This week, I've been thinking about MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) and online content libraries.

The Launch History

I remember when sites such as edX, Coursera, and Udacity launched to great fanfare. Grand phrases like "democratizing education" and the ability to learn from "top professors worldwide" were tossed about.

However, they failed, and the proof was and is in the completion rates, which typically run less than 7%.

The same can be said of sites like Udemy and Skillshare, which force their authors to provide most of the learning experience via video, leading to learners parroting from examples rather than engaging in deeper, more meaningful learning. Udemy has generally reported that the average learner only completes 30% of a course's content, and an average of 70% of learners never even start the course!

The Shift to Microcredentials

Realizing that the status quo wasn't working, the MOOCs started experimenting with Microcredentials. Moving away from university brands, they launched courses with big brands and "nanodegrees" from big employers like Google, IBM, and Meta.

They even attempted to move beyond video libraries. They experimented with graded assignments and "mentorship", but there was still virtually zero live interaction as contact was limited to message boards moderated by teaching aides.

However, the content was still delivered via passive videos with occasional quizzes, assignments, and a lack of accountability. Completion rates continued to fall , and the nanodegrees failed to provide significant value in the labor market.

Udacity even briefly offered a 50% refund to anyone who graduated with a NanoDegree to incentivize people to complete them.

The Missing Factors

There are a lot of things that contribute to these low completion rates, but the main thing is that they do not typically have all three of the factors needed to deliver a quality learning experience:

• High-Quality Content - Great content is more than sticking a camera in the back of a college lecture hall and recording the professor. Content needs to be delivered in the most effective format for the topic (video, written, audio, etc.), it needs to be up-to-date (a challenge for some technical topics), and it needs to avoid shortcuts by building a foundation of understanding that can be applied to future, similar problems.
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• Hands-On Practice - This is more than following along with a tutorial. To learn a skill, you need to engage in deliberate practice of increasing complexity and difficulty, something that many of these providers skip.
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• Feedback - Feedback is the secret sauce of mastering a skill quickly and effectively. Access to quality feedback provides reliable measurement and increases accountability and completion rates when done correctly. Feedback alone can increase completion rates by double digits.

The MOOCs and large platforms generally miss one or more of these features, especially the feedback. And this is because learning is not about the information!

Anything you want to learn is available for free somewhere on the internet. Effective learning is about curating that information to enable growth, experimentation, and being surrounded by other learners and mentors who share your interest in growing and exploring.

Any learning platform or offering not providing these things will suffer from poor completion rates and outcomes.

The Best Talent Isn't on Big Platforms

A big reason these platforms will continue to struggle is that the tools and technology have unlocked the ability for individuals to create and publish courses on their own. The means of distribution have been democratized.

So, let's return to MOOCs and online aggregators like Udemy. If you're truly an exceptional instructor and learning experience designer, why would you cede 70+% of your revenue to a platform when you can go direct with your learners and design your course with the features you want it to have?

Yes, the marketplace will get more crowded because of the lower barrier to entry, but the truly quality creators will rise to the top and be rewarded. So, if you're seeing new courses being launched frequently, this is the reason. If the future of the learning economy is affordable and engaging content with stronger, niche communities, then it's looking bright for learners in 2024 and beyond!