Online Education Is All About knowledge

Online education is a disruptive innovation for the obvious reasons, namely global reach, scale and cost. And for not so obvious reasons (if implemented correctly) such as customization and personalization (one size doesn’t fit all), not to mention the education research space that was never conducted in such scale before.

The importance of reach and scale from enabling developing  countries to get the best education available by enrolling to free open online courses from top universities such as MIT, Stanford and Yale, to less heroic reasons  such as the flexibility to enroll to any class any time…

Bad economic times take a toll on education.  Universities are downsizing, cost of education is rising, and graduates are unemployed while stuck with six-figure student loan debt. Traditional education no longer can offer value for money.

A great TED talk by Daphne Koller, Coursera co-founder, on online education - click here. 

Well, there are still issues to resolve, and not everyone agrees with this notion.   An interesting  post by Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, on the trouble with online education - click here. 

Online education is not just about higher education and degrees; it is first and foremost about knowledge.   Online education today offers a syllabus very similar to the traditional education, it is the “how” that changed not so much the “what”.  But in the future, we should be able to change the “what”, just like we are using search engines to learn, find answers, and build something new.

Until the next post,

Michal