Are Cohort-Based Courses the Future of E-learning?
https://medium.com/swlh/are-cohort-based-courses-the-future-of-e-learning-63f36c0e5f51
The idea of cohorts has come up in recent IH Podcast history (#190 with Li Jin, #193 with Jay Clouse, and #200 with Andrew Barry, Marie Poulin, and Ali Abdaal). Do you think cohorts are the way to create better buy-in and engagement versus asynchronous courses?
I think focus on "Completion" disregards education's purpose. I'd say we need all the types of education we can get. Cohort, async, Non-Linear. I'm building Better Sheets and I'm more and more coming to the conclusion that offering any certificate of completion is totally against why someone might take a course. The point is to get better at something, to practice it, to get focused training.
I'd offer that the future of education is in something that doesn't even look or feel like a class. A non-linear set of learnings. Having available videos and access to a teacher or guide can help more people more of the time, than a cohort based class that you charge high for and thus need to have a selection process.
But again, I'm not denigrating this process. There should be an option for everyone at every price point.
I'm in line with this thinking.
I also feel that things like curating content can be hugely educational.
I think the key is that people need variety, but also as indie hackers, we shouldn't feel that we need to provide all the variety, it's likely too much to handle. Instead, we should focus on the areas we feel most excited about.
I definitely do!
I'm Andrew Barry (from episode 200 😄) and I've been seeing the potential of cohorts for transformation both at the individual online course level and in corporate training.
In fact, my company uses this approach with clients - https://youtu.be/bsyzCSRphH0
I will caveat this by saying that it's not one or the other in my mind.
Asynchronous, or self-paced, courses are not dead.
In fact, it's the hybrid of the two that delivers the most transformations.
I don't think cohort-based courses are necessarily any better than async. I can see the appeal of cohorts to people who really need the structure of having their time scheduled for them. But in my experience of teaching in-person courses for years, that doesn't create anymore engagement unless the course is intentionally seeded with group activities requiring people to participate and interact with each other and the course material; and there are a lot of pitfalls to those group activities.
I have a suspicion that some people who pay big $ for cohort-based courses are hoping for longer-term network effects by buying time with an already established influencer. For instance, if you impress Ali Abdaal (for instance) in the cohort, then he might promote your channel or product; that's a huge network effect.
In a way, those network effects are the same reason people pay big $$ for tuition at a private college. They're buying into an alumni club & contacts with other students that might be useful to them down the road.
As mentioned in the other comments, a range of educational opportunities at different price points will exist.
I think it's not, but I do think that it opens an opportunity for people who like that style of learning that didn't have that in the past with typical e-learning platforms. I've thought of it as simply a new avenue to teach (and learn) online.