The Renaissance Of Online Learning: Flipping The Script To Benefit Business & Academia
If business and academia had a love child, it’d be flipped-classroom, cohort-based learning.
That’s my two cents from working at a startup incubator affiliated with a university. Where I had a front row seat to the debate over who’s more qualified to teach entrepreneurship: academics or entrepreneurs? Translation: those who’ve studied it as a science, or those who’ve lived it as an art?
But it’s not that simple.
People have been at odds over this question for decades. Many successful entrepreneurs claim university is “a waste of time”, while most universities require professors to have a PhD.
Taken at face value, these are two extreme views with limiting beliefs. Each camp has their strengths, and plays a crucial role in creating effective learning experiences.
The upside to opposing views? Each casts a spotlight on the grey zone in between them, facilitating the treasure hunt for a collaborative model for learning design. One that structures learning with an optimal balance between consumption and application.
Enter flipped-classroom, cohort-based (FCCB) learning.
What is flipped-classroom, cohort-based (FCCB) learning?
It’s a two-pronged approach to learning design. So let’s break them down one by one.
Cohort-based learning explained
Cohort-based learning is what you experienced in elementary, high school, and university. It’s the confinement of a learning experience to a specific time period with a fixed start date and end date. During which time, a group of students moves through the course together. Live sessions are scheduled at regular intervals, while homework and peer study groups can be scheduled flexibly based on student needs and preferences.
So why is the term “cohort-based” learning gaining popularity if it’s nothing new?
Cohort-based learning is new to online learning. That’s why you’re seeing it crop up all over the internet. We’re experiencing a renaissance in online learning: a shift from “self-paced” (i.e., asynchronous) e-learning in which accountability and feedback are scarce, to a cohort-based model in which accountability and feedback propel students toward desired outcomes.
Flipped-classroom learning explained
Using a traditional classroom approach, teachers use class time to explain concepts with minimal (if any) application, and then send you off with homework to apply what you’ve learned. This is likely what you experienced in elementary, high school, and university.
So what does a flipped approach look like? Simply the opposite.
The flipped-classroom approach front loads a live session with pre-reads and/or pre-work to complete beforehand so the live session (or at least the majority of it) can be used to apply the learnings, get rapid feedback, and iterate. Which helps students achieve desired outcomes faster and better.
Here’s an overview of how the flipped-classroom approach applies to Bloom’s Taxonomy (an industry standard for achieving learning objectives):
Why is FCCB learning the best of both worlds?
Emphasis on skills over credentials
“You won’t get a certificate, you’ll get the skills you need to build a viable business,” our startup coaches would say with conviction. And that was the case for those who put in the work. Because using a flipped-classroom approach, participants were able to maximize feedback and iterations during live sessions. Which helped them implement their learnings (around interviewing and pitching) in the real world throughout our courses—as opposed to trying to do so at the end.
Credentialism on the other hand, is flawed. Firstly, it creates illegitimate roadblocks for people to teach. A great example of this is the exchange between Maven co-founders Wes Kao and Gagan Biyani below. Biyani’s experience being passed over for a teaching role despite a successful track record at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship (including his role as co-founder of Udemy), is a common occurrence for many qualified teachers lacking the “right” academic credentials.
But problems with credentialism don’t stop there. In addition to being a roadblock for people to teach, it’s also a shaky rope bridge masquerading as a smooth pathway for graduates to enter the workforce.
That’s what I learned running a 12-week summer residency program, in which recent graduates were hired to work in multidisciplinary teams on various projects for our startups. Even with a dynamic application process that generated a cohort of diverse, high performing participants through hands-on workshops and group interviews (as opposed to academic metrics, like GPAs), 95% of participants felt unprepared to navigate the world of work.
And if most high performing grads feel this way, imagine how everyone else feels. It’s no wonder everyone has imposter syndrome when we’re dishing out credentials based on theoretical learning without a roadmap for how to apply it in the real world.
And it’s not just speciality knowledge that’s lacking a soft landing in the leap from school to work. It’s also essential transversal skills that aren’t being taught. For instance, problem-definition is a critical first step in problem-solving but most people overlook it (through no fault of their own). Schools serve up problems on a silver platter, so we’re conditioned from a young age to jump straight into solution mode. When in the real world, validating a problem is the first step toward validating a solution. And this shortcoming is like an oil spill contaminating other capabilities, like how to navigate ambiguity.
Doing is synonymous with thinking
We don’t know what we don’t know. Which is why application is fundamental to learning and understanding. And the problem with school is we become accustomed to “learning” without doing. Which creates the illusion that we can think our way through every situation and anticipate the best course of action before actually taking action. Which is rarely the case when we encounter a new challenge. Because no matter how much we think about something, we can’t anticipate every possible scenario or consequence.
Application generates tacit knowledge
FCCB learning is the antidote to passive learning. By empowering students to drive their own learning through a repeated process of consumption and application, participants digest their learnings with tacit knowledge rather than just explicit knowledge.
There’s still a lot of debate and ambiguity around the components that define FCCB learning experiences—not to mention the best methods and approaches to maximize their impact. But if we’ve come this far in finding a happy medium between business and academia, things can only go up from here. Which is why I’ll be delving into this over the coming weeks and months. So be sure to follow along and share feedback based on insights of your own.
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