Interne : Différentes avenues de monétisation chez Coursera

Article passionnant du New York Times suggéré par Francheska Gaulin sur différentes façons dont Coursera entend développer des sources de revenus avec sa plateforme… Si l’inscription aux cours est gratuite, comment rentabiliser l’opération?

On y apprend notamment que Coursera, avec ses 2 millions $ d’utilisateurs (en décembre 2012) a réussi à réunir 22 millions $ en capital de risque contre les 60 millions $ de Harvard et du MIT (surtout fournis par les Fondations de ces institutions) pour créer edX. Quant à Udacity, elle aurait amassé 15 millions $ de capital pour plus d’un million d’utilisateurs. Comme bien des jeunes entreprises du secteur technologique, on commence par se constituer un bassin d’utilisateurs… puis on cherchera à rentabiliser par la suite. Par ailleurs, le contenu est roi…

“Monetization is not the most important objective for this business at this point,” said Scott Sandell, a Coursera financier who is a general partner at New Enterprise Associates. “What is important is that Coursera is rapidly accumulating a body of high-quality content that could be very attractive to universities that want to license it for their own use. We invest with a very long mind-set, and the gestation period of the very best companies is at least 10 years.”

Effectivement, diverses sources de revenus envisagées incluent:

« Right now, the most promising source of revenue for Coursera is the payment of licensing fees from other educational institutions that want to use the Coursera classes, either as a ready-made “course in a box” or as video lectures students can watch before going to class to work with a faculty member. » [nos emphases] Ces “kits” deviennent intéressants en contexte de classe inversée.
- « Why would colleges pay licensing fees for material available free on the Web? Because, Ms. Koller said crisply, Coursera’s terms of use require that anyone using the courses commercially get a license, and because licensing would give colleges their own course Web site, including access to grades. »
« …[C]harge $20, or maybe $50, for certificates of completion. »
« …[C]harge corporate employers, including Facebook and Twitter, for access to high-performing students, starting with those studying software engineering. » Udacity fait la même chose.
« …[T]he company is an Amazon affiliate, getting a sliver of the money each time Coursera students click through the site to buy recommended textbooks or any other products on Amazon. »
« Many educators predict that the bulk of MOOC revenues will come from licensing remedial courses and “gateway” introductory courses in subjects like economics or statistics, two categories of classes that enroll hundreds of thousands of students a year. Even though less than 10 percent of MOOC students finish the courses they sign up for on their own, many experts believe that combining MOOC materials with support from a faculty member or a teaching assistant could increase completion rates. » [nos emphases]

Selon les contrats liant différentes institutions à Coursera, la jeune compagnie conserve de 6 à 15 % des revenus et jusqu’à 20 % des bénéfices bruts.

Source: Lewin, Tamar, « Students Rush to Web Classes, but Profits May Be Much Later », New York Times, 6 janvier 2012