Re-designing online education

The attrition rate of online ed is a cry for help

If you’ve ever signed up for a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), I’ll wager a bet you haven’t followed through on it. It’s a safe bet, given that most MOOCs boast a completion rate of 7 percent.

Unsurprisingly, I’m not in that top seven. I don’t think I even got to the second lesson of my edX class on Journalism for Social Change. My colleague Tsukasa, on the other hand, is one of the rare birds that followed through. “I did a course for six months or more in data science, and I can’t remember anything,” he said. “I did it late at night and everything… I should have just been partying.”

Even when students complete the course, often the most important goal — learning — is not met. And even when students take full, paid degrees online, attrition is high and reputations are low. This is disappointing, because the intention of bringing flexible education to all is commendable.

And it’s also possible. People spend hours binge-watching educational YouTube videos. TED Talks surpassed the billion viewer mark way back in 2012. Podcasts like HowStuffWorks and Stuff You Missed in History Class have 4 and 5 star ratings. Not to mention there are “more people learning learning languages on Duolingo in the US than there are people learning foreign languages in the entire public school system.” There’s no question that people are interested in learning. They just want it be bite-sized, gamified and fun. With no buffering.

Is it a perception problem? Yes, partly. School is never going to be as fun as new media perfectly marketed to our desires. But it’s mainly a design problem. Or as we like to say, a design opportunity.

The Problem(s)

Legacy technology and “talking head” videos are often pain points for students taking full degrees online. Online courses are notorious for their low usability, especially in areas like discussions forums which require participation. Seeing as accessibility via technology is the main USP, this is certainly a problem.

Defenders of the current UX claim that struggle is inherent to the learning process. “Working with technology for the purpose of learning, the user is expected to spend time facing challenges, struggling through them, and in almost every case the interaction with the technology is only one of many influences in achieving success,” wrote education researchers in the Journal of Interactive Media in Education.

Struggle enables growth, point taken. But we want students to struggle with course material, not school supplies. When students can’t find the portal to submit their work, it’s like their pencil breaking every time they try to use it. When students need to download extra applications to access course materials, it’s like asking them to run to the store in the middle of class to get another notebook.

Further, these technological struggles are unexpected. In ecommerce, users are led swiftly and efficiently through purchasing processes. On social media, it is second nature to quickly comment, like or respond to others’ posts with ease. Because we expect engaging, frictionless design systems, most people approach online courses the way they do everything else on the internet — passively and impatiently.

The core offering of an online course is its flexibility, yet researchers writing in the European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning (EURODL) found that 80.6 percent of participants reported “issues such as time, job, family and other commitments outside their course” restricting their active participation. Other research found that online courses are “more effective for students who are intrinsically motivated and can organise themselves well,” a caveat that fails to consider the chaotic contexts in which online learners often sit down (or stand up, or walk, or pace with baby in hand) to learn.

There’s a reasons classroom teachers prohibit smartphones (and babies) during lessons. So what happens when the class is on the smartphone?

It’s a wicked problem, and that’s why it needs a new approach.

The Problem with The Problem(s)

The usability issues mentioned above are certainly barriers to success for MOOCs and online universities. And no doubt research is being done into specific drop off points and pain points in usability. But before hustling to add more features or smooth submission forms, these institutions should be looking to make a more fundamental shift from a reactive, task-based approach to a proactive, holistic service design approach.

In short, online education would do well to shift from an information-imparting service to a learning-facilitation service. “How might digital tools enable focus?” is a hard question to tackle in our age of distraction, but it’s exactly the kind of question that online universities should be getting dirty with.

The service of online learning needs to be designed, not adapted. “It is important to avoid basing the MOOC’s duration, blindly, on the length of the ‘same’ course offered on campus,” write researchers in Current Issues of Emerging eLearning. “The design considerations are different.” Are you designing for the podcast-loving commuter, who needs offline audio content on their journey? For the social media influencer, whose video content needs to be bite-sized enough that she can check notifications intermittently? For the busy mom, who would enjoy a free coffee at Pret every time she sits down for some extended studying (and solace)?

These ideas might test terribly, but my point is that there is a lot of room for innovation when the problem is well defined. Service designers love getting to know people’s motivations in context, and context is key in flexible learning environments. Through deep research into online students’ motivations, habits and routines, insights can emerge that drive rapid iteration of new modes of flexible learning. Institutions can then test ideas in real-time and learn from student’s behaviour, just as all their favourite apps do.

It’s a difficult problem, but it’s a fun one. If online educational institutions hope to attract and retain students, a service design approach is crucial.