The inexorable rise of MOOCs

An academic brand and provider that has been in existence for just 12 months, now has over 3 million students who hail from over 210 countries. That brand is Coursera, and its’ success dramatically demonstrates the pulling power and impact of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses on the Education sector.

Unsurprisingly crowdsourcing guru Clay Shirky heralds the game changing power of MOOCs writing, “Higher education is now being disrupted; our MP3 is the massive open online course”. Not to be outdone, Simon Nelson the launch CEO of Futurelearn - the UK’s first MOOC - believes that the new platform has the potential to become a social networking site for the student community as popular as Facebook. Whilst there is plenty of hype around, MOOCs certainly are a disruptive innovation, with all that means for incumbent players, who at a minimum need a coherent strategy regarding this new phenomenon.

MOOCs could instigate, or at the very least hasten, the disaggregation of teaching, assessment and accreditation. They may drive down the fees for higher education courses provided by undifferentiated universities. Sir Michael Barber, perhaps with the interests of his Pearson paymasters in mind, forecasts the emergence of “pick-and-mix students” assembling learning from a range of sources. He would like to see students getting access to government funding to study MOOCs - perhaps the very force that will precipitate the avalanche that Barber and his co-authors of the recent IPPR report predict will engulf many HEIs.

MOOCs have their origins in the desire for Open Education – free access for as many students as possible - and the subsequent endeavours to harness online channels to this end from 2000 onwards. This laudable original intent is now equally open to proliferation in business models, hence the growing interest in MOOCs amongst venture capitalists and ‘for profit’ Education providers like Coursera and Udacity. It remains to be seen whether the implicit tension between ‘Open’ and profit motives can be successfully resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned.

Pedagogy, quality and completion rate concerns also stalk MOOCs; their open, online, global nature, making top-down regulation a non-starter. Conversely, accepted social ratings and rankings are likely to quickly emerge to condemn poorly regarded courses and laud well-received MOOCs, in classic survival of the e-fittest fashion.

So what does all of this mean for HEIs in the UK? 
• The rapid emergence and rise of MOOCs at one level simply serves to amplify the need for traditional universities to review and be clear on their wider strategy for online learning and OER
• MOOCs  present an opportunity for HEIs to think creatively and innovatively about new pedagogical practices, business models and flexible learning approaches
• At one and the same time MOOCs open up UK HEIs to more diverse and intense global competition in certain spaces, whilst offering the prospect of building their brand around the world
• In the short term MOOCs may siphon away part time tech savvy potential students; UK HEIs will need to explore how this segment and other early adopters are successfully re-engaged with their offering
• New channel hybrid approaches should be explored, just as the potential role for, and interplay between, cMOOCs (connected) and xMOOCs (content-based) should be considered
• MOOCs also represent a great opportunity to micro analyse student behaviours and attainment click by click.

In many ways MOOCs are just one early manifestation of the potential for digital channels to revolutionise teaching and education in the years ahead. Marking your HEI out as a technical innovator, prepared to embrace new channels in a professional, considered and well-executed way is likely to stand your brand in good stead, whether an avalanche is coming or not.

Take your brand on a holiday

For many of us our summer holidays are probably already a fast receding memory. We came back from them refreshed, re-charged and in many instances brimming with new ideas. What better place to get some quality time to think things through than beside the pool, on the beach, taking a stroll or just chilling with a nice crisp glass of wine. Once back at your desk or hunched over your smartphone the time to reflect soon disappears, along with some of your best new ideas too, if you're not very careful.

What if you could take your brand on holiday, or off on a short break? Give it a chance to reflect a little, look further ahead than the next quarter, experience some new things, meet some new people. Isn't there a chance that a good holiday could be as rewarding for your brand as it is for you?

Well perhaps there is a way that you could go on holiday with your brand. Why not arrange for you and your brand team, maybe even some of your customers, to spend a long weekend away together? Then you could set out a Holiday Itinerary that takes your brand to places that it wouldn't normally go - metaphorically or literally. Plan some stimulating holiday reading. Encourage your brand to try new things or simply spend time reflecting more deeply on the brand's future vision and the role it is looking to play in the world. Maybe it could even write some creative and inspiring postcards home. Useful reminders of what its' been thinking about and the new experiences its' had. Perhaps the team could keep a holiday diary or videolog.

Change and a rest. Recharge your batteries and your brand. Sounds a rather attractive proposition, doesn't it. I'd be delighted to come along as tour guide.

Why NEW is more powerful than ever NOW

‘New’ has always been hot, but the digital age has made it even hotter. The historically clunky and slow moving process of R&D, with progressive investment checkpoints and hurdles, has been put on warp speed. Increasingly the R&D phase has been moved out into the sunlight early, put live, as a Beta test. Pioneers and earlier adopter customers are now frequently the co-creators and shapers of ‘new’.

One measure of the momentum building behind ‘new’ is the 2 million patents applied for in 2011 up from 1.4 million in 2000.* Closer at hand, the app updates screaming to be unleashed on your smart phone is a daily reminder of the pace of change and improvement.

‘New’ isn’t a shock anymore, it’s an expectation. Customers want brands to evolve before their eyes. Those that aren’t keeping up are losing out. Trendwatching rightly identifies digital as the driver of the pace of change, commenting, “The online world with its relentless acceleration and amplification – of information, of excitement, of attention – is of course a major contributor to NEWISM.”

Kickstarter – the online funding platform for creative projects  is another child of the ‘new’ age, since its launch in April 2009 - $362m has been pledged to ‘new’ projects by 2.7m people.

 

'New’ experiences have become the most valuable social currency at a time when ‘new’ possessions have become less attainable and sometimes environmentally questionable. Volume and velocity of experience is on occasion compensating for the value and quality of the experience. The smorgasbord of the music festival, the always on ‘shuffle’ desire for something ‘new’, different and unexpected provide grist for the status update, tweet and blog post.

For some social status comes from being the first to know. Brands need to understand which consumers crave this and feed their thirst to be first. Giving them prototypes to play with, or the chance to access limited edition exclusives.

People are now very quick to sniff out products that aren’t ‘new’ enough, witness the lukewarm reception for the iPhone 5. But the hype and noise ahead of major launches by prestige innovator brands like Apple sell garners massive sales volumes.

Ratings and ‘try before you buy’ opportunities are taking some of the risk out of doing ‘new’ things. At the same time eBay is making it easier for ‘new’ people to own old things. But ownership isn’t everything either, it’s now often easier to experience ‘new’ things without ever owning them at all, from the Zipcar and Boris Bikes sharing model to subscription models like Spotify and Netflix.

Consumers want ‘new’ - NOW. They are less prepared to wait. Brands must come to terms with the marketing consequences of this: using skunk works innovation models, agile and
‘in play’ strategy management, learning fast from failure, testing out in the open, engaging customers early in product development, knowing how to surf success and grow with the flow. Who knows ‘new’ may eventually become the ‘new’ normal and ‘old’ could become a compelling differentiator – but probably not for a long time yet. Here’s to ‘new’ kid!

*(Source: World Intellectual Property Organisation WIPO)

What you want to achieve through the lens

What is really driving you? Today? This month? This year? Have grand ambitions and goals eroded to survival or keeping what you've got. Brands and people can easily lose their way when the conditions are difficult and the direction forward is hard to see. The irony is that tougher times demand even greater clarity and vision; a firmer grip on what's most important versus what's noise and a distraction.

Is your agency helping you achieve focus or adding to the fog? Are they helping you prioritise where to invest and where to cut? Do they bring a clear perspective or just more information?

Why not try adopting the attributes of a great SLR camera in the way you think. Zoom out to put things in context and literally see the big picture. Then zoom in to see and appreciate the detail. What view or depth of field feels right for you in making this decision or undertaking this piece of work? Do you need more light and illumination or do you need to act fast to capture the moment? Is there a way to automate this decision or should it always be on manual? If you made an album of your best decisions or the things you are most proud of - what would you include? Is there a common theme or narrative?

Sometimes achieving greater focus means thinking about focusing itself a little more.

Desktop photos and the inner world

Has anyone done an ethnographic study of the desktop photos on peoples' PCs and laptops? I'm sure that they'd reveal a lot about: an individual's deepest interests, mindset, how they want to be seen, how they see themselves, how technologically sophisticated they are. Do they use an anonymous downloaded desktop wallpaper or a personal photo? It would bring a whole new meaning to desktop research. Why the fascination with making your desktop a full bleed window on somewhere else? Your last holiday, gig, party, the Microsoft deep green hill somewhere far away. Well this is my desktop photo. Make of it what you will.

Marketing and the art of conversation

The celebrated professor, historian and philosopher, Theodore Zeldin was on the Radio 4 Today programme last Friday extolling the virtues of proper serious conversation designed to discover what other people really think. He has sponsored a 'Feast of Conversation' weekend to encourage complete strangers to talk through a menu of conversation topics over a meal. The intention is to get well beyond small talk into big topics like: aspirations, anxieties, fears, desires, hope and despair.

Could this be applied to brands and the way they understand the individuals who buy from them or don't. Should brand managers or advertising planners sit down for a meal with customers or prospects and run through just such a conversation menu. It has the potential to reveal considerably more than the average "depth" interview and provides the ability to come at consumer motivations, attitudes and behaviours from quite oblique angles, which as the leading economist John Kay maintains in his new book, may well be the best way to find winning solutions. Food for thought. Quite literally in this instance.

The psychology of online consumer behaviour needs more attention

Over 1.5bn people across the world now regularly use the internet. UK shoppers alone spent over £13billion online in Q408. As a marketing media the internet is eclipsing all comers. Given all of this isn’t it rather odd that there is no Wiki entry for ‘Online Consumer Psychology’ yet, no authoritative website on the subject and just one academic text dealing with the topic that assembles papers delivered at a conference in 2001 (decades ago in the web world!).

Why is this? Well, perhaps too few marketers, brand managers and their agencies have been asking just that question - Why? Much, if not all, of the focus has been on quantitatively monitoring and measuring online behaviour and transactional data. The standard web metrics are great for understanding ‘where’ and ‘how much’, a lot less great in helping us understand ‘who’ and most crucially ‘why’. Marketing and advertising are increasingly behind the curve of online consumer behaviour, in part at least because they haven’t fully understood the psychological drivers, attitudes and motivations that underlie these behaviours.

Successfully predicting online consumer behaviour and creating sustainable competitive advantages from this knowledge demands that the psychology of online consumer behaviour gets more attention. The brands that give this attention are the most likely prosper when the economy picks up.