A Collaborative Syllabus with a Clear Vision (Goals, Sessions)

COACHING: Co-creating a course plan with your students for better engagement

TL;DR 😊(Too Long; Didn’t Read)
To organize and plan your Live Coaching sessions, you can co-create a collaborative syllabus with your student using, for example, a Zoom Whiteboard. Combining a unified vision board syllabus made of sticky notes (in 3 states) and monthly timelines featuring frames—each representing a coaching session with 3 horizontal “layers”—this system is flexible enough to co-create with your student a personalized, enriching, and engaging experience over a long period of time.
1. The challenge
2. A platform with powerful tools
3. Designing a relevant syllabus
4. Creating monthly session timelines
5. Co-creating and bringing the system to life
6. Going further

Some context…

When I was recruited by Mango Languages in June 2024 to become a « Live Coach for French« , I quickly found myself facing a significant double challenge:

1. remotely coaching busy adult students, and…
2. getting them to speak and interact in « operational » French as quickly as possible—with government representatives from the countries and regions they are responsible for, in highly specialized fields..

All of them hold important positions in major international institutions that—I’ve come to fully realize thanks to them—contribute in very concrete (and too often discreet) ways to making our world a better place. Their dedication to their work has, over the course of our conversations, become a genuine source of inspiration for me. It is mostly for them that I designed this model, this “syllabus system” that I’ll describe in detail, explaining both my process and my reasoning (a mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches).

Granted, this wasn’t the first time in my unusual career that I found myself in a potentially… destabilizing situation. Having been, at various times, a « burger flipper » fast-food teammate to finance my studies, Secretary General of French cultural diplomacy institutions, team-building facilitator, co-founder of Romania’s first adventure park, professor of economics and law, blogger, and online course creator before becoming a books co-author. I was curious to see what this new adventure would bring.

But first, I would like to thank the remarkable women and men I’ve met through my webcam. In order of appearance on the train of my life, I send a heartfelt thank you 🙏🏻 to: Donald, Rodolfo, Katrin, Marcela, Linshuo, Jai, Sutayut, Lilia, Carolyn, Vivian, Eliana, Juan Carlos, Zainab, Mizushi, and Renee—you know who you are 😉. Through our discussions and conversations, you continue to enrich me and, I hope, help me become a better human being.

Many thanks also to Mango Languages and the entire admin team for allowing us to truly be of service to these students and for giving a real meaning to this exciting job. A special mention goes to our amazing account manager 🙏🏻😉

Finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to my wife Cristina with whom I’ve shared my life since I was 20, and who is also a Live Coach for French at Mango Languages. Thank you, my love, for all our discussions and exchanges that helped me “give birth” to this collaborative syllabus system, which I hope will be useful to other coaches who wish to implement it, try it out, and maybe even adopt and improve it (I’d love to read your feedback here or on LinkedIn if you prefer).

Sorry this was a bit long, but I really needed to write all of this…

1. The Challenge

Sitting in front of my webcam, a big smile on my face as we “get to know each other,” one of the first announcements I make to my students during our initial session is that from now on, “I’m your coach, not your teacher.” Usually, the person on the other side leans back slightly, visibly surprised. Even if they don’t openly admit it, their body language betrays a legitimate—but misplaced—shock. Why?

This « mental kung fu » I deliberately practice has a purpose: I’m trying to quickly establish a healthy, collaborative dynamic between both of us—not to prolong the outdated teacher/student hierarchy. I want to crack open, just a little, the patterns formed within the adult sitting in front of me, patterns shaped by thousands of hours spent in an “industrial” education system, where subjects are taught on a loop, conveyor-belt style, for years. I hope the rise of AI will finally push educational systems toward deep reform, and bring back mentorship—a human-to-human relationship where everyone can learn at their own pace. Time will tell…

Now, as coaches, we all have our own personal understanding of what coaching actually is, right? We often have strong opinions about what should or should not be done, don’t we? So we might still believe we hold the true definition of this complex job—one that should evolve with every individual who seeks our guidance.

And yet, the wave of change disrupting entire sectors of the global economy should spark serious self-reflection:

• Are our remote coaching methods still relevant?
• Do they meet today’s market demands—what our students actually want?
• Can we offer that extra something to our students, that « special thing » that we, as humans, can provide—and which AI never truly can?
• WHAT IS THAT “SPECIAL THING”?
  (short answer : emotional intelligence)

This two-way exchange that coaching is meant to be is, above all, rooted in human connection—full of nuance. It’s the meeting of two individuals, brought together in a specific space and time, to reach clear objectives.
These men and women sometimes open up about their lives, their worries. They trust us to find a personalized way of transmitting knowledge—not only of the French language, but also of practical skills and deeper know-how.

Moreover, they all want this process to be clearly time-bound, because they are busy adults.

In that sense, I believe coaching is very similar to project management.

But a human project. Which makes it far more subtle—and complex.

That being said, we must then address the following questions:

• How can we jointly define SMART goals and skills to be achieved in a remote collaborative setting?
• What deadlines and/or milestones should we set, and according to what criteria?
• How can we map them out over time within one- to two-hour weekly sessions that will take place over several months—or even years?
• How can we validate each step and ensure that the learner has truly achieved a specific competency goal?
• And finally, how can we sustain motivation over time and (ideally) increase engagement?

These questions—combined with my first weeks of Live Coaching—immediately reminded me of the Gantt Chart, a highly effective tool for project management.
But how could it be adapted to remote coaching?
And also—just as importantly—how could we « inject » human connection and engagement into this long-term coaching process?
How could we co-create, together with the student, that elusive « SPECIAL THING« ?

2. A platform with powerful tools

This first question haunted me in my practice—and the first answer came from Mango Languages itself. Almost exactly one year ago, the admin team sent an email to all Live Coaches announcing the rollout of Zoom’s « Whiteboards », a feature of the now-ubiquitous video conferencing platform that needs no introduction in the world of e-learning since the Covid-19 pandemic.

I was stunned to discover that we could offer our students a completely different kind of experience. I sensed its massive potential—but had no idea yet how to leverage it effectively. Truth be told, I felt an urgent need to create a « special thing » for my students—something highly visual, fairly simple, like when you’re trying to map out the multiple storylines of a novel and follow the key moments of a compelling narrative.

But I still couldn’t figure out how to translate that into a Live Coaching setting.
Until one day….

Now, mastering the Zoom platform is no easy task. So I’ll spare you the many tests and trials I went through over dozens of hours, and get straight to the point (bottom-up approach).
Here are the three main tools you need to use—and why:

2.1. The Sticky notes

These will be our foundational tools. They’re simply “sticky notes”—small, brightly colored virtual squares—that will allow us to display all the competency goals the student needs to achieve, arranged into a kind of « vision board« . I recommend placing this board in the top-left corner of your content on the Zoom Whiteboard.

Later, we’ll explore how to organize and sequence these goals over time across several timelines, by going back and forth between these “timeless” competency goals (no fixed deadline) and the coaching sessions themselves, which will be arranged on a timeline (or “chronological track,” if you prefer) on the right side of your Whiteboard.

Each competency goal should be written as concisely as possible, ideally starting with an infinitive verb. You can also use colored labels to personalize or clarify the sticky notes—for example here: Vocabulary, Grammar, Speaking, Listening, Reading or Writing Production, etc.

IMPORTANT: Each sticky note (representing a competency objective) can only have three possible states:

1. The sticky note is left untouched: the competency objective is “to be acquired.”
2. The sticky note is crossed out once: the competency objective is “in progress.”
3. The sticky note is crossed out twice: the competency objective is “ACQUIRED.” (We’ll later see how to collaboratively determine when this final state is reached with the student.)

2.2. The Frames: 1 Frame = 1 Coaching session

These “frames” on Zoom Whiteboards puzzled me for a long time. I simply didn’t know how to use them and kept placing them behind text boxes just to make things look nicer. What a mistake! But I persevered 😉

In fact, these Frames will likely transform the way you perceive the Whiteboard. They act as containers for the goals, activities, and notes you’ll work with during your Live Coaching session. To help you visualize, here’s what your next “lesson” might look like—with all its elements grouped inside a single frame, where everything stays “attached” (you can move the entire frame and all its contents at once, which is extremely handy):

You’ll notice that on a 16×9 frame (to best fit my learners’ monitor screens), I’ve clearly divided the space into “zones”, each easily identifiable by bright colors, using the various elements available on the Zoom Whiteboard:

• Date and session number in the top-left corner (in purple), within the top horizontal band (the “third” layer).
• Confidentiality notice also in the top-left corner, next to an icon.
• Session goals: represented at the very top by sticky notes that the student can select at the beginning of the session. Much like a fine-dining restaurant, you can present a “menu” of personalized, refined options.
• These goals are linked to a variety of activities (located in the second horizontal layer), usually accessible via hyperlinks.
• Finally, the first layer contains the interactive components: note-taking, exchanges, mini grammar lessons, vocabulary, etc.
• 😉 TIP: If needed, you can co-create “out-of-frame” text zones with the student in case you run out of space inside the frame.

Frames also offer a surprisingly useful navigation feature, especially during your Live Coaching session:

You can move between each “session/frame” by entering reading mode, which displays thumbnails of all your sessions from left to right, like this below:

Just like in a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll be able to move easily from one session/frame/slide to another—helping you tame the anxiety of the “infinite” whiteboard by creating « islands of content« , virtually linked like an archipelago. It takes a bit of two-dimensional spatial awareness, but you’ll get the hang of it 👌 And if not, feel free to reach out to me via my website or on LinkedIn 😉

In fact, this ability to jump quickly from frame to frame is exactly how I announce the date of the next session to my students and regularly return to the syllabus vision board to visualize their progress toward their goals—which is very satisfying on a psychological level.

Of course, you can adapt all of this to suit your own personal coaching style.

2.3. Artificial Intelligence: the AI Companion

Yes—this secret weapon must be used wisely. And (spoiler alert) I’ll show you a bit later how to use this third tool effectively.

A little more patience…

3. Designing a relevant syllabus

Mango Languages rightly asks us to design a syllabus and make it available to our students. But what exactly does that mean?

Well, if you check out this page from Standford University, you’ll see that a syllabus is defined as: “A course plan and what will be expected of you […]. It usually includes course policies, […] required texts, and a schedule of assignments.” All right—understood. But how do we actually design one?

In Live Coaching—especially if we aim for a student-focused approach based on the learner’s professional and personal interests—it’s very difficult to create a syllabus that remains valid over a long period of time. Our students go on missions, get interrupted by their supervisors, colleagues, or clients, face everyday challenges, change their minds, goals, even their job roles. So I had to build flexibility into the system from the start. At this point, let me switch to a more top-down explanation to show you how I approached it:

3.1. Finding a relevant knowledge corpus

Just like in a Work Breakdown Structure , where the goal is to simplify a very complex process (building a spaceship to reach Mars, producing the next electric car—or earning a diploma or certification), we must break it down into S.M.A.R.T. micro-tasks (i.e., the competency goals on our sticky notes). For that, we need a clear corpus and a solid nomenclature, with a 360° vision of the learning path. Fortunately, institutions have already done a lot of this work and published highly relevant documents.

For my own coaching context described earlier, I simply turned to the Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues (CECRL). I especially relied on a document called Inventaire linguistique des contenus clés des niveaux du CECRL (Linguistic Inventory of Key CEFR Level Descriptors), and in particular Annexes E and F, which contain excellent content. If you’re coaching in another field, feel free to use a similar authoritative corpus within your area of expertise 😊.

3.2. First step: Simplify the corpus

In the case of the CEFR, the first major simplification comes from the nine progression levels used to describe the path from beginner to mastery in a European language. We can represent them here:

This way, every student in the Live Coaching for French program can gain a clear, left-to-right view of the path they need to follow in order to reach the next level. But then comes the key question: How do we transform these charts into actionable, workable competency objectives that can be easily used within the structure of daily coaching sessions?

3.3. Simplify even further with AI… and adjust

Take another look at the image I showed earlier… See it? Look closely… even closer…

Yes, that’s right—well done. You need to copy and paste parts of the lists from your corpus and feed them into the AI Companion, after selecting the sticky notes option. In just a few moments, the AI will generate a panel of sticky notes, which you can then color-code and adjust according to your preferences. And now, a word of caution:

WARNING : Always double-check the content of the sticky notes generated by the AI Companion!

3.4. Creating the Syllabus as a “Vision Board”

This final phase is perhaps the most fun and rewarding. Here, you’ll create a collaborative syllabus, a « goals/objectives board » or « vision board » that the student can consult and co-create with you during each session—allowing them to clearly visualize their progress and what still needs to be done. It’s engaging, motivating, and most importantly—very concrete.

Here’s an example:

As you’ve probably gathered by now, this syllabus should also be placed within a dedicated frame—larger than a single session frame—and created when the student feels the need for it. It can be edited, expanded, modified, and—most importantly—updated together, either on-session or off-session.

Of course, you need to make sure that the Zoom Whiteboard remains accessible to your student by granting them the necessary editor privileges.

4. Creating monthly session timelines

So far, we’ve only addressed the “big picture” view of the competency goals. Yes, we’ve broken them down into actionable, manageable goals and arranged them neatly on a kind of syllabus visual board. However, this general syllabus does not specify what needs to be done in each session. To do that, we need to take our timeless goals and organize them along a temporal framework.

How? Let’s get very practical again.

4.1. One timeline per month

The simplest way is to structure time like a calendar—but a flat one. Each session is created in its own frame (as explained earlier), and these are placed beneath horizontal bars, each representing a month (the timelines). From left to right, you can dynamically visualize the sessions—almost like a comic strip, or for the history buffs among you, exactly like the beautiful animated version of the Bayeux Tapestry (click on « EXPLORER LA TAPISSERIE DE BAYEUX », further down on the official museum’s website).

Here’s an example of how that could look on a Zoom Whiteboard:

4.2. Global Overview of the Collaborative Syllabus

Let’s now return to the top-down perspective and, to get a full overview of all these tools, let’s recap the final design of the course planning system we can co-create on a Zoom Whiteboard:

Legend:

• Frames are represented as rectangles. The largest one on the left contains the collaborative syllabus, with sticky notes summarizing each competency goal to be achieved.
• Months are represented by dark blue horizontal bars—these are the timelines, beneath which Live Coaching sessions are placed. In this example, six months are shown, with eight sessions per month, totaling 48 sessions over a semester.
• Each session is also placed inside a frame: purple for upcoming sessions, green for sessions already completed.
• The red arrow in the upper right corner represents “Today.” Like a bookmark, it can be moved from left to right and top to bottom to clearly indicate where the current session sits on the horizontal timelines.

5. Co-creating and bringing the system to life

The system I’ve described would be meaningless without co-creation with the person you’re working with in Live Coaching—the student you’re here to coach and support.

I’m not claiming to teach you your job. You already have your own style, your experience—and so does your student. That’s why I’ll simply offer a few suggestions and ideas, which I’ll continue to refine based on the feedback I receive:

5.1. Suggested Co-Creation Actions for the Syllabus and Sessions (Sticky Notes / Competency Goals)

• Define together the real-life situations in which the student wants to feel more confident speaking.
• Identify the types of discourse they need to master (explaining, arguing, narrating, etc.).
• List priority topics related to the student’s work, studies, or personal interests.
• Organize the objectives by difficulty level or priority.
• Create a sticky note for each communicative competency goal.
• Link each objective with one or more key expressions to learn.
• Choose a suitable language register for each objective (formal, neutral, informal).
• Write clear, measurable objectives together (e.g. “Present a project in 3 minutes without notes”).
• Identify grammar or vocabulary blocks to address first.
• Display one key goal per week at the top of each session frame.
• Ask the student whether they feel they’ve achieved a given goal. Let them cross it out (twice) if so. If you disagree, explain why.
• …

5.2. Suggestions for Collaborative Session Organization (Frames)

• Plan upcoming sessions visually using a timeline on the Zoom Whiteboard.
• Structure each frame with sections: “Goal”, “Main Activity”, and “Feedback / Result.”
• Document the student’s progress by adding a sticky note at the end of each session: “What I can do now.”
• Reuse Frames for revision sessions at the end of a month or learning cycle.
• Move unachieved sticky notes to the next session to ensure continuity.
• Color-code Frames based on energy or theme (e.g. red = debate, blue = listening, green = storytelling…).
• Regularly return to the Syllabus / Vision Board to visualize progress.
• Include quick mini-challenges (5 minutes) inside the frames to encourage autonomy.
• At the end of every 4–6 sessions, evaluate together what has been achieved and what still needs work.
• …

6. Going Further

Mango Languages regularly shares tutorial videos featuring best practices. One of the most inspiring ones is about metacognition which I strongly recommend. The core idea is to help the learner realize they already possess certain knowledge, and guide them to mobilize it themselves. When a question is asked, don’t give the answer right away—instead, encourage the student to search. Searching is learning. I hope this Socratic method proves as beneficial to you as it has to my own practice.

• If you’re curious about how to integrate AI into your teaching and coaching, I highly recommend following Yann Houry on LinkedIn (in French)
• Mango Languages on LinkedIn is an excellent resource to stay updated on language learning topics.
• Need help? Don’t hesitate to reach out via my website or on LinkedIn 😉

I hope you found this article helpful.

Warm regards,
Olivier