Our Bureau E-learning has thrown off its initial inertia and emerged a popular learning platform, but a learner behaviour study by e-learning company Edureka claims that more than 50 per cent of e-learners drop out before completing the course.
The report goes on to show that although upskilling has gathered importance due to the decreasing lifespan of technical skills, low course- completion rates continue to plague the e-learning industry.
Edureka’s study was aimed at understanding the modern Indian IT professional’s relationship with learning on the job and their behaviour when it comes to learning. The online survey was conducted among 339 Indian IT professionals who were interested in online courses.
Commenting on the findings, Vineet Chaturvedi, Co-founder, Edureka, said: “Low course completion rate is a critical problem plaguing the e-learning industry, but often forgotten in the race to acquire more customers.
“Tech learners need constant motivation, high level interactivity and engagement from learning platforms. Today’s e-learning platforms need to offer the best of both worlds — online learning’s inherent convenience and ease of access with offline’s real-time interaction and engagement”.
“Our report has revealed key behavioural insights that give a roadmap to building better digital learning platforms for the industry. It is crucial to understand learners’ interaction with different instructional strategies in online learning to develop an effective e-learning methodology that can prepare IT talent to hit the ground running”.
Online education market
According to a KPMG and Google study, India’s online education market is set to grow to $1.96 billion and around 9.6 million users by 2021, with reskilling and online certification being the largest category standing at $93 million.
A separate study by FICCI-Nasscom and EY states that 9 per cent of the country’s 600 million estimated workforce would be deployed in new jobs that do not even exist today and 37 per cent in jobs that have radically changed skill sets.
An earlier study by Edureka had also found that IT professionals need to up-skill 15-20 times in their career to stay relevant in the industry. In such a scenario, there is a dire need for effective e-learning platforms that can train professionals on the job, he said.