The key to kicking off a successful cohort community

By Chelsea Wilson

Instructor Support

Summary

Learn how to help your students start your cohort with high energy and meaningful engagement by using Maven's customizable introduction template.

With a relatively short course, it's important for you to facilitate connections as quickly as possible. This is where students get a lot of value from cohort-based experiences.

When you welcome students into your course, start by getting them to introduce themselves with a brief template.

You can customize the introduction template so makes sense for your course.

Go to your 👋intros channel.
Navigate to the ⚙️ settings icon in the top right corner.
Create an introduction prompt that all of your students will see when they go to the 👋intros channel. Remember to save changes.

Everyone is an expert in themselves so getting them to give a brief introduction is an easy way to get them engaging in the community early. Students who post an introduction are more likely to contribute comments and reactions later in the course.

Consider 3-5 prompts for an introduction. And remember, their name will be associated to the post so you don't need them to write their name.

Some suggested prompts for your students:

Location / where are you?
Favorite vacation spot
Why you enrolled in the course
What you're most looking forward to
Fun fact
Best ways to connect / social handles
What skills you can offer
What skills you're looking to learn
Favorite song / book / author / thinker / artist / creator etc.
What you're watching / listening to

Pro tip: in your orientation email, give instructions for students to not only add their own introduction, but to comment in 3 other people's intro and say hi. It's a nice way to create a read-and-write dynamic in the community.

Related Courses

Interviewing Mastery

Learn the secrets of world-class candidate assessment. Install a talent algorithm to consistently "get it right" for mission-critical hires.

Build Multi-Agent Applications - A Bootcamp

Design, develop, deploy, and demo an LLM agent application in 7 weeks!

Manage to Lead - The Path to Breakthrough Performance

Most people think you either lead or manage. The truth is you need to do both. The first thing a good leader needs to manage, is themself!

Build a Lean MVP for your startup in under USD 22K using GenAI

Leverage GenAI to fulfil your startup dream by learning to validate your idea, translate idea to MVP & find right partners for your startup

Career Accelerator for Individual Contributors - Reach Your Career Goals, Faster

Double down on the 5 key skills that are force multipliers for individual contributors. Increase your value, build your brand, and level up.

The Empowered Designer: Design Your Impact

Shape your path forward by embracing what makes you unique as a designer, instead of trying to mold yourself to fit outside opinions.

Be the first to know what's new on Maven

Contact support: support@maven.com

Explore

Teach

Maven