like in out educational outcomes in many ways. And that kind of surprised a whole bunch of people.
Yeah. Um, but, you know, other ways to incorporate that, doing into your course, having forums like BB press forums or comments, um, threaded discussions having, uh, peer review of, of work, um, building that collaboration and, um, You know, there's all sorts of tools that, that we could add. And AI is not going to generate that. Now, you should expect today that your students are probably gonna be using chat g p t to mm-hmm.
Like, answer those discussion questions or whatever, but you know, that's kind of on them and that's a skill we're all gonna learn how to, how to figure out, you know? Yeah. What that really means for
us. I will say, right? You asked me about my philosophy. I did write a blog post a couple weeks ago, um, called like, chat. G P T is, ex, ex is exposing like a weakness in our education system or something like that. Um, where I basically talked about how, uh, is exposing our broken education system, right? Because if te my theory, right? And I think based on what you've said, you might agree with this.
I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but, um, if teachers are banning chat, g p t from, uh, from the classroom wholesale, first of all, You're now depriving students of a skill that they are going to need when they get into the workforce. Like you're going to need to know how to leverage generative ai. Um, but also, um, but also that means you're just giving assignments that are regurgitation assignments, right? Like if you tell me to write, uh, a paper about like the Battle of Shiloh, right?
Uh, and chat G p t can write that paper and it covers everything that you told me I had to do. That's not a problem with chat G P T, that's a problem with the assignment. Like you're just making me memorize and regurgitate, right. Um, instead of like critically think right about the Battle of Shiloh or whatever.
I completely agree. Um, and, you know, for course creators and some, you know, we work with people of all different types of courses that they're creating, right? There's some that are for like, certifications and you have like strict, um, either legal obligations or like some something that you have to make sure that they know and that are taught is covered. And then you have much more fun, um, you know, hobbies and things like that, that people that we, you know, all sorts of stuff.
And then everything in between. It depends on your course, it depends on the topic, but you can, you definitely wanna bring in community some way and mm-hmm. And the option for that, um, however you can, even if that community is external to the course that you're just opening the door to or something like that.
Yeah, absolutely. And now that we've gotten that out of the way, right, um, uh, AI tools can be helpful. Um, and I think something that, um, we're teed up to talk about is something that I always, always struggle with, right? I make courses for LinkedIn learning, um, and if I'm not doing, like, if I'm not doing a coding course, right? Where like the, the doing part, the assessment part is obvious. It's like, take this code, write this code, right?
Usually I'll like say, oh, right, well, I'm gonna, let's write this code, pause this video here, try to do it yourself, and then we'll walk through my solution. Um, if it's not that, then they want me to write quiz questions and I hate. Hate writing quick because like, they're so to me, they're like so contrived the way I write them. I'm really bad at writing. I just say that right off the bat. Right. It's always like four. One is I think the obvious answer.
One is a very, obviously not the answer. It's like, just totally at a left field. Um, and then, but it's like, it's something I spend, I think, a, um, inequitable amount of time on when it comes to creating the course. Um, but it sounds like Sensei is about to integrate something that could, could maybe help me. Yeah. This is our first,
our first tool that we're building in. And so what we wanted to avoid, um, was not having this like chat interface that you have everywhere else with mm-hmm. With AI tools. We just kind of want it to be magic wherever we can. And so you already have a lesson in Sensei and the lesson has content. Then you can click a button to create a quiz. I mean, that's how it works. Now, when you do that, we'll ask, well, do you want us to generate a few quiz questions for you?
And we did a lot of testing and we found that like chat, G p T usually writes three good questions. If you ask for more than three, they get really repetitive. Mm-hmm. Um, and so we were just showing three quiz questions and they, for now, the, they're multiple choice. But what I like about it is when we can take it a step further, we then ask to, well also display why the right answer is correct and why each wrong answer is not correct. Like, why is that the wrong answer?
And then we, so when the learner is taking the quiz and they choose the wrong answer, they'll immediately get the feedback that, you know, this is why this is the wrong answer, and here's the right answer and here's why. So it's like reinforcing right in real time and. You know, we could do that when we're building the course, but like you said, it's pretty time consuming. It's also a little challenging.
Um, and I think once you, I've been playing with these a bunch, like, it kind of helps train the course creator too, like on writing better quizzes and writing better feedback. So then you can extend and write a fourth and a fifth. And we don't want you to just use the quiz questions exactly as they come out of the box. Like we're hoping you're reviewing them and making sure that it's a good question and like it's the right answer and all that.
But, um, that's just like one way of starting and it's, you don't have to worry about writing a prompt. We've we're customizing those prompts for you all in the background and then putting it into the blocks. So no copy pasting or anything like that. It transforms it into Gutenberg and into the quiz editor. Ah, that's awesome.
Which is pretty cool. Yeah. That's awesome. And like the, why is it, right, why is it wrong? Like, that's another thing that I really struggle with. I'm just like, The right. I like, I feel like when I say, when I write y, is this the right answer? I can also put that in the Y. Is this the wrong answer, right? Like yeah, like yeah. Why is a the right answer there? The A is the right answer for these reasons. Why is B the wrong answer for the reasons that A is the right answer?
But that's like not really helpful, right? It's like,
and it's, and you wanna just kind of cut, be and paste what you've already written cuz you already wrote the right answer, you know, up above or whatever in the text. But chat g p t does a pretty good job of like writing it in a slightly different way that might connect with them a little bit better or something like that and not feel super repetitive. So, um, you know, that's just the first thing we're playing with.
Um, right after that it's getting to creating, we found, Just creating the course outline, which you can already go to chat G p T or I've been using Bard a lot too. Nice. I think that G Google Chat.
G p t Google established
earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yes. And so, um, you know, you can already ask it for a course outline based on the course topic and all that. But what we're doing is you have to put a course title in when you create a new course. And we ask you right after that what like the objectives are of the course. Mm-hmm. Well now we already have all the information we need to write the prompts for you. Yeah. Um, so then we can generate a, an outline and say, do you like this?
You can just start blank if you want. Like, you're not forced to use it, but if you choose to use it, you can easily customize it, edit it, but hopefully, you know, the goal is to get people to publish their first course faster. That's like the metric we're trying to improve. Yeah. Cuz we're a business, you know, we have to be, um, And,
but I mean also like starting a course is like the hardest part, right? I mean, to me it's some people, they're like people who have a hard time starting and a, uh, some people who have time, like getting a hard time getting over the finish line. I am hun a hundred percent in the starting. Yeah. I will stare at a problem for like a week and be like, yeah, I really gotta start this. But like, again, generative AI has been, that made that a little bit easier, right?
And like getting an outline, at least like you said, gets the ideas flowing and that's like super helpful. And so, yes, like you're a business, you want people to make more courses obviously, but like that is also extremely beneficial to the course creator who probably wants to get the course done as soon as possible. Oh yeah. So they can start selling it,
right? No, we want, I mean we want, we wanna make tools that makes their lives easier and better and a better end result of the course. And everything like that helps 'em learn how to use the our tool as well, because that is kind of the hardest. Piece is that very beginning, just getting used to the course. And so if it already has the lessons laid out there with the titles, it, it all just makes a lot more sense to teach you how to use the tool, which is a big part of it too.
And we'll do the same for lessons. We know the lesson title, we know the lesson objectives. We can, I'm nervous about this one. I, we're not gonna publish it if it's not good content, but like, I'm hoping we can write it in ways, like tell a story a around this topic or Yeah, like try to make it more engaging or ask discussion questions for this topic. So it's not just like regurgitating a textbook of content, right?
Like it's gonna vary based on what the topic is, that it gives you some lesson output, help build some of that, um, you know, interactive elements into the lesson
for you. Yeah, I really, I really like that. Um, cuz usually, you know, when I start, when I start on a course, the first thing I'll do is. Um, this is like course or book. Um, there's a like dual mind map of like everything I know about the topic. Right. Um, and so like even if I start there, right, I could still ask cha e p t or Bard, um, which by the way, I tried Bard when I first came out. Um, it's not as good, I'll be honest.
Yeah. I mean, I, I I I kind of feel like Google's like scared of how good it could actually be and like they're probably throttling it a little bit. Oh, interesting. Um, just based on what I've read, pre Bard coming out. Um, but like, is that, is that rapidly, is that changing rapidly? Cuz I know like one of the things that Bard can do that chat c p t can't is like get the content of a. Right.
Yeah, it does that. Um, and I use Bing actually a lot too. Oh, nice. Like, I'll test them all and Bing is chat g p t four, but it does the website stuff and I really like the way it cites its sources. Oh. And tells you where it pulled the information. Um, dang. That's awesome. Yeah. One thing, one thing I like about Bard is it usually gives you three versions of whatever it writes. And so you can immediately see what's different between the three versions. So that's pretty cool too.
And I'm hoping we kind of build that in maybe with, it's kind of like we're doing three quiz questions. You can choose to have all three. Um, but with the outlines, we might have it do a short course outline or a more complicated course outline with like modules or something so we can show you the differences. Um, that is, is something we're, we're actively kind of looking into.
Did you read Bill Gates's article about ai, like the future of AI and, and how it could help people?
I don't think I, I mean, I know I didn't read it. I've heard bits and pieces
of what I, my biggest takeaway and what I liked best from it was he basically said that my job is safe. Right? Educators, the world's always gonna need educators and the world's always gonna need nurses. So like, my job and my wife's job are safe. Um, but, uh, to that point, right, anybody at this moment can look up anything they want, right? Uh, you can find information on anything. And, um, but that doesn't mean that schools and educational institutions are eliminated, right?
Because you still need someone with the experience to discern and distill and filter out the garbage, right? Um, and so I think like what we're talking about here is how chat G P T or other generative AI tools can help us make better content, give us better ideas, right? Because we as educators, we still only have like our personal lens, right? So like, I mean, I don't want to, um, disparage programmers. I am a programmer, but like I've, I've said this before, right?
Where like I'll be talking to a client and they'll want to feature and I'll be like, why would you want that? Right. Like, which is just such a conceited thing to think and say. Um, but like the same could be said in, in the education setting, right? Like, I might not think of something that the, uh, the learner might need to learn.
Whereas a few good prompts from chat G P T might show me like, I'm teaching WordPress and most people don't know the difference between a page and a post that comes from a real life experience where my student was like, what are you even talking about? What's the difference? Um, so things like that, if you can short circuit that, uh, incredulous look from a, an 18 year old student, uh, chay, VT could save you a lot of pain.
Well, you know what, you made me think a little bit about. Chat. G p t is so text heavy and I know that there's some like generative like art and image tools and even videos we're getting there, but mm-hmm. We, we've kind of been on this trend away from reading a lot of text and moving into like these like TikTok like video for everything, right? Like if you can't, if you can't teach it in a, in a quick, uh, portrait mode.
TikTok, I mean, forever it was like, how dare you record a video in portrait mode and now Oh, I know. Um, and so like that's a good thing that educators have to remember. Like depending on the topic, depending on the learner, you kind of set it with their needs. Like some things somebody might be able to read and understand others they might be better if they hear it or if they see it in a video or if they get to draw it themselves or whatever.
So when we're building our course, we can inc. All these strategies, whenever possible, give people the choice and we don't have to funnel them through the exact same experience as everyone else taking the course. We can give them their options. And that's really what I hope this like AI will help us be able to build those sorts of like, just experiences
faster. Yeah. And, and this is something I talk about with like content reuse, right? Um, you know, I've got students who are like, how am I supposed to make all this content? Like, well, you know, it's, uh, record the podcast, use generative AI to get a transcript, have chat, e b t, clean up that transcript and make it readable and then have it summarize, right? Oh, now you have LinkedIn post, right?
Uh, there is, if you are creating text based courses, like maybe you're not good on like, maybe, you know, I mean, Thomas Jefferson famously delivered his state, state of the Union, states of the State of the Union addresses. There we go. Um, Via, via written word, right? Because he hated speaking. Um, but I was just looking at this tool by, uh, 11 Labs. I don't know if you've seen this one.
You give it, you feed it a sample of your voice, and then it will, you know, generate, uh, text to speech with your own voice, um, does a pretty good job if you have like that North American kind of accent and dialect. Um, you know, I think, uh, I was listening to a podcast with, uh, John Voorhis, who's from like Chicago and Federico Vici, who's from Rome, Italy, and, um, definitely worked a little bit better for John than it did for Federico. So probably a very US-centric tool right now.
But, um, you know, if you're in a position where you can. Audio content, you're not comfortable in front of the mic. Yeah. That could be an opportunity. Right? Or vice versa. AI tools are giving us the ability to meet the learners where they want to be, which I think is super great.
Yeah, absolutely. And like I can write a blog post or an email like in no time. That's just a skill that I've developed, but when it comes to trying to record a video, like it could take me all day to record a minute because I just like, just get stressed out about it and wanna rerecord a million times and all that stuff. Mm-hmm. Maybe there's tools that are available that are gonna help me. Right. Like I can write it out and like get it out quickly.
I think it's really interesting when you think about those things, right? Turning on a video and, and talking is energy. Like it takes a lot of energy, the camera steals energy from you. So, um, yeah. But these tools can be
a great equalizer. Yes. I mean, I think about, uh, you know, people with. Dyslexia or dysgraphia like or anything really. Like we can What's dysgraphia again? It's writing issues like especially handwritten. Okay. Like handwriting and getting their words onto paper. Gotcha. Um, like, you know, we have such good tools with text to speech that really helps.
Mm-hmm. Um, I've even seen people use like paste, copy paste and a whole bunch of text and say like, rewrite this in a more friendly format for someone with dyslexia. And it takes out some of like, it, there's some tools that people are working on just for that, but like, it's just these tools will hopefully be une equalizer for those, those of us both wanting to create content and consume. Right. We will all be a little bit more on an even playing field.
Yeah, absolutely. To be pretty cool. Absolutely. That's awesome. That's like one of the things everyone's like, why do I, why does my podcast need a transcript? Right. I'm like, well, there's like a lot of reasons, but some people prefer to read. And like the argument will be like, well, our podcast is so conversational that like just the transcript will be terrible to read. And I'm like, all right, well let the reader make that judgment. Right? Like, don't be like, you won't like this anyway.
Um,
yeah. Well, similarly, if you have a video based course, of course it's heavy with videos. Like not just having the caption option, but like you can use an accordion to hide it, but put the whole transcript in there, right? Yeah. So someone can expand, but you're also gonna like benefit search if someone's searching through your course.
One of the things that, I don't know how long this will take or how useful this will be, but I feel like we're gonna have these chat bots that follow us on every website we visit now. Mm-hmm. So the idea is like, and we're kind of looking into this like an AI tool where you could chat with the course. Yeah. And you know, so having that transcript in there is gonna make, building these tools and add-ons later so much better. So I would definitely,
someone told me. About a tool like this. It's not on this piece of paper, I thought it was. Um, but it's like you feed it a bunch of your content, video content, audio content, and it transcribes it, transcribes it, and then you basically say like, um, where do I talk about, uh, this was a real estate example, right? So like, where do I talk about, um, HOAs? And this chat box comes back and it's like, in this video at minute nine you talk about HOAs, right?
Like, so these tools are already being developed and that is absolutely bananas to me.
And even more than like search results like that, it'll like synthesize like, what did we talk about with HOAs in there? Right? And it'll like summarize instead of you having to read the transcript. And, and so I feel like that's coming. I don't know how far in the future, but your course will have a chatbot that someone can like. You know, ask questions of the course. Right? Um, every website has it with documentation and all that sort of stuff,
so Yeah. Completely indexed, right? And then this is, yeah, I mean, cuz this follows the trend and I'm aware we're coming up on time here. Um, so if anybody has any, any questions, uh, for me, or more importantly, Ronnie, um, leave them in the chat. I'll make sure we get to them. Um, but you know, the trend for the last few years has been, um, I first heard, uh, uh, Chris Badgett from Lifter, uh, use this term, um, like just in time learning. Mm-hmm. Right?
Where people have a problem they wanna solve and they want to find course material in that moment, uh, to help them. And so this tool, the tool is called Searchy. I'll put it in the chat here. Um, oh, nice. But this is like, this is the, the tool I was talking about, that like index is your own content for you. This is like, Definitely something I'm gonna be playing with probably on the next live stream. Uh, either that or like generating an outline for my next book idea.
Um, but uh, having a tool like this means that you can have, uh, over six or 14 hours of course content. And like, that doesn't feel daunting to the, the learner anymore. Right. Because I think this was like another thing that like course creators felt like they had to do was just like, put as much content as possible because content equals value, but like outcomes, equal value. Um, yeah. And
these micro courses are like a big thing and a good, I mean, you can learn so much in 15 minutes. Yeah. And like absolutely. You know, and you could, you could sell that easily. Right. Um, you know, and, and get good value
out of it. So yeah. That's like a tactical error I made recently where, um, I've got over a hundred videos, probably like 125 videos on podcasting. And, um, they were all in kind of self-paced courses. They were mostly in one big self-paced course, and I just kind of turned it into a membership where you could search for videos and, uh, I thought this was really the way to go, like Netflix style search for your topic.
Um, when I didn't anticipate was for like, I kind of priced myself out of the market, um, for my target audience, but also, like, sometimes people don't know what they don't know. And so if I give them a, um, micro course or a mini course where it's like, how to start a podcast for less than 400 bucks, oh, well that's the thing that they know they, they need or how to get your first podcast sponsor right now.
Let's not think long term about generating hundreds of thousands of dollars off of sponsorships. Let's just talk about getting your first sponsorship. Is that worth 50 bucks to you? Well, yeah, totally.
And then you can cross sell, upsell, right, exactly. Link all that sort of good stuff. Yeah. Especially into like a one-on-one coaching thing or whatever
it may be. So Yeah, that's exactly right. And the mistake I made learn from this mistake friends, um, I tried to bundle it all together, like you get all hundred 20 videos and live cohorts with me and a one-on-one session with me, and I thought I was throwing in a lot of value, but it kind of sounds overwhelming, right? And so, like people who bought, and now we're six months in, they, and they're like, do I still have that one-on-one coaching session with you?
Like, and maybe if I let more people buy it when they're ready, right? If I get them in and they, I solve their immediate problem, then the upsell the cross-sell is, is better. And so, um, not really generative ai, but just like kind of the theory of, I, I think we're moving towards, uh, away from. By the college degree. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and we're moving more towards like buy the skill, right? We're moving from like the big, like four, six year universities to the trade school again.
Yeah. Awesome. Well, I wanna wrap up here with, um, uh, we touched on the stuff that, that you are doing. Uh, obviously you work for Automatic, automatic has a lot of different tools. Automatic. For those who don't know, uh, they run wordpress.com, own WOR WooCommerce, uh, and therefore Sensei Mail Poet, Jetpack. A lot of other things that I'm probably forgetting. Um, did I miss anything major there? Did I name all the major properties,
but for anyone listening, pocket cast, it's my favorite
pocket cast, of course. Um, God and Pocket cast is amazing. Uh, Hashtag not a sponsor, but like really, um, the web interface is still like the best of any podcast app I've ever used. Um, yeah, so Great point. Podcasts, uh, lots of other great stuff. So, um, is there like an overarching philosophy inside of Automatic? I know Automatic has for a long time been very like, let the teams do their things ship.
Um, but as you've grown, maybe you've, you've gotten a more like com company wide philosophy. Does that question make sense?
Yeah, it makes sense. And it's a little bit of both. I mean, I think, uh, Matt Mullenweg, our founder CEO o like posted in a publicly in a post status channel recently, like, you know, he thinks everyone across the entire WordPress ecosystem needs to learn AI deeply and experiment. And it's like, I think like everyone, it's taken over.
Um, like it's something every team is talking about and is thinking about how to incorporate in their own way and that the teams have the autonomy and, you know, to figure out what works best. Everything from like, tools that we're using internally, like I now have a chatbot to ask like how, you know, like sense senses, subscriber numbers or changing over time or whatever.
Instead of looking for a graph all the way up to like getting it into the hands of users, creating content in different ways. Also a big focus around, uh, we have so much content. Uh, forums and from courses and from blog posts, you know, about how to use WordPress, wordpress.com and all these sorts of things that like, you know, how can we use AI to, to help synthesize all that and, and get the user what they want to know from, from a support aspect.
So it, it really runs the picture there, but it is like every team for themselves, we are working on like some centralized like, um, a p i tools that we can all use as, so that, that like some of the dirty behind the scenes under the hood work can be taken care of for us so we can just build faster, which is pretty cool.
Nice. That's amazing. Um, we'll have to get into this at a later date, right? But like, customer service is probably a really good place where AI could be helpful, right? And yeah, this is like the first quote unquote chatbots. I feel like chatbot has a totally different meaning now than even like two years ago. But like, you would see that in, in the chat bots that, you know, you have little bubble on the site and it's like, Hey, how can I help you? Like the support chat.
And it's like, oh, well, oh, it looks like you said the word migrate here. Like, have you looked at these FAQ articles and
it was rarely
what you needed. Right? It was rarely what you needed. Right. But like now Right. It feels like it'll be less rare. And also
like the folks, you know, handling, uh, which their job is unreal. And I could never do like handling multiple live chats and tickets. I know. And like helping people all day long. Like they're the heroes, but they also have access to this data and it's like a lot to keep up with. Mm. Two, um, to help them like search and, and find the right way to say it that worked for someone in the past or something. Right. And
yeah. That's pretty cool. Absolutely. I'm, I'm gonna, um, end with a, a question that I, I'm curious about, uh, cuz I know for a while every new hire at Automatic had to work support for two weeks. Did you have to do that?
I did, yeah. And I had to do Woo support and I had never really used Woo. Oh wow. And so it was quite eye-opening and I'm, I'm due for
getting back in there for a week. Nice. Yeah. Is that something that you can just like optionally do at any time or, uh, it's
once a year. Everyone needs to do it, do a week. Oh,
that's amazing. That's great. Yeah. That's, it's such a good, such a good thing. Right. I, um, just migrated to Transistor FM for my podcast host and, uh, the guy helping me support was also like the co-founder, uh, Justin Jackson. And I just thought that was like, Such a great thing, like, oh well, like, because you know, some people are like, I'm the ceo, and like, they're too good for like, the grunt work. But like, he's like, yeah, let me help you with that really
quick. Just really, no, absolutely everyone in the company. I mean from like the accountants and the lawyers to the developers Wow. To everyone. So it's pretty
cool. Yeah, I know. I've seen screenshots of like Matt jumping in too few times in time, which is cool. Yep, yep. Um, that's amazing. And then the last thing I'll just mention here is, uh, of the automatic products that I think are worth mentioning that I forgot to mention. Uh, we already mentioned Tumblr. Uh, day one, the journal app, which is super cool. Um, nice to be like, uh, I feel like Automatic is a good steward of that app.
Uh, and simple note, which again, I feel automatic has been a good steward of that app. So, uh, looking for notes, especially for Android, I feel like, well, I mean, when I was on Android it was lacking. Yeah. Uh, Simple in a long time. Best joint based. Yeah, it's been a long time though. Yeah.
So, oh, I mean, we've all in on open source and making the web better and not just through WordPress, which is yeah.
Is pretty cool. Awesome. Well, Ronnie, this has been great. Thanks so much for joining us here on the livestream today. Thanks to, uh, EDMA and Wanda and all the lurkers, uh, who were watching or who will be listening to this later, uh, if people wanna learn more about you, where can they find you?
I wrote a post on using Conmigo, which Khan Academy's ai on my blog@ronniebird.com. But you can also check us out on sensei lms.com, uh, for all the good stuff we're doing there.
Nice. And, uh, yeah, I will make sure to have again, links in the description for both this video and the podcast episode. But, um, This episode has been presented by Sensei. So, uh, if you go to How I Built It slash sensei, you'll get a little, a little coupon code if you want to check out Sensei for your own online courses. Uh, I'm gonna find this blog post as we speak, um, and link that in the show notes as well. So, uh, oh, great. I found it. Oh, very timely.
Thank you Ronnie, um, accounting Cafe. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate you. Uh, really interesting. Thank you, Ronnie. Thanks so much for spending some extra time with us today. Yeah, it's fun. I appreciate it. A lot of fun. All right. Yep. Thank you to everybody watching slash listening. Uh, and until next time, get out there and build something.