Natalie Schwartz – Dec. 16, 2020
Several companies offering premade virtual courses are seeing more interest from investors and schools, which could solidify an uncertain business model.
StraighterLine launched more than a decade ago as a way to offer students low-cost college classes online. It has steadily grown since then, but 2020 may be a turning point for the company and others like it.
Students generally pay $99 a month plus a per-class fee to access StraighterLine’s courses, which are guaranteed to transfer for credit to colleges in its network. The company counts more than 100 institutions as partners, including online giants such as Western Governors and Walden universities.
“If you aren’t successful, you haven’t spent a lot of money, you haven’t spent a lot of time, you haven’t put your Title IV at risk, you don’t have a black mark on your transcript and you haven’t foreclosed other options,” said StraighterLine CEO Burck Smith. “But if you are successful, awesome, you’ve now gotten credits prior to entry.”
Although the article approaches MOOCs as a win-win: a pipeline of prepared students for universities and a no-downside trial run for students, the hybridization of both the curriculum and the public-private model is interesting.
In corporate training, many organizations may adopt prepackaged modules – or blocks of modules – to improve staff skills and knowledge. The narrower the focus on specific software or job tasks, for example, the more likely the training must be developed in-house. The broader the content, such as conflict resolution or managing staff, the more likely it is that training content can be obtained from third parties. A third-party, branded solution may be viewed as providing enhanced cachet and as cultivating in the participants a broader view of management or leadership than can be gleaned from internal experts. -MW-
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