· howtocbc · Education · 2 min read
Efficacy of CBCs
Insights on building effective Cohort Based Courses from the howtocbc Pulse newsletter.
Welcome to the first edition of howtocbc Pulse.
We are very happy to have you here and join you in your journey of teaching better online :-)
Are you aware that CBCs have very high completion rates, compared to the measly under 10% completion rates that MOOCs offer?
Hello Teacher-Creators!
Over the past decade, our team has taught over 10,000 students across different subjects and cohort sizes. We present our insights below.
We have organised our data into the following graph displaying completion rate as a function of cohort size.
Our data is compared to the average completion rates of MOOCs. We assume a consistent and generous 10% MOOC completion rate across cohort sizes.
Why are CBCs more effective than MOOCs?
As you can see, the efficacy of CBCs is near perfect for smaller batch sizes. We see a dramatic drop in completion rates while scaling from around 40 to 100 students per cohort and a slow downward taper there onwards. But CBCs continue to be at least twice as effective as MOOCs even for large cohorts of 1000+ students.
At cohort sizes of 10,000 students and greater, the benefits of CBCs can be seen to diminish. At this scale, the educator has very little direct contact with the students and is, therefore, ignorant of their individual needs. Furthermore, the educator has limited ability to make any considerable impact in their learning process.
Let’s now try and understand why CBCs have better outcomes than MOOCs.
Featured Cohort Based Course
In our upcoming issues, we will expand on what it takes to run a streamlined and effective Cohort Based Course.
The featured CBC for this edition is The Minimalist Entrepreneur by Sahil Lavignia.
Sahil is the founder of Gumroad, a self-publishing digital marketplace platform to sell digital services, including CBCs.
One more thing…
He runs a 4 week long CBC for founders who aspire to build a sustainable business like Gumroad than chase a VC-backed unicorn. Next cohort starts on 7th February 2022.
If you want to learn how to design your own CBCs, come join us! Applications for our next cohorts are open. Share with a friend or a colleague who might benefit from the program.
See you in a fortnight! :)
P.S.
Team howtocbc
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