Remember the MOOCs? After Near-Death, They’re Booming (Published 2020)

Online education 1.0 featured MOOCs, which were akin to banner ads in the early days of the internet - a clumsy attempt to bring the offline paradigm online. 1.0 was the Wild West - fragmented, scam-ridden, noisy, and uncredentialed. A much-cited MIT study highlighted MOOCs’ abysmal 4% completion rate.

Online education 2.0 is about group courses, community, vocational training, and edutainment. A lot of smart people are experimenting with new approaches. Teachable is taking the Shopify approach of “arming the rebels” by enabling anyone to easily set up an online course. David Perell, Tiago Forte and Nat Eliason are building online-first schools f... See more

The rapid transition to remote schooling has supercharged trends in online learning — it’s possible that 3-5 years of behavior change has been condensed into a few short weeks. More independent/self-guided learning has required not only a re-thinking of curriculum but a shift in how students view their role in the learning experience. Creative resp... See more

If online courses are poorly designed, why have they become so popular? To students, MOOCs offer more convenience and lower cost than traditional education. To educators, it offers an unbelievably attractive business model with infinite scalability. You prepare a course once and, in theory, millions of people can buy it without your additional inpu... See more

This recession will reinforce that individuals must take charge of their own careers and invest in their own upskilling. However, what remote learning has highlighted is that higher education is not about the content, it’s merely a proxy for trust and quality of network. As great content continues to be commoditized, we will see the emergence of in... See more