History and Evolution of Online Education

What cohort-based courses (incl. ones at MỞ) are and how they fit into the larger picture of online education

Hi! Welcome to my blog post about online education, a world I have caught myself contributing to and thinking about for the past three years. In 2023, I hope to share more about what I have learned and have been doing in more detail. 

I am working with two Vietnamese bloggers to design an online cohort-based writing course at MỞ. We believe in the impact of community and are excited to see how the Internet changes how we learn.

Cohort-based courses are a new way of learning that is on the rise in the online education space. They provide high-impact learning by combining live sessions, discussion forums, practice problems, and support from peers and instructors in an inspiring setting, surrounded by the community.

Our live session every Wednesday and Saturday, hosted on Butter

What do I mean by cohort-based courses? How is the Internet changing how we learn? 

To better understand where online education is heading, what the current gaps in the industry are, and where our product fits into the larger pie of online education, let’s look at online education's history and evolution over the years. 

The very very beginning!

The history of online education dates back to the 1960s when the first computer-based learning systems were developed. These early systems were not accessible to the general public and were primarily used by government agencies and large corporations for employee training. By the 1980s, improvements in computer technology had made it possible for educational institutions to use computers for teaching and learning. In 1984, the Electronic University Network was established, offering students the ability to study remotely using satellite technology.

The 1990s saw the emergence of the World Wide Web, which revolutionized online education by making it possible to deliver course content and provide interaction between students and instructors in a way that was not previously possible. The development of learning management systems (LMS), such as Blackboard and Moodle, made it easier for educational institutions to create and manage online courses.

The first wave of online education: Accessibility 

In the early 2000s, online education began to gain popularity as an alternative to traditional classroom-based education. The rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to access high-quality education from some of the world's top universities. In 2012, edX, a MOOC provider founded by Harvard and MIT, was launched, followed by Coursera and Udacity.

Photo by Lewis Keegan on Unsplash

The first wave of online education was focused on accessibility and getting information out to the world. The Internet allowed different platforms to take shape and form where individuals and institutions can easily share information online. Some major platforms were MOOCs, Youtube, Sal Khan's Khan Academy, Udemy, and MasterClass. However, these platforms fell short in terms of learning outcomes and completion rates. For example, MOOCs often have very high signup and low completion rates because MOOCs have low barriers to entry and create a good feeling when learners hit the button to buy or register for something educational, almost like creating an illusion of progress.

To sum up, accessibility is not enough, as many people do not have accountability and do not know how to engage with the information presented when learning alone. Thus, learners cannot achieve effective learning outcomes. 

The second wave of online education: Outcomes and Transformation

The problems that arose from this first version of online education led to the second wave of online education, which was focused on outcomes and transformation. 

The big question that the second model of online education is trying to answer is: "How can we make online learning more sticky and impactful?" 

The second wave sees the rise of two learning models: cohort-based courses and boot camps. 

Cohort-based courses

2015 was a significant starting point of this phase when Seth Godin started the AltMBA, a live experience online. A whole new model that aims at delivering high value and high-impact was introduced and challenged multiple aspects of the first wave’s model, namely: 

1. Synchronous, community learning could now be possible online.

In the first wave, there were mostly pre-recorded videos that learners interacted with on their own. There was no community or live interaction. The juice of an online learning experience - the live experiences that combine presentations, discussions, exercises, and breakout rooms in an inspiring setting, surrounded by the community - was now made possible in the second wave.

Cohort-based courses are online experiences with live sessions, discussion forums, practice problems, and support from peers and instructors in an inspiring setting, surrounded by the community.

Right now, we are also seeing the rise of new community tools such as Circle and Mighty Networks as the focus on community increases.

2. There are credentials in gaining training from an industry expert.

Thought leaders such as Seth Godin shared that there are credentials in gaining training from an industry expert besides traditional credentials from established schools and institutions. More industry experts and content creators are motivated to share their credentials online and attract people with similar interests/pains. This notion challenges how we used to view credentials - provided by centralized entities.

The second wave’s approach to online learning was then made possible on a large scale by the technological tools available. One of the examples of the tools during this phase is the toolkit platform such as the ones led by Thinkific, Kajabi, and Teachable. These companies provide creators with the tools necessary to build their own courses. The toolkits give instructors ownership over their course and the more effort they put into the course, the more revenue they will generate from it. Tiago Forte, the creator of the Building A Second Brain course, even considered the toolkits as one separate phase of online education.

3. It’s beneficial to learn from peers besides experts or professors. 

The rise of cohort-based courses - intense, active-learning sprints bringing people together through project-based learning - unlocks how peer-to-peer learning is viewed. Sometimes, experts are too far ahead in terms of knowledge and experience to remember what it was like to be a beginner. Thus, we need people who are just one or two steps in front of us to help us learn. A person who is a few steps ahead can reinforce their learning by teaching people who are a few steps behind. 

Boot Camps 

While cohort-based courses are for upskilling, boot camps often are for dramatic or systematic reskilling. Upskilling means that learners have some background knowledge or experience and want to get to the expert level. Reskilling means that learners are starting from 0 and going through a longer transformation to get to their goal, either switching to a different path or getting started on a new one. Both aim at high transformations in the learners by implementing design elements such as community, accountability, peer feedback, or urgency. 

Besides transformation within the design of the learning experience itself, boot camps disrupt the education landscape by providing education at a much more affordable price than traditional forms of education, opening up opportunities for hundreds and millions of people to learn and land jobs. 

For example, in a podcast episode on the history of online education, Ish Baid, founder of Virtually, shares one of the transformational events in the second wave made by Austen Allred from Lambda School (now Bloom Institue of Technology) in 2017: ISA or income share agreement. The price of higher education in the US is often very expensive which puts many students in huge debt. Lambda School’s ISA program allows students to learn for free online in exchange for a percentage of their salary only when they can land a job after the boot camp. Lambda blew up and inspired a series of online boot camps such as Skillbank and Strive School. Similarly, the promise of AltMBA is a transformative, impactful learning experience at a cheaper price than traditional MBAs. 

However, there is a nuance to this disruption. We are looking at mostly models that provide transformation in the US. Firstly, since the cost of higher education in the US is very high, alternative forms of education that guarantee high transformation at a much lower cost are definitely transformational. Secondly, most of these cohort-based courses and boot camps are geared towards tech-related topics, which are contingent upon the booming tech industry in the US. The Internet is changing how we learn in response to the changing industries. 

Some questions I am interested in are (1) whether there are limitations in the types of topics that these models can address and (2) how we can apply pricing strategies in the US context to other contexts to arrive at similar transformations.  

To sum up, I think the transition from the first wave of online education to the second wave of online education was contingent upon these factors: 

1. The development of technological tools that allowed live, synchronous sessions to be possible online. 

2. The changing nature of industries that made experts' and professionals’ knowledge and experience more relevant than traditional institutions' and schools’ curricula. 

Trends to watch out for

Some of the trends we are expected to see as online education continues to improve are: 

1. Hyperspecialization: The absolute of the Internet and new technological tools will allow individuals to find their niche community and create transformational experiences for their audience.

2. Decentralization: As industries continue to change due to the development of new technology, people will continue to look for independent, smaller spaces to reskill and upskill instead of through long-standing institutions or colleges that cannot keep up with industries and markets fast enough. People will want to learn from industry experts. Industry experts will have opportunities to build their own micro niches around their niches. The way we view credentials will continue to change. 

3. Continuous learning/Lifelong learning: People will start to realize that they need community and learning throughout their entire life instead of only a short period provided by schools. People want to continuously reskill and upskill and find a community that they belong to. I wrote about opportunities for lifelong learning in Vietnam here.

4. Application of AI: The world of AI has recently disrupted the education industry greatly, especially the various updated versions of Chat-GPT. It’s exciting to see how we can use AI ethically to help make learning and teaching more efficient and personalizable for learners and educators.

Each wave of online education serves a different and necessary purpose. Companies and thought leaders in this space should think about how we can combine the effective sides of models in each wave to solve both problems in online education: accessibility and outcomes.

The pie of education is large. One model cannot solve all problems. We should collaborate with one another instead of viewing one model as superior to the other. 

At MỞ, we observe the lack of transformational online learning experiences in Vietnam’s market and we aim to be one of the thought leaders in delivering high-impact and transformational learning experiences online. I would love to talk to other players in Vietnam who are either solving the problem of accessibility or outcomes. 

Reference: This essay is inspired by the three-part series “A History of Online Education” by the “Reshaping Education with Ish & Will” podcast and Tiago Forte’s article “The Future of Education is Community: The Rise of Cohort-Based Courses”.