This survey's findings should give e-learning startups cause for alarm

More than 50% of IT professionals who opt for e-learning courses drop out before completing them, according to a behavioural survey conducted by global e-learning company Edureka.

The report claims that although upskilling has gained popularity owing to shorter lifespans of major technical skills, the e-learning industry still suffers from the grim reality of lower course completion rates.

The survey by Edureka sought to understand the learning behaviour of 339 Indian IT professionals and found that almost half of the participants who start learning on their own regularly gave up without completing the course.

The top reasons for learners opting out of an online course before completion included the inability to motivate themselves and lack of hands-on guidance in the courses.

The report also found that ease of access still remains an important factor for these professionals while picking learning platforms.

“Low course completion rate is a critical problem that plagues the e-learning industry, but it’s often forgotten in the race to acquire more customers,” said Vineet Chaturvedi, co-founder of Edureka.

Founded in 2011, Edureka is a global e-learning platform for live, instructor-led training in trending technologies such as Big Data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, data science, and business intelligence, among other subjects.

The survey found that while 42% of the surveyed professionals almost always gave up without finishing up their courses, 34% claimed to have finished all of their courses, while 24% of them confessed to having given up at least half of the times they had taken up an online course.

“As the industry matures, completion rates will define the adoption of e-learning among professionals,” said Chaturvedi. “Tech learners need constant motivation, high-level interactivity and engagement from learning platforms.” 

A study by Google and KPMG last year stated that India’s online education industry will touch close to $2 billion by 2021. The number of paid users will grow from 1.6 million to an estimated 9.5 million by 2021. Re-skilling and online certification courses were the dominant categories with a 38% share, the report added.