The PNI Practicum courses are on their way back

I've been working my way through rebooting my online courses. I thought I might be ready by March, and then April, but there has been (as always) much more to do than I expected. 

I now plan to start two new courses in May and one in June. I should have a link to my new website to show you in another week or two.

Here's what I've been doing since I finished the books in mid-January. 

First I spent a month choosing a learning management system (LMS) and learning how to use it. After watching many videos and reading much documentation, I decided to use TrainerCentral. After about a week of working with it, I decided I couldn't stand its limitations. Then I switched to LearnDash, which seemed better. But after about a week of working with it, I decided I couldn't stand its limitations. So I went back to TrainerCentral, and I plan to stay there. It's a pretty solid platform, and though it doesn't have everything I want, it will work fine.

Parenthetically, in case you're interested, the crux of the issue (and the reason I spent a month choosing a platform) is that even though every LMS says it supports cohort-based learning, it really doesn't. All of these systems were built to support individual video-based courses, so their support for learning cohorts is bolted onto an individual-learner frame. 

For example, in pretty much every system I looked at, you have to make a copy of each course for each cohort. You can't just point to the course; you have to clone it. So if you decide you need to change something in your course materials, like how you explain an instruction, you have to make the change in every copy of the course. It took me weeks to figure out that I could host most of my course materials on my own web site and just link to them from my cohort-courses. In this way, if I need to change how an instruction is explained, I can update my back-end files, and the change will affect every course cohort. 

Anyway, I'm past that hurdle now. The next hurdle is rethinking the course structures. That's what I'm working on now. After all, it has been three years since I last ran these courses, and I couldn't just pull them out and run them again without rethinking them. Luckily my trusty embarrassment rule is working as it should, and I can remember every little thing that didn't work as well as I wanted it to the last time. 

So I am changing many little things about the way the courses run: what they are called, what happens in their meetings, what people do outside the meetings, and so on. The differences will be apparent both in the paid courses and in the open-source course materials (which I am updating at the same time). If you took one of my courses before, thank you so much, because I am remembering everything you said and did, and it's helping me to make the courses better.

I haven't changed the course calendar (which I showed you in a previous blog post) or the time of day when course meetings will happen (they will all happen at 2pm New York time). 

One more thing: in a previous blog post I said that I plan to use a Purchasing Power Parity system to offer discounts to people in countries with low exchange rates with US dollars. On further reflection, I decided to just create some discount codes and ask people to use them on an honor system (that is, if they need them). PPP indexes can be useful, but there are richer and poorer people in every country. I don't plan to offer non-profit or educational discounts (because there are richer and poorer non-profits and educational institutions). I'm just going to let people decide whether they need a discount and hope people don't abuse the system.

I'm not quite ready to announce the reopening of the courses yet, but I hope to be ready within another two (or at most three) weeks.

 

More course adjustments

Just in case anyone is checking this blog to see how my course preparations are going ... they're going, but they're going slowly. Decisions take time to make, and I'm working my way through a mountain of decisions right now. I'm firm on some things, but on other things I've been waffling back and forth for weeks. And every time I make a decision, there's another one hiding behind it.

Anyway, I've had to abandon my plan to start with a March course. The time is getting too short. People can decide to buy a book in a minute, but it takes a lot longer to decide whether you want to take (and pay a lot more for) a course that will take up several hours of your time each week. 

So I'm going to start my first PNI Practicum Prelude course in April. The first Smaller-scale course will start in May, and the first Larger-scale course will start in June. I'll be using the time before April to get all three courses ready to go. 

I would like to be ready to take enrollments for the April PNI Practicum Prelude course in another few days, but realistically it will probably take another week to be sure I have everything connected up right. I'll make an announcement here (and on LinkedIn) when I'm ready.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, contact me at cfkurtz at cfkurtz dot com. 

New course schedule and other decisions

I've been working on getting my rebooted PNI Practicum courses ready to go, and I've made several decisions (and changes to my previous plans). If you are interested in taking one of the courses, you might want to hear what has been going on.

TL;DR - A new 4-week Prelude course will be starting on March 3, 2026 -- if I get at least six sign-ups for it. You can't sign up for it at this moment, but you will be able to sign up in another 1-2 weeks. 

A platform decision

After reviewing many options, I've decided to use ... I'm not certain yet. You'll find out when I'm ready.

A domain decision

The new paid courses will be hosted at a new domain. I'm now in the process of moving my course content there.

I plan to keep the open-source version of the courses at cfkurtz.com/pnipracticum. I will simplify that page to include just a brief description of the open-source file downloads (which I am also working to update).

A pricing decision

I have decided to price my courses using the Purchasing Power Parity system. I am not yet sure how I will be carrying this out technically speaking (there is a lot to learn about PPP), but depending on where you live, you might be eligible for a course discount of up to 50%. 

Why am I doing this? It's partly because I think it's the right thing to do, but it's also partly because my courses are cohort-based. If I can't find at least six people to take each course, I can't run the course at all. I was thinking of offering last-minute fill-up-the-cohort discounts, but (because of the time commitment) I don't think most people are going to want to take these courses on the spur of the moment. So I think PPP pricing could be a win-win solution for all of us.

A time-of-day decision

I have been thinking a lot about the time of day for the courses. 

In my previous blog post, I said I planned to provide courses at alternating times (1pm and 7pm my time) throughout the year. But I've begun to worry about that approach. Historically, the great majority of my coaching and consulting clients (like 90%) have been located in the Americas and Europe. Classes that start at my 7pm would be best for people in Asia, but they might not fill up enough to run.

People say the best time to plan an international meeting is at 9am New York time. I would love to be able to do that. Sadly, I can't. I have always been a night owl, but more importantly, some of my days start with migraine headaches. You don't want to talk to me on those mornings.

So I have decided to hold all of my course meetings at my 2pm (year-round). That is 11am in California, 8pm in Europe, midnight in Mumbai, and 6am in Sydney. It's at 3am in Singapore and Perth and Shanghai, but it's the best I can do, at least for the time being.

A time-of-week decision

I love talking to people. At the same time, talking to people drains me. Part of what I am offering people in my courses is access to the un-drained version of me. So I need to make sure I can be present and friendly and capable of thought in each course meeting.

To make this possible, I have arranged my courses so that I will never meet with people on more than three days per week, and I will never meet with anyone on Fridays. I think that should preserve enough of my energy to provide a positive course experience for everyone.

The Level I and II courses do include some (optional) one-on-one coaching sessions. I will schedule those calls on the same days as the classes, and never on Friday.

A time-of-year decision

Right now I'm working to get the Prelude (Level 0) course ready for people to take in March (one month from now). I don't know if that course will fill up in time to run, but it's worth a try.

However, I don't think six people will want to take the scheduled Level II (Larger-scale) course in March. It's a 20-week course, with an 8-hour per week time commitment, and I don't think six people will be ready to make a commitment like that at such short notice. 

So I've been looking at my schedule to see how I could change the Level II course to give people more time to think about signing up for it. Thinking about that that led me to a new idea.

This new schedule brings January into the picture, which allows me to add one more Level 0 course (in January) and to schedule two Level II courses per year (a "winter" class from January through May, and a "summer" class from June through November).

Note that the summer Level II course has an August gap in which people can either continue to gather stories or take a break. The extra time should help out anyone who is having trouble getting enough stories for their projects. 

This new schedule also means that I don't have to get all three courses ready in the next few weeks. I only need to get one (the Prelude) set up and ready to go. I think I can finish that in another week or two. Wish me luck! And send any questions or comments to cfkurtz at cfkurtz dot com.