-
So, how fast will these studies trickle to
improvements on
-
the MOOC format, or even improvements in
education in general?
-
Well, pretty fast, I would say.
-
To explain this, I'll need to describe how
startups work.
-
Here's the startup iteration cycle.
-
We see that we have a product, such as the
Coursera portal for Coursera.
-
It can be used to measure all kinds of
data.
-
That could be via A/B testing, for
instance,
-
as I just explained, or maybe using other
-
metrics, enrollment in a course or the
click-through
-
on emails that have been sent to the
students.
-
Armed with all this data, the startup
-
engineers can learn about areas that would
need
-
improvement, and they can generate new
ideas and things to do and build that in.
-
The whole cycle is not groundbreaking,
sure.
-
I'm not claiming it is.
-
The difference is that this cycle is not
bothered
-
by the usual very slow methodology of
education research.
-
Sure, this data can be spun off into
papers, and that's what education
-
researchers have to do, are currently
doing, because that's what their job is.
-
But, by the time those studies are
-
published, the engineers will have already
gone
-
through several iterations of this cycle,
and
-
the newly published results will already
be obsolete.
-
They'll, they will already have improved
the platform.
-
The big, big, difference with five years
ago is that now education is the next area
-
where software engineers can make an
impact, and
-
hundreds are working on making it more
efficient.
-
This is completely new, and you can expect
it to show effects very, very fast.
-
Just as for many other industries that you
know of,
-
such as the book industry, the travel
industry, et cetera.