How to Get the Most From An Online Accountability Course

If you are ready to take an accountability course to inspire your employees to be more accountable, there are a few best practices to ensure you get the most value from your time.

Above all, take 100% accountability for leveraging the best results from your time spent. 

In an online course, results aren’t delivered through the screen–they’re co-created.

The course creator and the learner collaborate to obtain new knowledge, apply it to real challenges, and take new action to create new results. None of this is passive. It requires intention, attention, reflection, and action.

Our accountability approach reveals this dual responsibility when we ask, “Who is accountable for you getting the most from a course?”

In alignment with Inspiring Accountability methodology, we would assert that the course creator is responsible for providing 100% effort toward creating an informative, engaging course offering maximum integration potential.

And we’d also support that you, the learner, are responsible for applying 100% effort in your attention, engagement, and action toward maximizing integration and implementation.

An excellent course will provide you with prompts or assignments to maximize your ability to put what you’ve learned into action. Although it’s tempting to skip these, this is where you get the value for the time you just spent in the course.

Your time in a course is not valuable for what you hear or watch. It only becomes valuable when it helps you get better results. The journey between watching a course module and getting better results requires your self-leadership to take action.

As you participate in an online course, make sure you leverage the best results for your time. Here are some specific suggestions to help you do that:

1. Before starting, clarify what you want to solve so you can measure your progress.

When you begin with challenges to solve, you have specific examples to revisit after each module to explore how what you learned can help. If you don’t identify challenges, you won’t know how much what you’ve learned has helped you.

If you watch a course but don’t tie it back to specific challenges, your brain (and behavior) will continue operating as it always does. Hoping for results without intentionally applying to specific challenges is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some change sticks. But learning happens from thinking about how you can use a new behavior before you need to use it. Now you are intentionally putting that spaghetti on your dinner plate to eat and enjoy.

2. Don’t multi-task. 

Sharing our attention and focus has become common for many, almost an unbreakable habit. Multi-tasking during an online course is unlikely to yield any results, if not wasting your precious time completely.

Check out these clarifying statistics:

• Multi-tasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity.  (Bergman, P. (2010, May 20). How (and why) to stop multi-tasking. Harvard Business Review.)
• Studies show that the human brain can’t handle more than one task at a time. Even though we think we’re multi-tasking, our brains are actually switching rapidly between tasks. (The Myth of Multitasking. Scientific America. 2009, July.)
• It takes more time to get things done when you try to multi-task. People who are interrupted – and therefore have to switch their attention back and forth – take 50% longer to accomplish a task. (John Medina, Brain Rules)

These statistics confirm that you may as well skip doing an online course until you are ready to give it your full attention. It’s unlikely you will continue your day incorporating anything new that helps you get better results. To get the most value from online learning, treat attending your course the same as an in-person training.

3. Schedule the time ahead of time.

If you wait until you “find the time,” you likely already know it probably won’t happen.

The goal of an accountability course that focuses on helping employees get better results should be to save you time as you begin to apply the strategies and tools. Decide to commit to the course, not as something you could do, but something you want to and will do. To truly get the promised value, schedule the time needed to complete the course in your calendar, and protect that time as a vital investment in yourself and your team’s effectiveness.

4. Choose to include time for reflection, integration, and creating action steps. 

If there’s a 20-minute module, you’ll want to schedule 30 minutes in your calendar.

One big challenge with online courses is that they can’t answer questions as you go or help you apply it to your unique challenges. Online learners are tasked with the choice to put thought and effort into real-life application and integration opportunities.

Calendar your learning sessions to include time for the module and include extra time to reflect on what action steps you’ll take to start applying it.

Our signature accountability course provides this prompt in our workbook. Whatever online learning you do, you can also create this. Dedicate a document or notebook for your notes, and prompt yourself to record your most useful take-ways and 1-3 new action steps to begin integration while the new learning is fresh.

Keep it doable! Choose an amount of time that feels like something you can easily commit to (maybe 30-60 minutes), because we know if it doesn’t feel doable, it doesn’t get done.

5. Commit to practicing one thing immediately after learning something new.

The learning doesn’t happen from listening–it comes from thoughtful application. By choosing new action steps after each learning session, you are making the time you just spent worth it. You’ll also start getting a better return on your investment as you upgrade your leadership approach, and your team starts getting better results.

New results always require new action.

That sums up our top tips for getting the most from an online accountability course! What else do you need to do to set yourself up for success with online learning?

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We’re here to help by offering Inspiring Accountability training, consulting, and coaching, along with our signature book and online course. Connect with us to see how we can support you and your team!

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Or learn online with our signature course: The Brain’s Secrets to Inspiring Accountability Crash Course.