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This originally aired as Episode 188 of the Holistic Herbalism Podcast.


All herb schools are different, in their focus and their style. When you’re choosing an online herb school, whether for a short course or a long program, here are some key questions to consider:

• How can you ask questions to the teachers & admins?
• Is there a free course you can take first?
• What’s the teaching method (text, audio, recorded video, live sessions, etc), & does it match your learning style?
• How are the teachers accessible – what kind of contact do you get with them?
• Do you get to keep the materials when the course ends?
• How many ‘hours’ is the course, and how are those hours counted?
• Is there a student community you can participate in, and how does it work?
• Will you be “certified” on completion? (Beware: this is a trick question!)
• How will this fit in to your learning spiral: is this brand new material, or a new view on something you’ve learned before? (Learning herbalism is not a single linear path.)

These answers will be different for every school, and there’s no one “right” answer! It all depends on how you prefer to learn and engage with your teachers. Knowing to ask these questions in advance will help you make better-informed comparisons between different offerings, and find the ones that work best for you.

As you may know, we teach herbalism online! We hope that if you’re choosing an online herb school, you’ll consider ours. When you sign up for any of our courses – including our FREE Herbal Study Tips and Four Keys to Holistic Herbalism courses – you get access to twice-a-week live Q&A sessions, integrated discussion threads on every lesson, and a vibrant student community. Our courses are centered on video lessons you can watch at your own pace, and once you’ve bought a course you retain access to it (and any future updates!), forever.

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

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You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!