Reshaping Education - Online Education, Cohort-based Courses, Bootcamps, and More

Acadium: https://acadium.com/Virtually: https://tryvirtually.com/Music: ROASN by Gil Wanders

Wes Wagner and I discuss his journey going from growth at Microverse to starting Pactero, a platform for issuing Income Share Agreements. In addition, we dive deep into our experiences with higher education and how institutions are failing to properly align incentives between their programs and their students.

Learn more about Parachute Bridge: https://www.parachutebridge.org/Learn more about Virtually: https://tryvirtually.com/Music: ROASN by Gil Wanders

Michael Ioffe and I discuss SMS-based courses, the short-comings of current online education, and what it was like for both of us to go through the very first remote batch of YCombinator.

Shift_up: https://www.shiftup.tech/Virtually: https://tryvirtually.com/Music: ROASN by Gil Wanders

Ryan Laverty and I discuss the founding story of Arist, an SMS-based learning platform, and the shift happening in higher education due to COVID-19. Specifically, a return to the apprenticeship model and project-based learning. Music: ROASN by Gil Wanders

Sharpest Minds is building a Data Science mentorship marketplace backed by ISA's. This allows those interested in Data Science to receive personalized career coaching with no upfront cost. In this episode, Edouard and I discuss the founding of Sharpest Minds, the future of ISA's, and the implications on higher ed as a whole. 

You've might have seen some studies or heard of statistics that talk about how low course completion rates are...It's true the average online course has a 6% completion rate; however, a recently implemented technique in the online learning space is flipping on the model on its head. With this simple mechanism, online course completion rates can skyrocket to over 90%. What is this new mechanism? Well, it's actually not new. It's old as civilization:Community.Nothing is more important to keep students engaged with course material than learning along-side individuals in a similar stage to themselves. This simple ingredient has been instrumental in making learning online actually viable for life-changing career education. And it's not just completion rate, every other metric goes haywire if you can successfully integrate community into your online course: engagement, comprehension, etc...Recently, Alberto Arenaza and I had an in-depth conversation about the transformation we're seeing in higher education and remote learning. A big focus of the conversation was about the role of community in online learning environments. 

This week's episode of Reshaping Education took place with Billy Bross, a marketing strategist who specializes in working with online course creators. Billy and I have had a few conversations at this point and with each one, I'm just blown away by how swiftly he's able to get a point across. This week, he delivers yet again. Billy and I spoke about what it takes to build and scale an online learning community. We dive into what it takes to be the "purple cow" of the online course world. It's not good enough to record some videos and throw them up online. You have to deliver value. You have to create a community. In this episode, Billy sheds light on this topic and how he's helped countless course creators build and scale their business. Not by building an online course, but building an online learning community and internet business. Main TakeawaysWhat's the difference between an online course and an online school?"[An online school] has a bunch of courses inside of it...it's an online university that usually targets a common customer avatar specific type of person and can serve them in, in multiple ways."How to effectively communicate online?"Keep people engaged. Give them assessments and community is a huge one that we're seeing emerge."The best part about running an online school is that students will often come for the course material, but then stay for the community. Never underestimate the power of the community. Looking to start your own online school?Check out Virtually, an online school builder.  A tool that brings together payment processing, live conferencing, and student management and makes it easy to build and scale your own online learning community. 

Learn more about OnDelta: https://www.ondelta.io/See what we're building at Virtually: https://tryvirtually.com/