Course Creation Crap: Learning Design for Business with Dr. Catrina Mitchum

If your course has a completion problem, the fix probably isn't the completion. In this BS Breakthroughs episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum unpacks what she learned working through Luna Muñoz's CV course for academics leaving higher ed, and lands on a diagnosis that catches a lot of course creators off guard: you might not have a completion problem. You might have half a course. What We Dig Into The "ha...

You built the thing. You actually finished it. And then it just... sat there as a bonus inside your one-on-one work while the version you imagined selling never quite happened. This week Dr. Catrina Mitchum sits down with Luna Muñoz of Luna Leadership to take apart a CV course that was quietly working as a supplement and figure out what it would take to make it stand on its own. What starts as a "...

You have a course idea you can see in full. Every phase, every module, the whole beautiful thing. So why does building it feel impossible? In this BS Breakthrough, Dr. Catrina Mitchum unpacks her recent conversation with Danielle Smith and digs into why being able to see the whole vision is exactly what trips so many course creators up. What We Work Through Why seeing the entire course in your hea...

Most course platforms are garbage. There, we said it. In this episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum sits down with Danielle Smith, mindset and movement coach and owner of Elemental Delta, to untangle a problem a lot of course creators hit: you have a massive, beautiful body of work, and now you have to figure out what is actually the course and what is everything else. What follows is a real-time consultat...

You've got college students who can scroll TikTok in their sleep but cannot attach a file to an email. You've got semi-retired folks who want to pay their gas bill online without bugging the grandkids. The gut reaction when your students look this different from each other is to build different tracks for different levels. This BS Breakthrough makes the case for a very different read on the situat...

If your course students keep coming back to you every time they hit a wall, the problem probably isn't them. In this episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum works through a live course design consultation with Tim Maile, an IT solutions specialist building a course to help people stop fearing technology and start actually using it. What unfolds is a masterclass in the difference between teaching a tool and t...

If you've ever looked at your course or membership and thought, "I should probably add more," this one's for you. Dr. Catrina Mitchum breaks down a real design conversation with Amber Cherelle, founder of the Everevolution™ collective, and the counterintuitive lesson that came out of it: more options don't create more engagement. They create more ways to avoid the work. What We Work Through Why gi...

What does it actually look like to design a learning experience around lifelong growth instead of a single outcome? Amber Cherelle, founder of Everevolution™, brings Dr. Catrina Mitchum a real design challenge: how to structure the EverEvolution Collective, an ongoing membership built around immersive Living Experiments. This one gets into the weeds on live vs. async, cognitive load, and what lear...

Sometimes the question you've been stuck on isn't actually the problem. In this BS Breakthroughs episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum unpacks her recent conversation with speaking coach Mike McQuillan, who came in asking about video production quality and walked out building an entirely different course for a brand new audience. If your course isn't doing what you hoped it would, this one is worth your ti...

In this episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum works through a live troubleshoot with Mike McQuillan, speaking coach and owner of Fit Presenter. Mike built a course for one audience, but his business has grown in a different direction and the course hasn't caught up. The conversation turns into a practical lesson in one of the most common course creation problems: what to do when the course you built is no...

Your students think they are telling you what they need. But what if the problem they're naming isn't actually the problem? In this BS Breakthrough episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum unpacks a real conversation from Episode 1 and pulls out three takeaways you can apply to your course right now, whether you're just starting or stuck somewhere in the middle. Topics Covered The stated problem is rarely the...

In Episode 1, Dr. Catrina Mitchum works through Suzanne's real course challenge live and the conversation turns into a masterclass in what it actually means to build a learning experience from scratch. Not a content dump. Not a manual. An experience that prepares a student to actually learn. What We Work Through Why giving students a 117-page manual is not a preparation strategy, and what to build...

If you've been trying to turn what you know into a course and keep getting stuck, you found the right place. Every episode, Dr. Catrina Mitchum works through a real course creation problem with a real guest who's genuinely stuck on something. No guru frameworks, no scripted success stories. Just honest troubleshooting using actual learning science from someone who's been designing and teaching onl...