🗂 Overview
One of the best ways to learn something is by doing that something. A lot of online courses fail at providing that aspect - they give you theoretical information and maybe provide some quizzes or small activities.
Courses are one of the most common and effective ways for people to make money online. But with regular courses, there’s little you can do to stand out from the crowd.
However, there are some companies that are taking online learning up a level and providing real-world projects to work off as you move through the course. Meaning you come out of the experience much more equipped when it comes to applying your new knowledge to the real world.
With the insane rise of AI over the last 12 months you might now be able to take this up a step further again by creating fine-tuned AI models that provide real-time feedback and instructions to your students.
Let me show you what I mean.
⭐️ Examples
Boot.dev is an online backend development learning platform earning $76k/m and it’s run by a solo-founder.
Similarly, Frontend Mentor provides real-world projects to help front-end developers practice their skills. It makes $30k/m and is also run by a solo founder.
Code Academy is an online learning platform for coding in 12 different languages and was recently sold to Skillsoft for $525m. It doesn’t provide real-world projects like the above but shows how much these businesses can be valued.
Tutor AI, as the name suggests, is an AI-based tutorial platform for almost any topic. Searches Tutor AI are up 1000% in the last 12 months and according to SimilarWeb, it gets over 750k visits a month.
Scrimba offers interactive screencasts where you can pause and modify code.
👎 The Problems
Traditional courses and online learning models:
Lack of Engagement: Traditional courses can be a one-way street with little interactivity.
Inflexibility: Set syllabus and learning paths don't accommodate different learning speeds or styles.
Retention: Studies show that passive learning leads to poor retention of material.
Lack of Practical Application: Often focused more on theory than real-world application.
No Accountability: Many platforms lack a system to motivate students to actually finish courses.
How gamified, AI-enhanced solutions could help:
Boost Engagement: Gamification elements like scores, badges, and leaderboards make learning more interactive and engaging.
Personalization: AI algorithms can adapt course material in real time based on a learner's performance and engagement levels, catering to different learning styles.
Improved Retention: Gamified elements can encourage active learning, which is proven to improve retention rates. AI can reinforce concepts at optimal intervals for individual retention.
Practical Application: Gamification can simulate real-world challenges and scenarios, thus preparing learners for the practical application of their skills.
Accountability: AI could also track and predict user behaviour to nudge or incentivize learners to stay on course. Gamified peer challenges could add a social accountability layer.
📊 Stats
The global online education market size was valued at USD 217 billion in 2022. The market is expected to bring in $475 billion by 2030. (source)
The global online education market is highly fragmented, with no single provider dominating the industry. (source)
The global coding bootcamp market size was valued at USD 399.91 million in 2021 and is projected to reach USD 889.37 million by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 10.70% from 2022 to 2030. (source)
Nearly 70% of students prefer gamified classes and learning experiences over traditional education methods, citing increased motivation and engagement as the primary factors drawing them to gamified learning. (source)
Employees who undergo non-gamified training experience higher levels of unproductivity (12%) than those who receive gamified training (3%). (source)
📈 Trends
It’s no surprise AI-based searches are trending, but they also show no signs of slowing down any time soon.
Online courses see steady YoY increases in what is a fairly mature market.
💡 Opportunities
A lot of the above examples I gave focus mostly on coding and data. From my (albeit limited) research there seems like a huge opportunity to bring AI, gamification and real-world scenarios together in other verticals.
Investing Strategies
The idea here is to have a gamified investing strategy platform that doesn’t just teach the strategies but shows you how to apply it in a simulated investing experience.
The simulated investing environment could mirror the real market (like this stock market simulator) or it could be artificially set up to provide optimal conditions to teach the particular strategies.
The users could use this simulated environment to implement the chosen strategies, learn about trading, learn how to analyse charts, the fundamentals, and so on.
Integrating AI into this would take it to the next level - the AI could provide real-time feedback, answer questions, and act as a full trading knowledge base. It would need to be a fine-tuned model but you potentially could use something like finetuning.ai for this.
Something that could be interesting is building this and then creating a white-label offer so that investing influencers on YouTube/Social Media can sell it to their followers in their own branding whilst you get a cut. This means you just need to build it and pitch it to the thousands of influencers out there in this space and they’ll do all the marketing for you.
Copywriting
We all know AI’s capability when it comes to copywriting. It’s been one of the main ways people have utilised it since the early days of GPT-3.
Copywriting as a skill is very valuable to have for many businesses and AI still isn’t all the way there yet.
It also has seen consistent growth in terms of search volume for quite a while. Even with a slight dip recently, it’s still up 22% vs last year.
Creating an AI-enhanced, gamified copywriting education platform could be a huge opportunity.
The course would educate them on copywriting and provide real-world projects that are marked with a finetuned AI model which provides real-time feedback, suggestions, advice, etc.
Sales Training
People (mostly sales people tbh) always say sales is the most important skill to have in business. It’s something a lot of people struggle to learn, especially if they are by themselves.
Not everyone wants to get a sales job just to learn sales and fear of rejection is a big barrier for a lot of people when it comes to even trying to get good at sales.
An AI-enhanced, gamified sales training platform could help solve these issues whilst providing an effective way to learn.
Other ideas:
Children’s education
Employee onboarding
Languages
Dating
Music (music production or instruments)
🛠 How to build it
Research: You should only be creating a course about something you know and would consider yourself an expert in. If that isn’t you yet, keep researching and working in that field until you are or partner with others who are.
Course Content: Develop course materials like videos, quizzes, and real-world projects. The real-world projects could be done through industry partnerships, simulations, community input, in-house design (replication), and so on.
AI Integration: Implement algorithms for personalized learning paths, which adapt based on user performance and engagement. Use NLP as a chatbot mentor to provide real-time support and clarification.
Gamification Elements: Add point systems, badges, leaderboards, and unlockable content. Create "boss levels" or capstone projects that test a range of skills before levelling up.
Data Tracking: Capture data on user behaviour, performance, and engagement. Use this data to continually refine the AI's predictive and adaptive capabilities.
Feedback Mechanisms: Allow for course reviews, user-generated FAQs, and direct feedback. Utilize AI to analyze this feedback for trends and areas for improvement.
Iterative Testing: Soft launch with a smaller audience to collect initial data and refine the course. Make adjustments based on analytics and feedback.
User Onboarding: Utilize both AI and gamification to make the onboarding process engaging and personalized. Gamified tutorials and AI-generated "beginner quests" can help acclimate new users.
Monetization: Consider Freemium models, subscriptions, or one-time fees. Use AI to suggest the most relevant upsell opportunities based on user activity and progress.
🚀 How to grow it
Make Content: Make content and build your audience organically on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and/or Linkedin.
Build a Community: Building a community on top of your course can create peer-to-peer pressure and recognition which can drive completion rates up. It also provides an element of social learning, feedback loops and of course brand advocacy.
Run Ads: Run Google Ads on relevant search terms and Social ads to get in front of your target audience instantly.
Start a Free Newsletter: Give out free content in a weekly newsletter to keep prospects or customers engaged regularly.
Partner with Companies: If your course can be directly translated to professional skills and development, contact relevant businesses and offer them a bulk discount or premium access.
Referrals & Affiliates: Encourage users in the community and those who have completed the course to refer their network for a reward - this can be more course material or monetary compensation.
👍 Tips
Make sure you update your course material regularly to keep it accurate. This might also mean finetuning your AI model as well.
It’s worth taking similar gamified courses to understand what makes them unique or what you can improve.
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