The Future of Education

It is generally argued that education as an industry needs greater innovation and disruption. A new trend of Cohort Based Learning appears to be a step in that direction. Here, learning communities are formed around subject areas, where an expert, who serves as an instructor holds space for individuals to learn, interact and build skill-sets with one another.

This article explores cohort-based learning, how it came to be and why knowledge creators- i.e. coaches, consultants and experts- could harness its increasing popularity.

Education 1.0: Offline Teaching:

This is the conventional schoolteacher standing in front of the classroom, delivering a teaching session, training, or seminar. Typically, it was geography bound and hence limited to a certain number of participants.

Education 2.0: Online Teaching through MOOCs:

As the cost of owning an internet connection reduced and its popularity increased, MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) started growing in popularity. They took educational content (even degrees and qualifications) from around the world and uploaded it on the internet. Such that, anyone with an internet connection could take these courses anywhere in the world. Thus, educational content was democratised. Some of the platforms that enabled this, and flourished were: Coursera, edX and Udacity.

Simultaneously, a new breed of educators was born. These individuals did not necessarily have education degrees or PhDs but were subject matter experts (e.g. coaches, consultants and working professionals) who want to teach and monetise their expertise. This saw platforms like Udemy and Skillshare increase in popularity to connect educators to education instructors, teaching their expertise by creating their own MOOCs.

With this, came an insurgence of tooling solutions that enabled creators to create their own MOOCs and distribute them to their audiences. Hence, we saw the rise of platforms like Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi.

Up until this point most of the education and its delivery, on the internet, was unidirectional a monologue by the teacher without much student interaction. An educator teaches their content via pre-recorded lectures and distributes it using either a marketplace such as Udemy or a white-labelled tooling solution like Kajabi.

While technology was enabling the distribution of educational content, the emergence of quick, bite-sized, instantly gratifying, and close-to-free content was being made available (e.g. the rise of informational videos on YouTube).

The plethora of content and its subsequent distractions meant the appeal of accessing “scarce” educational information, that was not quick to consume was diminishing. A study done by two MIT researchers found that between 2013–2018 completion rates for MOOCs steadily plummeted to an average of ~3%. In other words, they faced 97% drop-out rates!

Education 3.0: Cohort-Based Learning:

With content being accessible with a click of a button, educational content is not king anymore. Rather, a learning community is. Here, a community of learners and live instructor interaction can help individuals get from 0 to 1 or 1 to 100 in a subject area.

Cohort Based Learning enables this. Here students have access to quality content, but also live interaction with the instructor and fellow learners. This, therefore, facilitates peer-to-peer learning and, most importantly, ensures student accountability. The cohort-based learning experience can come in two forms: courses and communities. The former is time bound with fixed start and end dates, while the latter is continuous.

Cohort Based Learning is a win-win for learners and students. On the one hand, learners can learn complex and dense topics through dialogue and projects. This, in turn, enables higher-order skill sets such as critical and analytical thinking (as opposed to “how to” videos that MOOCs provide). Thus, the experience of the learner is holistic.

On the other hand, instructors are able to establish themselves as authorities on a subject by teaching their cohorts to a small group of learners keen to learn from them. They are simultaneously increasing their followers by creating a tribe of students learning from them. And finally, because these experiences are transformational and impactful, they are also able to charge a higher price point and therefore, earn higher course revenues.

The overall impact of cohort-based learning?

MOOCs promised to democratise access to education content. However, cohort-based learning takes it one step further- i.e., it is promising access to learning communities that are guided by experts who are operators teaching from experience.

Cohort-based learning unbundles the university experience and packages the best components together. Such as, experts (not necessarily PhDs) teaching- so content is relevant and in tune with the workforce, no high school test scores, or having to move to different geography is needed for students. And, choosing to teach a cohort virtually means overhead costs that typically weigh an education institution down, can be recreated in a virtual environment allowing students to pick and choose what they want to learn instead of forcing them down a set path.

More importantly, education 3.0 is changing the definition of schools, teachers and learners. Schools are no longer institutions but learning academies, taught by teachers who are no longer PhDs but operators delivering their expertise to students, who are no longer 20-somethings but also professionals wanting to continually upskill and re-skill.

In an age where content is no longer king, learning communities will drive the greatest learning impact; through their ability to organise learning in a practical, peer-to-peer and timely manner.