“Online education” has been thriving in recent years, showing unlimited business opportunities. A milestone of online courses is the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) launched in 2012, which enables many world-class professors or scholars to share knowledge with students from all over the world for free through online teaching. This is an unprecedented breakthrough and has greatly promoted the development of online education.
Coupled with the previous epidemic that swept the world, it created space for online courses. Not only can formal and non-formal education use online courses to supplement some classroom activities, but also working people can take the opportunity to learn online and acquire new knowledge or skills.
Many bosses hope to establish different income sources for the company, so as to earn the largest and most income for the company. Therefore, organizing online courses has become one of the channels for building passive income. However, I have seen many company bosses spend time and money on online courses, but failed.
Learning from successful experience
Hahow (Good School), an online learning platform in Taiwan, announced its revenue for 2021 (hereinafter referred to as NT$), which is 380 million, an increase of more than 100 million compared with 270 million last year. The number of business enterprise customers of Hahow for Business (especially for corporate training) increased by 1.5 times.
In addition, Hahow released the “2022 Brand White Paper”, with three major trends in online learning:
- Online courses become an effective monetization tool for creators
- Participating in multiple forms of online learning has become an option for consumers’ life and entertainment
- Corporate training pays more attention to self-directed learning than before
It is worth mentioning that during the epidemic, online life and entertainment have also led to the popularization of online learning. General consumers are also willing to learn about cooking, yoga, fitness, horoscope and other topics through online learning. The traffic in the field of “Lifestyle” has increased by 35% , which is the highest growth rate among all fields.
The common dilemma of online course platforms
However, there are always many deficiencies in online courses, which prevent their functions from being brought into full play. First, the “completion rate” of online courses is unusually low. Although many students enroll, they give up halfway before completing the course. It is said that the “dropout rate” of MOOCs exceeds 90%.
Secondly, compared with the course certification issued by traditional colleges, the qualification is generally questioned by the industry, and this also affects the willingness of some students to take courses.
Finally, there is the issue of cash flow. The online course platform requires sufficient cash flow to cover huge upfront expenses, such as: filming of video clips, production, video hosting system development, marketing expenses, etc. Where does this cash flow come from? Relying on the initial “joining fee” from the tutor alone is often not enough. The platform needs investors, otherwise it will be difficult to succeed.
Disrupting online learning: partnering with businesses
Udacity therefore changed its strategy to focus on online courses designed for businesses, which made a huge difference. Udacity and companies jointly develop new online course content, and implement a paid online degree (Nanodegree). The price is about 150-200 US dollars per month, depending on the course, and the course usually lasts for 8-12 months. But even so, only about one-third of the completion rate. Udacity then makes references to many online education platforms to summarize the following experience:
- Online education cannot rely solely on technology, interpersonal relationship (teacher-student, and among students) is equally important
- Online education must include small group tutoring
- For enterprise-oriented online courses, the participation of management is the key to success
Conclusion
I think the biggest challenge in online courses is to redefine the roles of “teacher”, “teaching assistant” and “student”. The “teacher” must become the chief learning facilitator (CLF), the “teaching assistant” is the learning facilitator (LF), and the “student” is the active learner (AL). Students no longer passively receive knowledge, but need to actively learn and apply it.
Also, an online course platform needs to define its target audience. It needs to clearly define who will be interested in the content, who is willing to learn via the defined language, and embrace the online teaching mode.
Before the epidemic, online education began to develop, and hundreds of online education platforms sprung up. The competition is extremely fierce. Many online education platforms have gone bankrupt, or are operating in debt.
Although the demand for online courses is indeed huge, there are few examples of educational innovations that can truly meet social needs and make good use of technology. I believe only by developing a brand-new “online combined with offline” education courses can capture these business opportunities.