Even though the content of the course disciplines are advanced, the teaching technology is not advanced as Peter Norvig metioned on his TED Talk. We got stuck in classrooms. As illustrated the following figure, there still are textbook, the sage on the stage and sleeping guy in the back – just like today. However, the most prestigious universities (e.g. Stanford, MIT) offer their course contents online nowadays on MOOC (e.g. Coursera, edX, Udemy) and these courses are mostly free. The only you need is to enroll.
You all might be aware of the popularity of fintech. Its investments peaked 5.3 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2016. Herein, education technologies is thought to be the next fintech.
Presently, market value of edtech is 5 trillion dollars annually. Also, edtech investments are expected to grow 250 billion dollars until 2020. This means growing 17% annually.
In summary, the biggest investments in edtech is made by United States. Asia is now experiencing investments into the edtech sector. Besides these news, Europe is still under invested.
Failure breeds success
Eren Bali (co-founder of Udemy) is interviewed by Cuney Ozdemir on the TV programme 5N1K. The interview is in Turkish. That’s the key notes of his speech:
Udemy is firstly established in Turkey in 2006, and failed. After then, the enterprise is re-established in Silicon Valley in 2010. He admitted their first trial was an early attempt and Turkey wasn’t a right location. Re-establishment process lasts 3 years because of visa procedures and required time to stand on his own legs. This lose time turns into an advantage because e-learning market was advanced rapidly in 2012.
Firstly, almost 60 investors refused them. Then, an angel investor invested in Udemy for 50K dollars when the site went up, and a few of instructors opened up cources on site. After then, they are invested 1M dollars rapidly. Thereafter, the company is invested 3M, 12M, 65M and 70M dollars for annual.
Today, market value of Udemy is 1 billion dollars.
Sometimes it matters standing in right place and just in time to succeed as Malcolm Gladwell mentioned in Outliers.
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