Managing 900+ Students Without Losing the Human Touch with Heather E. Wilson

Heather E. Wilson started in the early 2000s doing what they called "computer based training" — animated PowerPoints that ran for hours. She watched instructional design evolve over two decades, then left to become a business coach and create her own courses. When she joined Mirasee, everything changed in scale. "A lot of people aspire to have hundreds, if not thousands of students," she says. "But they really have no concept of what happens when you have 900 plus students instantly." The first challenge was email volume. Each coach was assigned a group of students and became responsible for every type of question — from assignments to Slack access to tech troubleshooting. "Tech being one of the biggest ones was kind of a surprise," Wilson admits. They had to train coaches not just on the courseware, but on everything that surrounded it.

Wilson describes a pattern that every large-cohort course creator will recognize: "You see real major excitement when they first start — full engagement, 900 plus students, everyone's go, go, go, thousands of emails flying at the coaches. And then you notice, after a couple of weeks, that has decreased." The team tracks engagement levels and monitors where students are in the course. When a student goes quiet, a coach sends a personal email: "Hey, I haven't seen you for a while on a call — what's up? Can I help you?" But personal outreach alone cannot scale. So Wilson built systematic re-engagement challenges designed for each of the four courses in the program. The approach is not just accountability — it is fun. "We like to add fun into it," she says. "That's a big part of why students love coming to our calls."

The re-engagement tool Wilson is most enthusiastic about is bingo. Each course gets its own custom bingo card with tasks linked to the actual course content. For Hybrid Course Audience, one square requires designing your lead magnet. You cannot check it off until you have actually done the work. Completion enters you into a prize draw — and Wilson says people are genuinely motivated by it, even in 2023. "You would be amazed at how much people love bingo, even in this day and age." The prizes are internal: Mirasee service credits for copywriting, web design, and similar done-for-you services. For solo course creators without that kind of budget, Wilson suggests offering coaching calls, access to a program you have already created, or anything you can give that costs you time rather than cash. One coaching-call prize, she notes, often leads to a longer relationship because the know-like-trust factor becomes so strong.

Wilson closes with a statement that Danny later highlights as the real takeaway of the episode: "I feel that our students know that we really care. And I think that differentiates us in the industry." She acknowledges the scale will only grow, but insists that every student who is in front of the team at any given moment should feel cared for and heard. In the debrief, Danny cautions against the opposite extreme — becoming so preoccupied with tactics and gamification that the course feels gimmicky. The bingo cards and challenges are valuable, but they sit on top of a foundation of genuine care, coach training, and consistent blocking and tackling. Abe adds that the emphasis on fun is often overlooked in course design conversations: "There's a risk that we become too focused on how we get people to completion, and it becomes this almost aggressive or pushing process. How can we approach this with a sense of lightness?"