The Market for Online Education

Introduction handed-down command is k promptlying well-nigh face to face communication in a corporal distinguishroom. Educational institutions be essential to pay for dear(p) inputs, the woos of which atomic return 18 spread turn out everywhere a make up sensations minded number of students. It is no wonder indeed that this reading delivery archetype has produced a 550% increase in the address of tuition at U.S. universities since 1985 (Vella, 2012). In addition to this, most universities atomic number 18 play by non-profit trusts or governments, where there is little storm to innovate and fully utilize the physiologic and intelligent resources of the institution. With this rumpdrop, online courses ar offering low-cost learning alternates, which argon customized for inquires of customers, and are available without consider to blank shell and prison term for different collections of customers foundingwide. Over time, attitudes of students and employer s towards online teaching are likewise improving. Finally, brand- modernistic private companies are computer program of attack up to offer customized roots often backed by defame reckon computer programmes, though they lock off want the brand recognition of handed-down universities.This paper impart examine the demarcations of traditional didacticsal methods and explore sources of occupy and supply of online development with a view towards how advanced(a) vexation homunculuss much(prenominal) as crowdsourcing and engineering science infrastructures such(prenominal) as obnubilate deliberation are creating switch in online grooming (Weld et al., 2012).Evolution of Online Education traditionalistic fostering delivery in thousands of universities globally is designed around transfer of knowledge from teachers to students via face-to-face, lecture base interaction in physical classrooms. At the out sink, this imposes the limit of physical capacity of the cla ssroom on the number of individuals who lavatory enrol in the class. In comparison, late advances in information and communication technologies constitute enabled alternative online reproduction delivery mechanisms, which stack optimize educational delivery in a cost-efficient expression for a large number of hirers. Online education can be defined as a saucily social fulfill which utilizes digital engineering science to partially or fully substitute traditional classroom learning methods, optimized for learners without the barriers of a traditional educational apparatus (Hiltz & Turoff, 2006). Allen and Seaman (2013) define online education to embroil courses where at least(prenominal) 80% of the course core is delivered online. These courses are delivered over the Internet and include significant use of digital media, data storage and communication technologies such as computer-assisted instruction, group communications, use of immersive simulations, gaming and async hronous learning networks, collaborative knowledge systems and use of radio receiver and handheld devices.Online education offers different sets of opportunities to different organisations and individuals. For subsisting educational institutions, it offers a way to increase registration or reach a different font of audience such as corporate training. For start-ups looking for to shake up the education industry, it offers the chance to compete with traditional universities on different bases of competition, such as price, program duration or class timing. For separates, it offers the luck for lifelong learning or the opportunity to learn from professors of top universities.Surveys show that the number of students taking online learning courses is on the rise. Allen and Seaman (2013) report that the kernel number of students in the U.S. taking at least 1 online course during 2012 has increased to 6.7 million, representing 32% of the add student population of 21 million stud ents. In an exterminateorsement of the online learning platform, 77% of academic leadership believe that online learning leads to better learning outcomes than face-to-face instruction. On the major obstacles that are holding back the growth of online education, the authors believe that most faculty members still do not pack a confirming view about online learning. 40% believe employers have reservations about online degrees.Product OfferingsOnline education is influencing different tiers of the foodstuff in different ways. Firstly, in traditional universities, more(prenominal)(prenominal) and more fully online classes are being developed, and technology is finding its way into more traditional classes as well. Many universities now offer online scarcely classes for their students. In addition, universities such as Georgia Tech are creating tailor made degrees for corporations such as AT&T. This setup benefits the university which gets an extra r til nowue stream and also AT &T which gets high-end skills training for its employees on the gambol (Kitroeff, 2014). In addition, some new, non-traditional universities have also been set up. These online universities, such as the University of Phoenix, replicate the existing university model but without a physical campus, utilizing online marrow delivery.A different model has also been developed by some traditional universities such as MIT and Stanford. In partnership with private start-up companies such as Coursera and EdX, these institutions are putting together free classes apply to global masses known as massive open online courses (MOOC). These courses are available to all the students in the world who have Internet access and some of these classes bollocks registrations in hundreds of thousands. Currently, nearly 3% of institutions of higher(prenominal) education in the US are offering MOOCs speckle another(prenominal) 10% are in the training process of offering MOOCs (Allen & Seaman, 2013). Cour sera is also expanding into China with its more than 1 million online learners (Larson, 2014). However, it is not clear how MOOC offerings go out be financed (Anderson, 2012). The author points out that giving away sum for free usually never turns out to be good business model. Suggestions for tax revenue generation include subscription and charging employers who want to hire successful students. other issue is how to ascertain the identity and actual uttermost of work by a given individual. Udacity, another start-up has devised a solution by offering physical testing facilities in different countries where students can bribe certification exams in a supervised environment. opus they are becoming increasingly popular, MOOCs offer exceptional customization. In comparison, some start-up education companies are exploring the thinker of customized learning enabled by crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a term which defines the growing of an online community whose physically dispers ed members whitethorn be called upon to provide results online to a given problem. One limitation of MOOCs is that grading assignments of hundreds of thousands of students requires utilize automatize software, which can only grade multiple choice problems. This solution does not work very well in the arts and social sciences. A crowdsourcing-based solution is to use colleague evaluation for this purpose.These learning environments also deploy other technology enabled learning techniques such as using software to analyse common mistakes made by large groups with the highest frequency. Significant insights can be gained into gentle learning from observing such errors and analyzing their causes. Other automated software agents can crawl the web for profitable resources pertaining to the course and collect it on a new website. Additional functionalities that can be offered by appliance learning systems include profits that link students with finical demands with tutors with sk ills suitable for teaching those subjects.Role of technology in the online education ecosystemCentral to this paradigm crusade in education is the Internet and technology regeneration. A key enabling innovation in this regard is the tuition of a low-cost services model known as streak figuring. befog computing is an umbrella terms which describes how computers, servers, and applications and processes on those servers can be networked together in a distributed computing platform to create scalable infrastructure which enables users to connect from anyplace and using any device. slander computing may be considered an extension of Service Oriented architecture (SOA), which is a software design which makes it easy for computers on a network to cooperate. An institution or group of institutions that gets together to develop a cloud computing based platform submits to develop content and services that can reside inside the cloud since not all applications are cloud enabled (Mirce a & Andreescu, 2011). defame computing is a way of designing a network in blocks, not all of which need to be owned or operated by one university. Instead some components of infrastructure, or the platform or the software or even the computing military force itself may be owned and managed by service providers who allow the university to pay for them on an ongoing, pay-per-use basis (Matthew, 2012). Cloud enabled service delivery enables access to educational content by anyone, anywhere on a pay-per-use basis, gum olibanum enabling deployment of scalable educational services. If a real(a) number of users exist, the cost per user and thus the honorarium charged to the user can be get down substantially compared to traditional educational institutions (Moore, 2011). This can have several other avails for institutions as well. For example, institutions can immingle resources with others to share a cloud, and then focus on content creation to focus on their position and outsourc ing the IT services to a large degree.The new business models will begin with market need identification, and then deploying a solution to meet that need, offering a high return on investment (ROI). A major university offering a global MOOC would need a very different platform than a commercial service offering English as Second Language in China and cloud computing would allow each to have the skillful cost and infrastructure for the size of the opportunity. A stilt of effort is going into the development of each of the elements of online education. These include digital books, grading software, intelligent software agents, cloud computing infrastructure and tablets. Amazon is also merchandising more digital books than paper books and it is now even possible for students taking online classes to rent their textbooks for limited time (Schuetze, 2011).Through its success, online education seems to be substituting traditional education (Mehaffy, 2012). This phenomenon has been label led by Christensen & Eyring (2011) as the process of disruption. Disruptive technologies are championed by new companies which do not compete with the incumbents along the existing bases of competition, but offer new and often low-cost merchandise to a previously underserved group of consumers. at one time successful in their niches, they increase volume, improve product quality and unseat incumbents in the high end of the market. Alternatively, disruption forces incumbents to change their business models.One of the reasons the education market seems ripe for disruption is the high cost of university education which makes the high-end of the market out of reach for many an(prenominal) students. Some of the new business models in online education offer lower cost alternatives for those average students. In response, several mainstream universities are already considering lowering the abidance requirement of their degrees to lower the total cost of earning them, enchantment consid ering how to improve their online courses. While it may be withal early to predict how successful they will be, for now the online education market seems set to grow globally. outcomeIn conclusion, it can be said that online education is a powerful business model because it can service large underserved segments of the education market at low average cost (Gaytan, 2007). It is a solution for those who could previously not afford the high cost of education or may only need to develop certain job related skills or they may be lifelong learners. Deployment of digital content and software over a cloud enabled distributed computing network is the first step towards infrastructure development required for online learning platforms. More high-quality content is required together with ingenious business models to take online education to the next level of success.Recommendations While they do not face any immediate threats, existing educational institutions will need to adapt their busine ss models in cast to not become obsolete. At a minimum, they should consider ways of reducing their cost without diluting the experience. Traditional universities have a strong competitive advantage they offer a period of residence in an academic community. This is difficult to replicate for online institutions. Online universities should consider partnerships for revenue and content sharing with traditional institutions in order to build their brands quicker. Without brand acceptance, they will never be able to compete with traditional universities. Start-ups should focus on helping develop those innovations that increase the return on investment in new business models for educational service providers to encourage innovation and investment in technology supporting online education. BibliographyAllen, I. E., & Seaman, J. 2013. Changing Course decennary Years of Tracking Online Education in the join States. Sloan Consortium. PO Box 1238, Newburyport, MA 01950.Anderson, N. 2012. Elite education for the masses. The Washington Post, 4.Christensen, C. M., & Eyring, H. J. 2011. The innovative university Changing the DNA of higher education from the inside out. John Wiley & Sons.Conn, S. S., & Reichgelt, H. 2012. 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