Skillshare

Teacher Stories: Nora Abousteit

Meet Nora Abousteit, founder of Kollabora.com, the popular craft and maker community for sewing, knitting, jewelry-making and more.

Nora has built her DIY empire unconventionally - through publishing. Previously to founding Kollabora, while working for German publishing giant Hubert Burda Media, she was appointed to revive an old but iconic sewing magazine that had been languishing for years. She ended up reinventing the entity into DIY fashion community BurdaStyle.com, now with over 750,000 members, and established herself as an entrepreneurial icon in the sewing, craft and maker community.

Nora’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired, BusinessWeek, Women’s Wear Daily, and Fast Company, and she currently sits on the board of the Craft and Hobby Association. Long story short, when it comes to all things knitting, crafts and DIY, Nora knows her stuff.

Naturally, Nora’s Skillshare class was a hit. Nora used Skillshare to teach hundreds of students around the world the art of knitting in Learn to Knit with Kollabora, which launched in August of 2012. Students knit cowls from home, shared their knitting progress in real-time, critiqued and praised each other’s work, and even ordered their own knitting supplies from Kollabora to continue practicing what they’d learned.

How was your experience teaching an Online Skillshare Class?

I love teaching on Skillshare. Teaching used to be something you only did face-to-face and in-person. I think with the tools that Skillshare now supplies, the way people are taught is changing - so many more people can be reached simultaneously and that is wonderful. On Skillshare, you can reach a lot of people but there is still this kind of intimacy that makes it so special.

What was your favorite part of the class?

I loved the contact with the students, and I learned a lot about my own teaching skills from the feedback I received from the class. I learned a lot from my students behavior, and these students are our site’s potential users, so those insights alone were incredibly valuable.

We had students become customers, and even have students who stay in touch. I am definitely going to teach more.

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