MOOC providers are now more certain about their real audience.
“There’s been a decisive shift by MOOC providers to focus on “professional” learners who are taking these courses for career-related outcomes,” concludes Dhawal Shah, CEO at Class Central on an article in EdSurge.
These are some of the extracts:
- At the recently concluded EMOOCs conference, the then CEO of Coursera, Rick Levin, shared his thoughts on this shift. He thinks that MOOCs may not have disrupted the education market, but they are disrupting the labor market.The real audience is not the traditional university student but what he calls the “lifelong career learner,” someone who might be well beyond their college years and takes these online courses with the goal of achieving professional and career growth.
- The real audience is not the traditional university student but what he calls the “lifelong career learner,” someone who might be well beyond their college years and takes these online courses with the goal of achieving professional and career growth.Traditional lifelong learners might learn due to their love of learning, but in the case of lifelong career learners, the “lifelong” part is driven by the necessity of constantly adapting to the changing job market.
- Levin defined the lifelong career learner as someone typically between the age of 25 to 45. Eighty-nine percent of Coursera learners are over the age of 22.
- To target professional learners, MOOC providers started creating content in high-demand skills and launched their own proprietary credentials.
- Helping universities put their courses online or earning academic credit for MOOCs is only the beginning. MOOC Providers also want to help—and convince—universities to put their entire degrees online. Early this year, edX announced its first master’s degree in partnership with Georgia Tech. Coursera plans to have up to 20 online degrees by the end of 2019.
