Frontbench 2.0: I’m re-imagining online education again
Everything you want to learn today is available on the Internet, whether you want to become a full Stack Engineer, machine learning engineer, cloud engineer, designer, entrepreneur or even if you want to build a rocket company (like Elon Musk).
Still, India has more than 70%, unemployed graduates. And, even most of them who are employed earn less than Rs. 50k/month ( yes, all experience bracket).
FYI : Only 8% fresher jobs in India are above 3 LPA
A recent study from Columbia University’s Teachers College on EdX and Coursera courses indicated that the MOOC certificate programs had a completion rate of less than 15 percent.
But, why is learning online so hard with so many available resources?
Working in the education and tech community for the past 2 years, I have observed that there are multiple reasons for it.
- Lack of engagement
Online learning is boring because there is no engagement in it. In a MOOC course, you can’t talk to your teacher or peers. You don’t even know who are your classmates.
What colleges and traditional institutions are doing right that, they have such a huge retention rate? Apart from status and degree, you make life long friends, interact with other people, participate in extracurricular activities.
2. Personal Mentorship
One of the key reasons for dropout from an online course is, availability of a personal mentor who can help you whenever required.
For example, what if you are learning some new concept, you are stuck and not able to figure out what to do! You search here and there, and if couldn't find any reliable solution, you think its not your cup of tea. And, you switch to a new course.
Switching/dropping out of college takes lot of time and money, dropping off from a course just take single click.
3. Community & asynchronous learning
In a typical MOOC Course, you are free to choose the start date, end date, and pace of the course. You can complete in 1 day or 1 year, and no one is going to ask anything.
I believe in online learning, the content is pointless if you can’t ask questions and don’t apply the learning to build some application.
Building a peer community group with synchronous learning where people can ask questions, interact and learn from each other while everyone is on the same page (synchronous)
That's the reason we have seen an upsurge in live synchronous learning and cohort-based learning.
Synchronous learning is not the future, but it’s preset.
I am running FullStack Camp at Frontbench, helping 15 folks to learn to code and build some real-world projects and eventually break into tech roles.
If you want to read more on education or know more about my journey, Follow me on Twitter
