Personal development is an important way of giving meaning to life. In the current society, where work, sports, friends, and everything else need to be combined in a tight schedule, people are seeking for new ways to keep developing themselves. Hence, it is no surprise that in recent years the online education industry is booming.
Online education can be used for multiple purposes. Want to make a career switch? Or do you want to be up to date with the latest ideas concerning technology? You name it, anything is possible! It gives you the opportunity to educate yourself at your own pace, anywhere, anyhow, anytime. When traditional learning methods are replaced by e-based learning, companies can save up to 60% of instruction time and 50% of costs. A disadvantage of online education compared to the traditional way of studying is the lack of social contact with fellow students, which also functions as a motivational factor. You need a lot of self-discipline to start and finish a study on your own!
In our project we focused on learning a new language. We found two main players in the online market for language courses, which are Duolingo and NTI.
Duolingo is an application that offers multiple language courses on different levels – from beginner to advanced. One of their unique selling points is their playful way of learning. Every aspect of learning a language can be practiced. One can follow language courses via the app or website. While doing the exercises, the user contributes to the translation of websites as a mean of the crowdsourcing. A weakness is that the majority of the language courses are only accessible for English speaking people. For example, Dutch speaking people only have the choice to learn English.
NTI is a Dutch institute for online courses, that offers a broader range of courses than Duolingo. They do not only offer language courses, but also guitar lessons, beautician courses, bachelor and master degrees and so on. Unlike Duolingo, the education programmes of NTI are not for free. Depending on the preferred length of education and the type of course, prices vary from €125 until €500 per month! This is quite expensive and decreases the accessibility for those who want to study. For this price, the customers will get an officially approved certificate, which is recognized in the market with the same value as a regular certificate. Besides, an NTI user can expect to receive personal guidance by experienced teachers.
The cost structure of Duolingo is different from NTI. For Duolingo, the initial costs are very high. Later on, not every user will bring additional costs. High fixed costs and low marginal costs can increase the barriers to entry. Conversely, NTI has a cost structure with relatively less fixed costs and more marginal costs, because for every extra student personal support is needed and class space is offered for some lessons.
Looking at the future, we expect online education to become much bigger. In 2019, half of all students study via online education. Eventually, all traditional education might be switched to or combined with e-based learning. As our whole world becomes digitalized, this way of education fits our needs and wants much more. Wherever you are, whenever you have time, whatever you are interested in, online education can be your solution.
Online education is the future!
Source: http://www.wealthladdermagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/internet.jpg
Group 35: Dian Verstappen, Lotte van Uden, Ilya Verschuren, Katelijne van Tienhoven
