What is Drip Content? How Drip-Feeding Online Courses Improves the Learning Experience

4 minute read

If you are an online course creator or you are interested in creating your first online course, you probably heard the terms "drip" and "drip-feeding".

Drip-feeding course content to your students has many benefits, so keep reading below to find out exactly what this means and how you can start drip-feeding your courses in no time.

What Does it Mean to Drip Course Content?

When we talk about "drip" or "drip-feeding" content to students we mean creating content that becomes available to students only after a set amount of time, usually a number of days since they enrolled in an online course.

Instead of allowing students to access all of your course content as soon as they purchase your online course, with drip, lessons or modules become available to them only after a set amount of days that you can customize.

For example, if you want your students to receive a new lesson every day from the moment they sign up for your course, you could set a drip of 0 days for your 1st lesson, 1 day for the 2nd lesson, 2 days for your 3rd lesson and so on...

Pros and Cons of Setting a Drip for Your Online Course

When used correctly, drip-feeding content to online course students has many benefits, let's the pros and cons of setting a drip for your online course:

Drip-Feeding is Great For:

Boosting engagement levels: by releasing new content after a set number of days, students will feel more motivated to go back to your course and access the fresh content, helping you to keep your customers engaged over time.
Creating a better learning experience: drip-feeding content helps your students follow a structured path of lessons that guides them through their learning process and makes sure they are consuming the content at the ideal pace.
Breaking down complex topics: if your topic is very long and complex, drip-feeding your course can help students digest the lessons without feeling overwhelmed with information.
Increase completion rate and student retention: Since students are regularly given access to new content, drip-feeding can help you motivate them to keep coming back to your site and consume the new lesson or module.
Structuring content for students: dripping content ensures that students engage with all of your course content rather than skipping ahead to the lessons they are interested in. This helps you guide them through the learning process and ensure that students assimilate all of your valuable teachings.
Memberships: If you are running a membership site or a subscription-based course, drip-feeding content is a great way to structure your program, since it helps you to divide your content and slowly release it to your members, increasing the value of your membership and justifying the monthly price.
Preventing fraudulent refund requests: Drip-fed content helps you reduce the issue of refund abusers. Since students can’t access all the course content immediately after purchase, there is less risk of them accessing it all before asking for their money back.

Drip-Feeding Might Not Be Good For:

Courses that students want to complete quickly: the topic of your online course can play a role in helping you decide whether to drip-feed content or not. If your online course teaches a topic that students can consume quickly, or maybe they want to reach the end result as soon as possible, drip-feeding content might not be the best idea as it forces students to adhere to your own schedule.
Larger, more general courses: another case scenario where you might want to think twice before applying a drip is with larger courses that contain a wide variety of topics and content. If you have a course or membership like this, students might want to have the freedom to skip ahead to the modules or lessons they are interested in.

How to Drip-Feed Courses Using Heights Platform

Now that you know all about the pros and cons of setting up a drip in your online course, let's see how you can actually do it using Heights Platform.

There are two main ways to deliver content on a schedule on Heights Platform. The first and most common option is the Drip Release settings, which we described in this article.

The drip release feature allows creators to drip-feed lesson content to students. For example, by entering the number 7 as the lesson release day, the lesson will become available to students 7 days after they join that particular course or program.

This feature is extremely useful if you want to guide students through your program more slowly and keep fresh new content coming to them based on their individual signup time.

Lesson and Module drip release start days are based on the date that your student purchases the course or the course launch date (whichever is later). So for example, if a student buys your online course during your pre-sale campaign and the actual launch date is later, the drip will be calculated from the launch date.

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This is not the only way to deliver content on a schedule in Heights Platform. Another feature that allows you to do this is Challenges.

An online challenge is a type of online course that has a fixed calendar start and end date. What differentiates challenges from online courses is the way students get access to the content and lessons. You have the option to schedule the exact calendar dates when your challenge will be available to students, together with the release date of every single lesson.

Every single lesson inside an online challenge can disappear for students after a set period of time that you can customize (or you can leave the lessons available until the end of the challenge). Everyone who enrolls in your online challenge will gain access to the course and go through the lessons simultaneously, on the same calendar days.

But what does this have to do with drip release?

Similar to drip-feeding content to students dynamically based on their enrollment date, in a challenge all students get access to a new lesson on set calendar days.

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For example, with an online course set with drip release, students get access to a new lesson 4 days after they enroll in the course. In a challenge, instead of calculating the days since enrollment, all students get access to new lessons on the same date, for example, May 31st, regardless of when they enrolled in the challenge.

What is great about challenges in Heights Platform is that you can also schedule automated emails to be sent once a new lesson is released! This further incentivizes students to log back into your program and keeps them engaged.

Learn more about creating challenges for your online business:

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