What is a Teachable Community?

Teachable Community is a feature that lets you build a community around your courses. It helps you create a space where students can interact, share ideas, and support each other.

Online communities help students stay engaged and complete courses.

They provide a space for students to learn from each other and get support, making the learning experience richer and more interactive.

Use Cases for a Teachable Community

Here are some practical ways to use this community feature to benefit your course and keep your students engaged:

1. Practice and feedback - If your course involves practical implementation, your Teachable community can arrange practice sessions and share work for peer feedback. For example, in a photography course, students can post their photos for critique, helping each other improve.

2. Accountability - If your course relies on students sticking to a schedule, your community can provide accountability. For instance, a fitness program can have weekly check-ins where members share their progress and support each other to stay on track.

3. Exclusive access - If you want to offer something special, your community can provide exclusive access to experts. For example, a business course can include monthly live Q&A sessions with the instructor, giving students direct access to valuable insights.

4. Ongoing value - If you want to keep your students engaged beyond the initial course, your community can offer ongoing value. For example, a writing course could feature monthly workshops on new techniques and styles, keeping members learning and connected.

How to Structure Your Teachable Community

Your Teachable community can be divided into separate areas called categories, each with its own access level. So you can set an access level for the whole community and/or individual categories. Categories can be anything you choose.

Popular categories to offer in your Teachable community:

• Introduce yourself - Encourage new members to introduce themselves. This helps create a welcoming space and lets members get to know each other.

• Announcements - Use this area for important updates and news. It makes sure all members are informed about key events and changes.

• Events - Share and discuss upcoming events like webinars, live Q&A sessions, workshops or in-person events.

• Course discussions - If you have multiple courses, you could create a separate category for each course so that discussions stay organised. This also allows you to limit access to course discussions to just students of that course.

• Lesson/module discussions - If you don't have many courses, you could create a category for each lesson or module so that people can share their progress.

• Ask the community - A place for members to ask questions and get advice from peers. This promotes interaction and can minimise admin support requirements.

• Share your wins - Encourage members to share their successes and milestones. This boosts morale and helps members feel accomplished. It's also great for new members to see these positive outcomes.

• Get support - Provide a space for members to ask for help with technical issues or course-related problems. Handling support in your Teachable community can be easier than managing individual support tickets, because you can communicate with all members at once.

• Admin discussion - A private area for course admins and moderators to discuss things. This can help keep admin communication organised in one place.

• Product feedback - Collect feedback on your courses and community. This can help you improve your products for future members and students.

• Membership tier levels - If you're using Teachable's membership feature, you could create separate areas for different tiers (e.g., gold members, silver members). This lets you offer exclusive content and benefits to different groups.

• Study groups - You could create a space for people to organise study groups if they want to help each other with accountability.

• Off-topic - A casual space for members to chat about non-course-related topics. This helps build relationships while keeping the main areas focused.

• Job opportunities - If appropriate for your topic, this is place where members can share job openings, freelance opportunities, and networking events.

Creating the right categories in your Teachable community can really improve the student experience. It keeps things organised and makes it easy for members to find the information they need.

Setting Up a Basic Teachable Community

You can set up fairly complex access rules for the categories inside your community, but for now let's just set up a simple community with a simple structure.

1. Open your Teachable dashboard. 

2. Go to Community in the sidebar.

3. Click Create your community.  

4. It can take up to 15 minutes for your community to be created. Once it's ready, you'll get an email from Teachable.

5. Click Edit access.

6. Select the access level for your community:

   • All students - If you'd like everyone in your school to have access, use this option. (Note that you can set up product-specific categories inside your community if you'd like to keep some areas private to certain people.)

   • Members - If you're using Teachable's membership feature and only people in specific membership tiers should have access to your community, use this option.

   • Students in specific courses - If only some courses should give people access to your Teachable community, select this option.

7. Click Save.

That's it!

You now have a basic Teachable community with three default categories (General, Staff and Site feedback). But you can edit these categories to add your own…

How to Create Your Own Categories

Remember, categories are areas in your community that can have their own access rules. So you can create whatever categories you like, then limit access to certain members.

1. Open your Teachable dashboard. 

2. Go to Community in the sidebar.

3. Click the Categories and sidebar tab.

4. For each category you'd like to create:

   1. Click Add a category.

   2. Enter the category name.

   3. Select a colour for this category.

   4. Choose the access level for the category.

   5. Select the permissions of users in this category (what they can do).

   6. Click Save.

5. Use the drag handle on the left to reorder your categories.

You can use the preview pane on the right to see what students will see. Use the dropdown to impersonate a specific type of user.

Add a Welcome Message For Members

When members first arrive in your Teachable community, they might not know what to do. Pinning a welcome message to the top of your Topics feed is a great way to say hello to new members and help them orient themselves.

1. Open your Teachable dashboard. 

2. Go to Community in the sidebar.

3. Click View community to open your community.

4. Click New Topic.

5. Enter the Title and Content of your welcome message.

6. Click Create Topic.

7. Click on your topic and scroll to the bottom of the page.

8. Select Pinned Globally in the dropdown.

Now, all members will see this welcome message at the top of their feeds when they join.

How Students Access the Community

Making it easy for students to access your Teachable community is key to getting them involved. Here are the main ways students can access the community.

Option #1: Access via Course Curriculum

If a logged-in user has access to the community, they'll see a Learn with others button in the curriculum of any course they have access to.

This button will take them directly to the community.

Option #2: Direct Community Link

You can also share your community link with members directly:

1. Open your Teachable dashboard. 

2. Go to Community in the sidebar.

3. Click the Student Access tab.

4. Click Copy link next to your Community URL.

5. Share this link with your students.

If someone clicks this link and they're not logged in, they'll be taken to a login page. Then once they log in, they’ll be directed to your Teachable community if they have access.

Note: The default link format is your domain string plus .community.teachable.com. You can edit the first part of the URL, but it must end in .community.teachable.com.

Option #3: Add the Community Link to Your Navbar

To give students easier access, you can add the community link to your Teachable navigation bar. This is the main menu at the top of your site pages.

1. Open your Teachable dashboard. 

2. Go to the Site section.

3. Click Navigation in the sidebar.

4. Scroll to the Navigation Bar section.

5. Click Add Link.

6. Enter Community as the text.

7. Select External Links and paste your community URL.

8. Set it to be visible to All.

9. Click Edit Link.

If you open up the front end of your school, you'll see a Community link in your main navigation. Anyone can see and click this link, but only those with access can enter your Teachable community.