In recent years, over 25 million people worldwide have enrolled in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by Coursera, EdX, and other platforms. Taking courses online and get equipped with new skills or just to be entertained by the enrichment of knowledge is no longer fresh and new to us. Some would wonder how this online learing affects the traditional classroom teaching or what impact it would bring to the dynamics of the society. Here are some thoughts and idea about online education combined with the long-tail theory and pricing strategies discussed in class.
Lists of some online education
MOOC( massively open on-line courses)
EdX Harvard MIT Stanford open courseware offer free lecture notes, exams, and videos from these universities. Open course is free and requires no registration. Edx has 3 partner universities (more coming very soon) and 7 courses.
P2PU: A grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls.
Udacity: a totally new kind of learning experience. You learn by solving challenging problems and pursuing udacious projects.
Coursera:Coursera has 33 partner universities and nearly 200 courses, less than 1 year after launching.
Learning space: introductory to advanced level, each takes between 1 and 50 hours to study. Over 600 free online courses from The Open University.
Alison: Provide 400 free interactive multimedia courses in Computers, IT Literacy, Languages, Business and Finance, Liberal Arts and Science.
Khan Academy: watch, practice, and learn…almost anything for free. There are over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history.
Online Bootcamps: providing students with programming and design skills.
Business Model
Online courses are not absolutely free any more. Education is actually a big market if apply the pricing strategy and bunding properly and the recent movements of several online platforms just made the first step. For example, Udacity offered micro-credentials where students pay for Nanodegrees—focused skill training with a certificate-type credential upon successful completion. Coursera made another significant move—targeting the corporate sector. Coursera is aiming to fill the employee learning gap with “Coursera for Business”. Companies are struggling to deliver relevant, just-in-time skill-training that fits in with the drive for productivity and need for employee-directed learning. MOOCs also recently offers verified Certificate and personalized grading at different charges.
How on-line Courses disrupted the Traditional Education
Lower cost and less time-consuming for students (the value of customer), but more profitable margin for Provider.
As the average college tuition costs continues to rise every year. With online courses, students are provided with access to higher education and cost effectiveness.
Suppliers would apply pricing strategies to online courses. For example, the cost for this MOOC that includes a Verified Certificate and personalized grading is $300, about $200 more than a Verified Certificate for other MOOCs in the same category. But still free tutorials and massive open online courses. It all depends on the student’s willingness. Other online mentorship programs, like “online bootcamps,” providing students with programming and design skills that take less time and money to obtain than in a traditional college setting and lead more directly to jobs.Students can also opt to pay even more for personalized services with Nanodegree Plus which includes career support and mock interviews. Coursera has something similar, minus the personalized services, with its ‘Specializations‘.
The long-tail of online education: Massive enrollment and more lesson variety/Personalization:
For there is no limit of the number of the student, popular online websites can enroll as many as students they would.
The online made-to-order lessons would be more diversified to meet different tastes and demand. Students can break away from the monotonous syllabus and get more personalized curriculum. And for those who have already graduated, but intended for more professional development and lifelong learning or just for personal enrichment, would catch up with the new things in his or her field. Which means they can focus their studies on the kinds of real-world problems that professionals face daily in the workplace and apply their newly acquired knowledge immediately to their jobs. For example, there are hundreds of high-quality online courses that teach specific programming languages instead of focusing on software development or computer science as a whole. On the other hand, most colleges do not offer courses that would train you to be, let’s say, a JavaScript developer, by focusing only on that language.
What’s more, students can learn at his or her own pace with video lectures and assessments, in some online learning like Learning Space, after students signed up, they can track their progress. For instance, MOOC’s self-paced format allows students to participate in MOOCs on-demand.
Higher engagement in active learning:
Instead of videos of in-class lectures posted online in the early stage of E-learning, there are more fun and dynamic short videos with different forms of “interactivity”. For students on the progress of learning, they will answer the quizzes right to get to the next stage. In this way, students improved by receiving the instant feedback. This is the case with Stanford online classes.
Actual learning calls for collaboration and flexibility.. People can form an online learning community worldwide, in which they are more connected with each other in their learning experience. Online education provide a global learning environment for students to meet and make friends with someone in another country.
Higher Availability/Flexibility:
Unlike the traditional learning, providing the oldest method of education in which students have to see the professor face to face. Online learning provides new age technology with which one can learn anytime and anywhere in a dynamic way as long as equipped with a tablet or smartphone. For those working adults or stay home parents with busy schedules and social responsibility can carry with their higher education by participating the online course. They can make their own schedule; they can carry education while on the move. This allows students the flexibility to schedule their learning around families, jobs and other activities.
How Online Learning affects the Dynamics of the Economy.
On-line education like MOOCs has the potential to transform the way people start their
careers. Online courses are much more focused than degree programs, teaching the
necessary skills and leaving out the general education requirement. Second, online courses are generally drastically cheaper than a degree. They’ve opened up expansive opportunities for lower class- or other less educated people to switch careers and boost their income. Close to 72% of MOOC participants reported drastic career benefits from taking online courses. (2015, Harvard Business school) At a time when the growth of higher education costs appear unsustainable, particularly in second-tier universities, and when the demand for high-quality higher education is exploding in the developing world, these online learning projects have attracted a lot of interest.
Nowadays, the education is no longer something that is done once, but lifelong learning is a must to keep up the pace of change. Online education is going to change the way people educated and their lifelong career development.
source:
https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/tag/how-do-moocs-make-money/
The long tail of free online education
