Why 3% pass rate in online education is a question that should concern every course creator.

The 3% pass rate or 97% failure rate in online courses is a big scandal and a dent on the image of online courses segment of the education industry.

This abysmal pass rate has worried me over the years and others.

“Most online courses assume you are a wizard on a computer.

You are a “techie” marvel.

Lessons bandy acronyms like

ICA, CRM, ILT, VLT, CBT, WBT, SME, LMS, CMS.

What do they mean? ….

It doesn’t matter.

You don’t need to know.”

–Peter Shunn

(OCCCNA)

Peter Shunn, a member of Online Course Creators Community For Newbies And Advanced Beginners (OCCCNA), posted the above insightful comment on the OCCCNA Facebook group.

Indeed over insightful if you are a trainer.

In training, there is what is called pedagogy, which if you Google you will see being described as “The method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.”

On the other hand, there is andragogy, which is described as “the method and practice of teaching adult learners”.

In effect, andragogy is about ‘adult education.’

University of Illinois, Springfield, Centre for Online Learning, Research and Service (COLRS), gives a fuller description of pedagogy and andragogy.

It says, “pedagogy is the teaching of children, or dependent personalities”, while “andragogy is the facilitation [of] learning for adults, who are self-directed learners”.

On the other hand, it says, “heutagogy is the management of learning for self-managed learners.”

Follow this Link to access COLRS.

So if you ever wondered why the failure rate of online courses is 97%, wonder no more.

The problem is that ‘techies’ dominate the online courses domain.

The techies are experts in their various fields but have no clue what adult education is all about.

This is what Marisa Murgatroyd, the creator of Experience Product Masterclass has to say, “the likelihood of somebody completing a program is very low. Only 3% of people actually finish a program. When 97% of people can’t go to the finish line, it’s a systemic problem, not a problem with the customer, or with your lack of willpower, or a matter of intelligence.”

In some instances, you have the gurus stacking 10 – 15 other ‘products’ and ‘service’ atop their main product to justify a high value.

While the main product may be $120, $500, $1,000 or whatever, you have stacks upon stacks of ‘bonuses’ to justify Everest high fee.

And in 99.99% of the cases, the ‘bonuses’ are irrelevant and end up overwhelming the students.

This is the so called ‘irresistible offers’ you see in the online course industry.

An offer is irresistible or a no-brainer as the gurus call it, when the value is 10 times the fee.

So for a fee of $100 or $1,000 you end up receiving a value of $1,000 or $10,000, so the theory goes.

To make the offer extra juicy, you are given 100% unconditional money back guarantee so long as you can prove you went through the ‘product’, in this instance, a digital course.

This is how the industry has thrived on ‘irresistible offers’ and rip-offs for years but that is about to change as people like Peter Shunn begin to speak out.

Today, together with #Graphy, an all-in-one and end-to-end course hosting platform or more appropriately, learning management system (LMS), I had a webinar where I spoke on Mastering Online Courses.

One of the topics I addressed was the “Avoiding the mistakes of the gurus.”

If you are interested in my slides, send your email address to paul@pauluduk.com and I will email the slides to you.

More importantly, I will be conducting a webinar on Winning At Scale With Online Courses on 1st October to commemorate the 2nd year anniversary of Online Course Creators Community For Newbies And Advanced Beginners (OCCCNA).

If you are interested, you can join the webinar of the due date by clicking this link: https://bit.ly/3LrMtgQ   

If you are new to my posts and articles, just know that I help newbies and advanced beginners build their online businesses, especially online course the right way.

To this end I launched Internet Business Mastery Course (iBMC) in July 2020 and since then we have grown from zero students to 150, including returning students.

I created Online Course Creators Community For Newbies And Advanced Beginners (OCCCNA) on October 26th 2020 and the group has grown from 1 (one) member – me – to over 3,600 members today.  

 Meanwhile, I will be admitting a few students to join the waiting list for iBMC-8 billed to kick-off on 15th October, 2022.

If you are interested in joining iBMC-8 click this link: https://bit.ly/3NLClzc

Even though my courses are focused on digital products, the same principles apply for E-Commerce, Network Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Content Marketing and associated segments.

The key is understanding the BASICS and doing all it takes to prevail while the client to of mind.

May sunshine meet you wherever you are.