In Online Ed, Content Is No Longer King—Cohorts Are

Online course creators are frequently caught between goals that, too often, come into conflict: to teach and to sell. What happens when one gets in the way of the other? How do creators navigate the tricky waters of being both teacher and business owner? And do course creators actually know how to teach? 

At the end of the day, everyone writing on the internet is still in the business of attracting eyeballs. Subscriptions make this relationship a little more diffuse, but they end up in the same place: what generates money is what draws attention. And individuals, unbound by institutional restraints and implicitly rewarded for sensationalism, are at ... See more