If we can assign humanity a purpose, it would human development itself. There’s no point inventing or discovering anything unless it helps us in some way . One of the crucial inputs to human development is education/learning.

While large parts of the world don’t have access to learning systems, even those with access are seeing spiralling costs and questionable outcomes. The internet has come in like a wrecking ball to the university education system that’s been prevalent since the 1100s, with many precepts being questioned. There are now ongoing attempts to (re)create the university online. These attempts are a replay of our attempts to make written knowledge electronic. First, there was the analog phase, where all of knowledge was in books, people’s notes and brains. Then computers and networks arrived, and we entered a hybrid phase . We started digitising things. It was common to scan documents into the computer for storage / transmission and print documents out for usage. The tools we used were constructed around analog concepts . Even today Microsoft Word and Google Docs default to an A4 page as their interface. Now we’re finally entering the digital native era. Most of human knowledge is share via social media posts, files, dashboards, etc . Few of those are meant to be printed. Production and consumption is digital. New tools like Notion and Coda, are essentially webpage authoring tools,

How is this playing out in education? The analog phase is the university; not a product, but a bundle. The university bundle gives you a courses for learning, access to labs & libaries, a certification for employment, opportunities to secure some jobs, expensive daycare for teenagers/adults and a chance to make friends and socialise. When the computers and the internet hit education, it most manifested itself in the form of digitised textbooks and recorded lecture videos. This was the hybrid phase. These digitised components made learning more efficient and scalable. Famous initial experiments were video playlists like Khan Academy and MOOCs on Coursera and MIT”s OCW . While these were very famous, MOOCs had an

abysmal graduation rate of 3%. Something was missing. Without peers, accountability, and fun; these felt like a buying a book instead of taking a course. In the meanwhile, we saw a lot of technological change. Thanks to the smartphone, quality of networks, quality of displays, access to cameras went up . Making payments online is remarkably easier than 10 years ago . Tools like Slack, Discord and Facebook groups emerged allowing digital congregations.

All of these meant we had the building blocks for (re)creating the university experience online. We have two interesting digital native education trends popping up: CBCs and Educational Short video. Cohort based courses are a first step towards that digital native education, and the beginning of the terminal phase. The atomic unit of learning is media consumption, whether it is reading a page in a textbook or listening to a lecture. The next steps in truly learning are applying that knowledge, whether in practice problems, assignments, or exams . After that it is validation, whether is a fancy degree or even a small course completion badge. The ultimate thing a person wants of course are a cascade of learning outcomes - a certified skill, a job, an identity, and a better life.

CBCs are exactly like university courses except online. They are paid, have fixed start and end dates and are done with peers; constraints that introduce a sunk cost, prevent slacking off and add social accountability . Assembling learners is not geographically constrained, people can watch lecture videos anytime as per their chronotype. Completion rates for CBCs are in fact higher than college, probably because they are new and there’s massive self-selection bias.

Another interesting tool is TikTok/short video content. People think short video content is just teenagers dancing to trending sounds but there’s whole lots of new interesting niches of TikTok emerging . I watched marketing case studies there and was wowed! It’s amazing how quickly you can convey things you get straight to the point! The more interesting thing about short video is that it reduces the activation energy need to start something . It easy to watch a 30 second, then another one, and then … until you find out you’ve been sitting there for an hour. If an hour long video was presented to you instead, you’d balk! The short video medium is forcing us to acknowledge what we knew all along, long droning lectures are boring . Chop em up. This consumption pattern is great way for people to get started, as it needs less motivation. It’s also great for revising things.

We will see an inevitable bundling of hundreds and later thousands of CBCs somewhere. The university of the future will provide tons of short video content for free, monetise it via CBCs, access to alumni groups and in-person events.