Extension Engine
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ExtensionEngine teamed up with Jennifer Gormley, Senior Director, Product at McKinsey Academy to present a webinar on “Using Open edX for online training to generate revenue or create impact.”

From time to time, we like to take a look at the learning experiences other organizations are creating to help sharpen our own edge in instructional design and user experience.

Please, not another “we ought to put this online” idea….

Recently we’ve been speaking with companies that deliver training and generate revenue from it. Most of these companies deliver this training in-person. They’ve done it this way for years, they know how to get students, deliver the training and generate good revenue. And when we suggest to them that they think about moving it online, we often hear “No! We’ve tried that and it didn’t work. It was hard. The students didn’t like the experience. We never got the results we hoped for. I am not going there again.”

It’s always gratifying to read an article that validates your position and provides evidence that you have, indeed, been making the right decisions and are providing a valuable and much-needed service.

For us, one such publication is a recent white paper, Report on Coursera online course for University of Chicago and Booth School of Business written by John H. Cochrane. The white paper enumerates various “lessons learned” from Cochrane’s venture into online course development as he adapted a Ph.D. level course, Asset Pricing, for the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) environment.

ExtensionEngine teamed up with Eduventures to present a webinar on “Online Learning without Revenue Sharing.” What did we learn? Well first, we learned you can cover a lot of ground in 30 minutes if you speak fast and stay focused. We love short webinars — they are better learning experiences. We also learned that many of those who attended were excited to learn about the fee-for-service and a la carte models. The OPM model, which has dominated online learning in higher education for many years, is changing — new entrants, new approaches, and new demands from institutions.