If one thing had a fantastic run during the pandemic, it’s undoubtedly the world of online courses. People started enrolling left, right and centre once the pandemic hit. Irrespective of the age category, many people applied for these courses. Either because of the desire to learn or the fear of missing out. We won’t be discussing the motivation behind people applying for these courses, but rather are they actually working.
Let’s see some stats that will make you raise your eyebrows, shall we?
KPMG estimates that there are 3500 Edtech platforms in India alone. If we consider each platform to be providing ten courses on average (which is a conservative estimate), there are 35,000 courses for you to pick from!
The stats get even better (or worse). Of the people who enrol for these courses, only about 4% complete them!
So why aren’t they working?
No one platform offers all the courses one’s looking for. This pushes people to enrol for courses on different platforms. It becomes a nightmare to track courses on various platforms. Many of us even forget the courses we enrolled for.
And then comes the lack of accountability. If you enrol for a course, nobody will hold you accountable if you don’t show progress. Sure the platform you registered on sends you remainders, but who are we kidding? A lot of it has to do with the asynchronous process of online courses. You can access them anytime you want, which creates a bias for action. We start thinking we can always get it done but end up not doing so.
And then comes the non-human aspect to it. When you enrol in offline courses, you can always discuss with your classmates about your course and even get your doubts cleared. That’s something online courses don’t offer at all. Although there are forums to discuss the courses on a few platforms, nothing comes close to an informal discussion with your buddy, right?
Should you stay away from these courses?
The desire to learn and the Internet is all you need in the 21st century. In a sense, these courses have truly democratised knowledge. You can get access to any course with just an internet connection. And most importantly, you can access them anytime you want and how many times you want. Try doing that with your professors :)
We just have to fix the process of learning from these courses. You must make use of the moment you are inspired to learn about something. And waiting to act on it will make you drop the entire idea. The moment you seem interested in enrolling for a course, add it to Coursestack.
You can organise all the online courses you are currently enrolled in and not only set milestones for those courses but complete them with your “study buddies”. Learners can create study buddy groups as easy as making a WhatsApp group with their friends and sharing learning resources online with coursestack.
Coursestack helps you keep track of all your courses in one place. Add milestones and realistic deadlines to set yourself a path to completion. Well, begun is half done after all :).
Get yourself a study buddy (accountability partner) and achieve all your learning goals!
-Varun, Content Writer
