Human Learning #46 — MOOCs market big, fairly valuable and slowing and Coursera get social
Happy New Year! 2019, I’m so excited (actually ask me after March 29). Although not in the MOOC world, I think it’ll be like last year — degrees — but more. That said there are lots of exciting trends in the wider world of Edtech — assessment, credentials, P2P, chatbots (love chatbots) etc.
I’ve written an article to this effect — After MOOCs the next wave of disruption
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State of the MOOCS
MOOC end of year stats are in — The ever-useful Class-Central has provided summary stats for the year, of which the headlines are 101m students taking MOOCs, 900 universities and 11,400 MOOCs. Dhawal Shah of Class-Central makes the salient point that MOOC production has outpaced user growth leading to a decline of users per course, something seen across platforms and a problem for course monetisation.
The other obvious point is the market growth, since Class-Central began tracking growth MOOC user growth has slowed from 23m (2016, 2017) down to 20m in 2018. I know Audrey Watters et al like to crow about MOOCs being finished but 100m total addressable market to date with ~20m p/a growth is enormous, sure it hasn’t led to the downfall of universities but its created a lucrative market to which MOOC platforms have access — here
Coursera add a community layer to their platform — The current structure on most MOOC platforms is to have discussions tied to each course, there are some variations. Some have them tied to the course, some to the run itself — FutureLearn’s — as a product of its social learning philosophy tied the discussion to the learning asset itself e.g. a video and some with groups have group discussions (typically ~ 8 person) but again linked to the course. Coursera’s new community will be a operate like a standard forum across the site — events, study tips as well as subject specific.
I’m surprised it’s taken a MOOC platform this long. There has always been evidence of demand for social beyond the strict confines of the course — learners talking to each other in course forums after the course has finished — Facebook groups — and it feels like value left on the table by leaving that to other platforms. By creating meta-groups to the course they enable useful knowledge and tips to be shared, communities to form hopefully teeing up retention and completion — here
edX, getting there eventually — edX have a paywall system that basically maps to FutureLearn’s which itself roughly matched to Coursera’s. edX have reduced what you can do for free — you can read and watch but quizzes, assessments and long term access to the course are for paying users. Did it take them so long because of a stronger commitment to free or because they are a company without a clear strategy? — here
Udacity stats
Udacity reports on its Nanodegree graduates. They estimate they’ll hit 70K graduates by the end of 2018 (ca-ching!) up 18K from the year before. Udacity also claim (although to be clear this kind of data is hard to validate) that their graduates see on average a 33% pay rise in the US and 18% outside the US — a couple of ways to think. A couple of ways to think about this; it could be true, sure. It could be people switching to an entry level developer job from a lower average paid job (most likely), it could be promotion, it could be nothing to do with Udacity, Nanodegree graduates self-select as more conscientious, hard working people who were on track for promotion anyway.
Udacity have continued their cost-cutting drive, this time merging Peer review and mentors — to the pay scale of the lowest which has led to an estimated halving according to Dhawal Shah of the renumeration — here
Yale bring in Flatiron coding bootcamp — Successful Student applicants can go on the bootcamp and gain credit on successful completion. There is an interesting question as to whether universities will do to bootcamps what they did to OPM providers — bring them in, learn from them and then do it themselves. Long term bootcamps’ presence — especially among elite universities — seems an abrogation of their responsibilities to know how to to prepare students for the world after graduation but as a learning curve it could be effective — here
Tangents
WeWork opens up an incubator in Portland Oregon — Of course they did, WeWork’s business model is best described as caricature of the urban tech economy (whether that’s an actual business model is a different matter) but the cognitive resonance with the investor psyche is currently impossible to resist, hence their valuation (although on that note they just had their valuation sliced by their lead investor) — here
