Benchmarking Digital Reach in Global EdTech

EdTech Digital Reach doubled over the last 3 years. MOOC’s nearly achieved 4x growth.

Education Intelligence Unit

calendar image
January 22, 2021

EdTech Digital Reach doubled over the last 3 years. MOOC’s nearly achieved 4x growth. We've been applying our core computational engines across a range of experiments to benchmark the digital reach of companies and categories in education technology.

In 2020 we set out to build ‘HUM’, one of HolonIQ’s core computational engines. HUM is designed to build and benchmark real-time indices that measure the change in a group of individual data points, much like say the MSCI, FTSE, S&P100 or Dow Jones does for stocks. More generally, we set out to build indices that allowed us to track growth, performance, risk and health from different perspectives and ultimately provide predictive insights into social and economic trends.

We applied the first version of HUM to develop HolonIQ’s Global Impact and SDG Stock Indices. This set of indices measures the performance of nearly 1,500 stocks powering social and economic impact across 9 Impact sectors and 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This initial work also led to the development of the world’s first Education Technology and Digital Learning Index in partnership with Foxberry and subsequently, the world’s first ‘EdTech ETF’ or Exchange Traded Fund (LERN) in partnership with RIZE.

Experimental Digital Reach Indices.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought heightened awareness of how powerful education technology can be to support education delivery and learning, as well as offering a stark reminder of the digital divide and inequality of access that reliance on technology brings.

Through 2020, we saw the rapid acceleration of EdTech. We observed the digital reach of MOOC’s growing 2.5x through the first half of 2020 (at one point by approximately 300 million monthly visits globally), as isolated learners sought immediate solutions to their knowledge and skills needs amid a rapidly-evolving work landscape.

Through the second half of 2020, HolonIQ’s Data Science team further developed HUM to help us learn more about how Global EdTech’s digital reach was evolving. Below is a small selection of our first experimental insights.

Based on web-traffic reach estimates and leveraging our open-source Global Learning Landscape taxonomy, HUM now builds digital reach indices for core categories and clusters, statistically weighting the underlying performance of up to 100 top organizations per category in each index. For example, the MOOC Digital Reach Index provides insights into the weighted performance of 100 of the world’s top MOOCs. Not just Coursera, edX, FutureLearn et al, but the top 100 MOOCs around the world tracked by HolonIQ’s Global Intelligence Platform.

MOOC Growth.

MOOCs started the last decade as a proof of concept and finished with 380 million students taking over 30 thousand courses and 50 degrees from over 1,000 Universities globally (almost all published MOOC research statistics ignore China, emerging markets, workforce focused MOOCs and the long tail of niche-platforms).

MOOC’s saw explosive growth through 2020, building on an already very strong 2018 and 2019. The borderless digital market for ‘just-in-time’ skills and knowledge is highly competitive and represents a rapidly evolving part of the post-secondary education landscape.

moocs

OPM Partnerships.

OPMs, or Online Program Managers, are companies that partner with universities to build, recruit for and deliver online programs. Revenue share is the dominant commercial model with fee for service and hybrid relationships growing. Universities are establishing public-private partnerships at a growing rate as the Higher Education model evolves, with the COVID pandemic accelerating the move to fully online learning.

Even before COVID, the online degree market was one of the fastest-growing segments of higher education globally, forecast to reach $74B by 2025. The pandemic has dramatically accelerated online delivery, including a rapid expansion of the university-OPM model, with 800+ universities engaging with OPM providers.

opm-s
No items found.

Wellness Solutions.

Although a smaller part of the higher education market, solutions for physical and mental wellbeing of students, staff and stakeholders are now in high demand, with the overall Wellness in Education category expected to grow at 25%+ CAGR through to 2025.

Wellness has been a cluster on HolonIQ’s Global Learning Landscape for several years and now counts over 350 organizations around the world dedicated to supporting learners, families, institutions and companies with physical and mental wellbeing.

COVID-19 has highlighted the need to provide digital solutions to support the health and wellbeing of students and staff, beyond traditional on-campus services. Telehealth, online counselling and support services, app-based wellness and peer-to-peer solutions have all seen a spike in demand.

wellness-s

Q&A Platforms.

The peer-to-peer knowledge exchange phenomenon is now embedded into learning and education, with platforms supporting educational Q&A structured by traditional content topics such as maths, science and history.  Typically B2C solutions for students to share information with each other, for experts to support learners or a mix of the two, Q&A platforms have massive question-banks, supported by sophisticated search algorithms.

Digital Reach of Q&A platforms has seen a spike in the latter half of 2020 as student return to online studies and need support on a real-time basis. As online and hybrid learning becomes a more accepted mode of delivery in higher education, we are likely to see a greater uptake of Q&A platforms, as well as integrations of such technology into regular university services.

qa-s

Bootcamp Model.

The Bootcamp model, which traditionally provides on-site, instructor-led intensive courses in tech subjects, has morphed and transitioned into online delivery and B2B segments. The bootcamp-university partnership model is now the fastest-growing academic public-private partnership segment. Universities around the world are under pressure with qualified funding from governments to offer short and fast, very high ROI, technology skills led and employer integrated programs.

Bootcamps have shifted rapidly through COVID to online, project-based learning platforms and are seeing the potential for B2B growth through partnerships with institutions and companies.  Compared with other clusters, Bootcamps have historically had a low Digital Reach, given the face to face format, however 2020 has seen a consistent upswing in Digital Reach as the online bootcamp model takes hold.

bootcamps-s
No items found.
No items found.

Latest Insights

Global Insights from HolonIQ’s Intelligence Unit. Powered by our Global Impact Intelligence Platform.

Newsletter
Newsletter
2024 Back to School
2024 Back to School
North America EdTech 200
North America EdTech 200
2024 Paris HE Summit
2024 Paris HE Summit
2024 San Juan Speaker
2024 San Juan Speaker
Indices
Indices
Cities
Cities
2023 Back to School Featured Speaker
2023 Back to School Featured Speaker
New York
New York
2023
2023
Webinar
Webinar
Economics
Economics
Draft
Draft
Platform
Platform
2022
2022
Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation
MedTech
MedTech
Global Impact Summits
Global Impact Summits
Impact 3000
Impact 3000
Nuclear
Nuclear
Mobility
Mobility
Electric Vehicles
Electric Vehicles
2021
2021
2020
2020
Sub Saharan Africa
Sub Saharan Africa
Nordic Baltic
Nordic Baltic
North America
North America
South Asia
South Asia
East Asia
East Asia
ANZ
ANZ
Market Sizing
Market Sizing
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality
Blockchain
Blockchain
Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality
Regions
Regions
Markets
Markets
Mobile
Mobile
Client Report
Client Report
Publishers
Publishers
Labor Markets
Labor Markets
Global Landscape
Global Landscape
10 Charts Series
10 Charts Series
R&D
R&D
LMS
LMS
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Executive Panel
Executive Panel
Language Learning
Language Learning
Russia
Russia
Israel
Israel
Germany
Germany
France
France
Media and Press
Media and Press
Climate Tech
Climate Tech
MENA
MENA
South Korea
South Korea
Japan
Japan
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Health Tech
Health Tech
Global EdTech 1000
Global EdTech 1000
Unicorns
Unicorns
MOOCs
MOOCs
Global Giants
Global Giants
Client Note
Client Note
Capital Markets
Capital Markets
Advanced Technology
Advanced Technology
OPM
OPM
International Education
International Education
India
India
China
China
Canada
Canada
Venture Capital
Venture Capital
Bootcamps
Bootcamps
Online learning
Online learning
Notes
Notes
Europe
Europe
Asia
Asia
Africa
Africa
LATAM
LATAM
Brazil
Brazil
Robotics
Robotics
Education in 2030
Education in 2030
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence
SDG 17
SDG 17
SDG 16
SDG 16
SDG 15
SDG 15
SDG 14
SDG 14
SDG 13
SDG 13
SDG 12
SDG 12
SDG 11
SDG 11
SDG 10
SDG 10
SDG 9
SDG 9
SDG 8
SDG 8
SDG 7
SDG 7
SDG 6
SDG 6
SDG 5
SDG 5
SDG 4
SDG 4
SDG 3
SDG 3
SDG 2
SDG 2
SDG 1
SDG 1
Climate Tech 1000
Climate Tech 1000

Sign Up for our Newsletters

We provide you with relevant and up-to-date insights on the global impact economy. Choose out of our newsletters and you will find trending topics in your inbox.

Weekly Newsletter

Climate Technology

Weekly Newsletter

Education Technology

Weekly Newsletter

Health Technology

Weekly Newsletter

Higher Education

Daily Newsletter

Chart of the Day

Daily Newsletter

Impact Capital Markets