We have already heard what we should, or could, do during these Corona-times – us all becoming 100 % digital. But what do we actually Do? Here are some courses I bet my head of you do take at this moment. Then, who gains, and who loses, position due to that, at this very moment?
The first E-learning-course I believe that you are already taking at this moment is “Science of Well-beeing“, given by Yale at Coursera. It´s great. I gladly support it.
If you are not already taking that course, I guess it is because you already have started “Science of Happiness“, given by Berkely at EdX. Also a great course.
Or maybe you have already started “Covid 19: Tackling the Novel Corona-virus, given by London School of Hygien and Tropical Medicine at FutureLearn. I definitely support this one.
You take the first two courses, because you might already have heard about them, before Corona. They were big even before Corona, but probably bigger now.
The third one you might take simply because you just stumbled on it, if you went to the FutureLearn-main-webpage at this moment.
You actually stumble on a whole battery of Corona-related courses at FutureLearn at this moment: 15, if being precise (the button “Disease outbreak prevention courses”). The one I mentioned included.
At the same time you do not stumble on any specific “Corona-realted-courses” at all, neither one the Coursera-, nor the EdX-website, at this very moment (see pictures).
On EdX you actually see nothing related to Corona at all at this particular moment. On Coursera you see a small banner on the top where they address Corona. It leads you to a “support-site”, useful if you are a teacher, or a whole university. But that is not for you as a student.
Well, you also get things for free. But then; several platforms is now either giving away courses for free, or give you a discount. It is not unique at this moment to do that if you are an E-learning-provider.
How come these differences? Coursera and Edx are US-based, but FutureLearn is from UK. Wasn´t US, and not UK, the “land of marketing”?
I do not know if it is true, but to me it at least seems true, that UK is the country on the globe with the best “virologists”. Could maybe then that explain the different things we see on these platforms?
Not necessarily. Several out of the 15 courses related to Corona that FutureLearn is providing are not even given by UK-content-providers. You find providers of courses from Taipei and Madrid among the 15 courses.
Could then instead the fact the FutureLearn seem to react faster here than Coursera and EdX be explained by maybe the management-teams at FutureLearn being a bit faster, and maybe even smarter?
Or, are the suppliers to these platforms, the teachers, the King Kongs of education, a bit different between the platforms? Could FutureLearn have smarter, and faster, teachers? Do even some of the platforms have different kind of contracts with their content-providers making it possible for FutureLearn acting faster here than the US-ones?
Difficult to know the answers, but interesting to think about.
Well, we do not “only” have to see Corona-times as a business opportunity. Delivering courses at this moment related to Corona could actually also be about doing social good. In some weeks ahead, when we are getting bored of sitting isolated; would it not be better from the societies point of view if we took a Corona-related-course compared to Netflixing? Doing social good could at this moment be unusually = good business.
At least; is it not reasonable to assume that the platforms for E-learning that are acting smart, and fast, during these times of Corona will gain a stronger position, that they can have use of later one, when Corona times are over, compared to platforms that do not? Could then even the best platforms we will find, in the long run, be the ones that are able to act smart, and fast, during times of change as such? I mean: Do we seriously expect no other kind of major change to happen in society the upcoming decades?
Could this, then finally, be the moment in time when we see the business value of being able to deliver courses with content related to the actual time we are living in, no matter what time we are living in?
Timing has always been an interesting thing in business. Neither being to quick, nor to slow. But timing. Being there when “it” happens, no matter what “it” is.
Then how about finally starting to address timing in a serious way, also in the field of education?
Disruptive Education 