Human Learning #44 — edX dream of unpacking the Bachelors degree while FutureLearn share the labour
A slow fortnight for Edtech news but a livelier one for comments (see article below). FutureLearn takes top billing with its co-created degree, arguably a Microbachelors is a bigger thing but it (and don’t hate me Kantians) but it currently lacks the property of existence.
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My article on whether MOOC recruitment is sustainable c/o of a lively comment from Steve Brewer.
State of the MOOCS
Deakin and Coventry co-create a degree on FutureLearn — The Masters in entrepreneurship is a first among the main MOOC providers by being co-created. Presumably the thinking is two-fold (1) Like MBAs there is a curriculum advantage by forming a business degree from different geographies and (2) There is a marketing advantage from their respective marketing/recruitment operations — here
edX aim to run MicroBachelors by 2021 — This is the ultimate vision of a stackable degree and edX CEO Anant Agarwal suggests when ready it could be taken as early as High School. Anant suggested a price point as low as $10k and suggests early adopters would be mainland China, Hong Kong and Australian universities. Note though, at the point where someone could do a bachelors early, all education starts being unpacked (excluding arbitrary barriers) and we move to a world where within reasons students study at their own pace — this would be a significant step on that — here
Edtech’s Business
2U signs up a new partner and a commitment from another — Yale School of Management and George Washington University — will both deliver short courses for 2U’s GetSmarter division. This announcement exemplifies the advantage of 2U’s acquisition of GetSmarter by offering a different product (short courses) to deepen relationships with existing providers whilst acquiring Getsmarter’s existing partners to do the reverse — here and here
LinkedIn Learning open up to third party suppliers — A reasonable critique of LinkedIn Learning would’ve been that despite their volume, lots of their courses were a bit shit. Less so now, TreeHouse, edX and Big Think are among the first to take advantage of their opening up of their platform to third party providers. To help make LinkedIn Learning function more like a learning platform, it has built a new feature that enable Q&As between students and teachers. Despite catty remarks such as my own, LinkedIn Learning has 11K enterprise customers (64% growth since it started in 2017) as well as being offered to LinkedIn premium users for $30p/m.
On the one hand, LinkedIn is very well suited to the shallower side of Edtech — which is less the learning and more the proof of learning — because where else will people display skills and knowledge? On the flip side, LinkedIn has a habit of not doing product particularly well, and may always be a poor second choice for people to learn vs actual Edtech platforms -here
Ed’s tech’s
Hatching more thoughtful Edtech startups — 2010 was the start of the Edtech flood (the ‘year of the MOOC’ but also a slew of startups across all education ranges) with the high water mark of Edtech startups (2012 saw 240 startups in the US) . Barbara Kurshan of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education — which had its own incubator — argues that the startups were well meaning but often lacked the background in education and awareness of the environments (e.g. of schools). Kurshan argues new Edtech needs to be more thoughtful, with deeper engagement with Education and pedagogical research as well as the K-12 and University market. This seems about right and made me think of (1) edX’s slightly nauseating ‘click data’ point and (2) and ‘duh’ — actual learning is hard — here
Tangents
Edtech platform Treehouse demonstrates a more proactive push for diversity in Edtech — A classic line for a lack of diversity — be it at companies or universities is the pipeline argument. The argument is straight forward, a company advertises in plenty of places, perhaps even going out of their way to advertise to underrepresented groups, but come the final round claims there were insufficient qualified candidates and so stops there. Treehouse had the same problem, but decided then went further. First they investigated what the obstacles were among different minority groups (fewer graduates, more lifestyle constraints due to different living situations etc) and then, working with a local NGO, Treehouse created an apprenticeship scheme to find talented employees who didn’t have a degree. Successful apprentices then became led to full paid jobs across a number of positions — here
