Education In A Digital Age

Chialin Yu
3 min readFeb 4, 2020
The Vitruvian Man

During the holidays I got unsolicited ads each day on anything from a Dyson hairdryer to a discounted subscription at MasterClass on my social media pages. Growing up in Asia, the world of online classes feels like family. I’ve been taking classes outside of school since I was 10 years old (contrary to popular beliefs: not as a result of my Asian parents) to either get better grades at school or to learn things that are deemed “valuable” skills in Asian societies, like watercolor paintings, languages or crafts. As a result, for the past decade, I’ve had the fortune of being a direct witness of how online learning as an industry has evolved and changed. Many platforms that I’ve personally used (New Oriental, Duolingo, Coursera) have grown from small enterprises to internationally trusted brands, and the social awareness of all-around learning and the amount of capitals flowing into companies empowering access to knowledge greater than ever. While the mere presence of platforms like Duolingo and Coursera is enough to excite me, I’m acutely aware that not all virtual learning platforms can be successful.

MasterClass boasts of classes taught by “masters” across different fields

There is an overflow of contents online. Search any topic and there’s probably 100+ free youtube tutorials, pages of online…

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