A new online course portal has launched in the United Kingdom. XCourse is an education portal selling online courses that customers can purchase to learn on their own time. XCourse is initially offering courses in Microsoft Office, Web Programming, Databases, Business and People Management, HR, Marketing, and Negotiation skills.
Without any existing meta information such as reviews (though the functionality is there), with no previews of the courses, and with no element of accreditation then paying for these courses is a leap of faith. I can’t help but think that the only courses you would pay for are the ones that you can be sure that are simple enough to ensure that anyone could get the standard info right. In other words, I’ll only pay for what is easy enough for anyone to design given the annonymity on the of courses on XCourse…so why would I pay? Seems pretty counter-intuitive.
I applaud the effort to increase access to self-paced learning, but think the anonymity of educator combined with absence of crowd validation means XCourse will struggle to catch on.
