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Ask HN: Why are video courses and MOOCs so famous

3 points by 3into10power5 ↗ HN
I see that most of the well known courses/MOOCs (Udacity, Coursera, Skillshare, Pluralsight) online are all video based. Why is this so? Why have text based tutorials and courses fallen out of favour? With video, you cannot go back and forth as easily, you cannot concentrate on what you want and is generally slower than using text bases tutorials/classes.

Why have they increased in popularity inspite of above reasons?

2 comments

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eye900
+1. Apparently smaller population do well with text based tutorials, while a larger population needs video based MOOCs to get along with the learning. Pretty much the same reason why schools are still necessary, and self-taught remains a minority in our society.

It's not something falling out of favour with some substitute getting into fashion. It's the inclusion of a larger population into online learning industry. When a majority of the society are compared to the smaller populations that do away with text based learning, you may notice:

  (1) Reading disability.
  (2) Shortened attention span, especially in mobile age.
  (3) Weaker ability to concentrate on material unless being talked to.
3into10power5
Great comment. Thanks! I agree with all the associated problems.