Rather than point to what is wrong, it's time to tell a story of what the future holds for forward-looking online learning companies and MOOC platforms.
Unshackling from sunk costs of courses
The rearview mirror is a double edged sword. Glance at it occasionally and it will help you adjust your direction, speed and the course of your journey. Stare at it too long and you become a danger to yourself and others.
Sunk costs in online certification training and education are rearview mirrors in the best case scenario, and a fast track ticket into obsoletion at their worst. And it's you who decides which one it is.
Now that you've spent thousands upon thousands on creating a course or creating an online learning platform, your eyes need to stay on the learning road ahead. The market is pulsating with change and the best ways to learn have moved on.
Your students are using ChatGPT 30-60 minutes a day, and that's just the start.
But somehow, you think your talking head videos and training course that was made a decade ago can compete.
Action: Think of these courses as your own competence and resources, but not as your final product.
Learners are spoilt for choice and fear is not an incentive
The chat interface of LLM apps like gemini, chatgpt and deepseek has set a precedent for user behaviour. Talking to content has been on the cusp of miraculous. Despite it being dismissed as next token guesswork by cracked ai researchers - few of us are not impressed.
AI for learning at the moment is embodied by this chat experience, feeding in context or questions and consuming an answer. And it is largely free. The foundational models are generous - and learners care about price. Professional online courses just can't compete.
But just because chat is gradually shifting search, it doesn't mean chat is the best interface for edtech and learning tech. In fact, alone it's counter productive to cognitive retention or, put simply, remembering what you've studied.
shows that learners are becoming lazier, and the their engagement is dying slowly.
This doesn't mean you can just use this as your marketing and PR to strike fear into learners and that personalisation learning experiences can be left out.
Action: You are the expert in your online professional certification training or course. You must be thinking about how to deliver non-chat based personalisation.
From fixed course to content companion
You might be familiar with the enormous chasm between education investors and tech investors. On one side, you have slow moving, content loving, risk averse money. On the other, you have YC and the obsession with early traction.
Because of this, the response to learning in the age of AI has been largely chatgpt dust and aggressive targeting of university students. Repurposing LLM chatbots for learning has been worthwhile for the tech founders. They've raised money quite easily, got TikTok traction and didn't need to develop content.
As for education investors, they've had tons of meetings with LLM consultants and model providers, but are too preoccupied with their existing SaaS business models to care. Kick the can and the problem might just go.
This has left huge arable education and training opportunity waiting to be cultivated by education and learning professionals. I use this analogy because it requires some blood, sweat and tears.
Content is deliverable now in infinite permutations - personalised text, audio podcasts on the fly, AI videos and images, human-like avatars and so much more. And people are complex. What appeals to them, what resonates with them and what sticks in their minds.
The role of an e-learning provider is to figure out how each mind ticks, and to deliver content accordingly. This is no mean feat. Luckily we have built , while you focus on the additional offerings to enhance personalisation.
What makes this significant is that the learner now has a companion - one that can pull from real world events and colossal amounts of data to keep them informed. Couple that with knowing what analogies or learning components work best for the user, and it's a game changer.
This translates into a LTV that's longer and more valuable and a revenue model for online education that's a cash cow.
Action: Reach out to us on trymarcus.com to adopt an AI personalisation layer, then begin planning in person or online cohort based activities for social enrichment
A long-term healthy relationship with the learner
All relationships need investment. As a course provider, you need to invest in the learner's success. Taking the horse to the water is no longer acceptable. The onus now is on you to incentivise it to drink. But in doing so, you win their trust and long term commitment.
Customizing online learning paths for better outcomes is the minimum requirement for a highly personalised AI learning world. This doesn't mean insidious data collection or relentless spamming - it's about listening to their usage and forecasting their learning need.
It's on-going, and at times will be frustrating and difficult.
But nothing good comes easy.
Action: Always invest in the learner - whether it's your time doing R&D, building additional experiences or just a simple chat.