I am searching on the LERN site for any information or best practices you may know of that pertain to processes and/or incentives for having instructors “upsell” the next course to students.

Answer:

Thanks for reaching out with your question. Getting students to take the next course has always been an issue in the continuing education field. In my experience students in a Spanish 1 class will always tell you how much they want a Spanish 2 class but when you put one together, very few of them actually sign up. This is probably not as big a problem in workforce development classes because the students are taking the classes to improve their careers and not just for enrichment, but non the less it is always difficult to move a student from a level one class to the level two.

Creating incentives for instructors to "upsell" the next class to a student is an interesting idea. How this would work would have to do with how you pay instructors. Since most instructors are paid a flat rate, there is little incentive to work to get students into level two classes, unless there is risk of the class being canceled and the instructor not being paid (this depends on the instructor payment structure as well.) The only agreements with instructors that I have heard about that could work in this situation are flexible payment structures where instructors are paid a base rate (less than what the flat rate would be) and then paid additionally based on the number of students that enroll in a class. For instance (and the numbers are hypothetical) if you normally pay the instructor $500 to teach the class, you could offer them $250 plus $25 for every student enrolled. I have also heard where instructors get a per student bonus for every additional student enrolled over a certain number. So something like $250 plus $30 for every student after 5 have enrolled. Often instructors don't like this structure though because of the risk involved on their part.

You could also create an incentive just for students that took that instructor's level one class. So pay them the normal rate and give them a bonus for every student who also took their level one class. This would incentivize the instructor to push the level two class at the end of their level one class.

There are also a few ways to create incentives for the student themselves. For instance you could group classes together and give a discount. So if a student signed up for level one, two and three together they get a 20% discount, or something like that. You could also incentivize signing up for level two right after level one. So give them a discount code for level two class at the end of the level one that must be used within a certain amount of time (maybe a week?) after the end of the level one class.

Hopefully these ideas are helpful. Let me know if they lead to any other questions.