Coursera

Team A6
 Value Proposition
“The best courses from the best instructors at
the best universities made available to
everyone around the world for free”
~Daphne Koller, TED Global 2012

“Big breakthroughs happen when what is

suddenly possible meets what is desperately
necessary”
~Thomas Friedman, May 2012, New York
Times
 Value Proposition
What is the nature of the innovation in the product,
service, or offering?

• Real course experience: starts on a given date

and progresses on a weekly basis.
• Graded Homeworks and assignments with
deadlines
• Peer review of assignments
• Community of learners
• Certificate of completion
 Value Proposition
How is this value proposition unique, innovative, or
disruptive?

• The first MOOC offered was registered by 100,000

people. For an instructor to reach the same
number in offline class, it would take 250 years!
• Higher education needed to scale-up!
• Videos are more engaging way to learn instead of
traditional textbook based learning
• Optional materials provided to aid students who
need extra help
 Strategic use of IT
How are information technologies being used
to create this value proposition?
• Creation of content: Break up the
monolithic long lectures into bite size
videos
• Retrieval practice: Embedded quizzes
• Grading: MCQs, short ans, models are
graded by AI
• Measuring success: attendance,
engagement, learning
 Strategic use of IT
• Ability to interact actively with the
course material: active feedback
• Largest peer grading pipeline
• Global community of learners
– Q&A forums
– Study groups across cultures
– Response time: 22mins
 Strategic use of IT
• Data on the learning pattern of students helps
improve the platform even more
Personalization: The 2-sigma problem
• Helps find misconception that is prevalent among
students about a particular concept.
• 2000 students giving same wrong answers. By
identifying this pattern instructors were able to
design an intervention which ensured that whoever
got the ques wrong understood the concept really
well.
 Revenue and Profit Drivers
How is the firm likely to generate
revenue through this innovation?
• Freemium model
• B2B model: large firms take bulk
subscription for their employees
 Revenue and Profit Drivers
What is the basis of its profitability?
• High quality content
• Tie ups with top universities
• Tie ups with large firms
Revenue and Profit Drivers
 Trend in higher education
• Rising costs of higher education
• Unequal access to quality education
• High penetration of internet in tier-2
and tier-3 cities in India.
• Universities are shifting from “a
temple of knowledge” to a “knowledge
enterprise”
• Emergence of educational “Netflix”
 Nature of the Innovation
What is the likelihood that this innovation will be
successful?
• Highly likely
– Establishing education as a fundamental right
– Enable lifelong learning
– Enable a wave of innovation

“College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes

go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without
passing through the brains of either”
~Mark twain
 Nature of the Innovation
Will it have a disruptive effect on the
industry? If so, how will the disruption occur?
• People are moving from private tuitions to
online classes
• Firms are moving from classroom trainings
to online trainings

“The mind is not a vessel that needs fillings,

but wood that needs igniting”
~Plutarch