Online Education – More than a Content Library
30 November 2016
It is well known that online education brings
many things to the table, giving it a significant advantage over offline modes
or traditional campus learning. However, most of us still have to cross many
perception-related hurdles before we can be completely comfortable with the
idea of online education.
Access and flexibility are major positives in
favour of the concept. Those who do not have the means to travel across
national or international borders to acquire degrees from reputed institutions
require only a workable internet connection, even in remote parts, to avail of
some of the best learning experiences. This gives the medium an advantage of
scale too. Taking into account where India stands today and our goals for GDP
growth, we need an investment of more than $100 billion to create the
additional offline higher education capacity necessary to train our future
workforce. That target is impossible for a country like India to afford. And in
that context, online education will play a very important role in capacity
building for the future of India.
However, like for any new technology or
concept, online education faces many obstacles. In the space, there are some
key challenges that edtech companies are up against: (a) online lacks the
gravitas of offline, walking into a campus or class room; (b) it’s very
anonymous – no one will know when I join or when I drop out; (c) online
education is monotonous; (d) logging on to a platform that has an array of
aggregated lectures and courses that do not for deep learning is its “out
there”; (e) the notion that if it’s online, it’s free; (f) how does a potential
customer get his employer and family to respect and recognise online learning
as the future, given its ability to make him more productive without the need
of time being taken out for an offline study break?
One of the most important challenges to
contend with is the perception that online education is nothing more than a
content library. Thanks to the rise of MOOCs (with a question mark on their
impact), this is where the merits of online education seem to end in the eyes
of most, doing a huge disservice to the disruptions this phenomenon is capable
of.
We have all been to a university/institution,
and we did not go there to visit only the library, but for a full university
experience. In most cases, the primary problem facing online education has been
thought to be that of access or affordability. But to me, it is a problem of
experience. Experience cannot be addressed simply through content; a holistic,
end-to-end approach has to be adopted. Following a full stack approach of
developing quality and relevant content through the syncing of industry and
academia, encouraging more innovative pedagogical models, and servicing each
individual consumer in a manner that ensures value creation, could help one
achieve a high completion rate of more than 90 percent, as opposed to the low
rate seen by MOOCs today (below 10 percent).
Forming a community is critical to the
success of online education. While we could build a rapidly growing business by
just providing content, we would miss out on building a sustainable
differentiation. Part of building the community is to remove the anonymity from
online education. When you are taking an online programme, it is unlikely that
your friends and family would know about it. Compare that to enrolling for an
offline programme, where everyone from your friends to your distant relatives
would be in the know. Therefore, when it comes to online, it is very easy for
people to enroll and equally easy for them to drop out. Ideas like taking
anonymity out of online education are small steps towards building a holistic
experience.
I will end this article by summarising that
the perception of online education has to move beyond that of a content
library, and the focus needs to shift towards building a great learning
experience and a strong community. And for that, there is a need for a lot of
innovation and out of the box ideas. Each and every edtech provider needs to
contribute towards building a great experience, and thereby building up the
credibility of online education!
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed
in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
views of YourStory.)
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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