Disclaimer: This blog is not a scientific analysis of education but our own learning from catering to 1000s of students in the past year. These are trends that I believe represent what the market wants from educators.
You can read Part 2 of the Review with Key Developments and Vision for 2022 here: https://rahulkapoor.me/turnip-2021-year-in-review-part-2/
The world is still recovering from the pandemic. We can see that the higher education industry is still looking for stable trends.
Some things appear certain:
- Part of the teaching will permanently move online
- Education institutes will tie up with private ed-tech companies to supplement their curriculum
- More students will appear for job/internship interviews online
- Colleges should be ready to offer NOC to students who do full time internships
Webinars and live streams on the decline
2020 and early 2021 saw the rise of live webinars and livestreams. We saw huge attendance in our own live sessions. However, this trend declined in the later half of 2021 because of two likely reasons:
- Education institutes rose up to the occasion and got their own infrastructure to conduct live online sessions.
- Students experienced “webinar fatigue.” The average time spent in front of screens had already increased. Students spend large part of their time on social media. Adding long hours of live sessions became detrimental to their concentration, and hence learning outcome.
Omni-channel is here to stay
The advent of “content” is causing fundamental changes to learning patterns. High quality educational material is at everybody’s fingertips. The young generation has shorter attention spans but much faster receptive powers. They are able to quickly discard noise and narrow down on whats important. Hence, instead of learning from one medium deeply, students are learning in smaller quantities from multiple mediums.
Flexibility, but with a framework and a routine
We know pre-covid online education from the likes of Udemy and Coursera. These platforms are still highly relevant hosting high quality content and instructors. They however, suffer from very low ācompletion rates.ā
According to some estimates, 70% don’t even start; University of Pennsylvania found an average completion rate of 4% for their online courses.
I wrote a thread on possible reasons for low course completion rates at Udemy:
In general, I think it is because (i) students get overwhelmed at the amount of content; (ii) because there is no framework or deadlines to complete courses; and (iii) because of lack of community.
In this regard, experts are touting cohort based courses (CBCs) as the next important revolution in online education. What makes learning in a University so enriching? Community! College education will never be the same without friends. CBCs create batches that emulate community in college. Private online education players are innovating various means to drive group work and community engagement.
CBCs provide a necessary framework to undertake the course within certain deadlines.
However, the level of commitment needed is significant. Hence, it does not appear to be a mainstay solution for most college students to supplement their learning.
Moreover, universities will be reluctant to engage with private CBC providers because of significant commitment from students.
Turnipās framework: Slow and consistent learning
Learning is a journey. It is not something that can be āfinishedā or ācompleted.ā Two words that are emphasised a lot by our education system. Even experts who practice their specialisation for decades are wary of calling themselves experts. They know how there is always more to learn.
Thatās what we embody in our courses and live events. We donāt think that a certain platform or certain format is better than others. All that matters is the learning outcome of students!
We have conducted over 80 live streams between 2020-21. Most of our community have joined majority of them at their convenience. We will be conducting such live streams for years to come and we expect people to carry on and brush up the concepts from time to time.
Our courses last several weeks and deliver byte sized, high quality material in an easy to consume fashion. Students have wrote back to me on how they are really waiting for my course emails!
This blog is Part 1 of the Turnip: 2021 Year in Review Series. The Second and Final Part will be out by 31st Dec 2021!
P.S. If you want to check out some Turnip Courses, visit: https://linktr.ee/turnipinno
You can follow me on Twitter (@rahulkaap) to hear more from me.
You can read Part 2 of the Review with Key Developments and Vision for 2022 here: https://rahulkapoor.me/turnip-2021-year-in-review-part-2/