✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Online Education's Dirty Secret — Awful Retention by Peter Reinhardt

rein.pk · 1,219 words · saved by 1 readers

I’m extremely excited about online education, but I’ve noticed that online education products have a really serious problem: low retention. I’ve used Coursera, EdX, Hack Design, Duolingo, Codecademy… and I’ve churned from all of them. I bet you did too! I don’t want to tear down these products or the people who’ve built them, I’m rooting for them all the way. They just need some tough love, and so this article explains why I churned: the starting commitment is too high, the re-engagement emails are terrible, and the pacing is impersonal. Coursera founder Daphne Koller said last year that only 7-9% of students who sign up actually “finish” the class. The definition of finish is a bit fuzzy, so I wanted to collect some more data. The Coursera class Introduction to Operations Management had 87,000 people sign up, but only 4,360 views on the final lecture. This is a 5% retention rate for viewership, and presumably worse for the assignments. Probabalistic Graphical Models taught by Daphne K

Online Education's Dirty Secret — Awful Retention April 1, 2013 I’m extremely excited about online education, but I’ve noticed that online education products have a really serious problem: low retention. I’ve used Coursera, EdX, Hack Design, Duolingo, Codecademy… and I’ve churned from all of them. I bet you did too! I don’t want to tear down these products or the people who’ve built them, I’m rooting for them all the way. They just need some tough love, and so this article explains why I churned : the starting commitment is too high, the re-engagement emails are terrible, and the pacing is imp

Explore this link on the map →

related reading