The Fantasy of "Learn at Your Own Pace"

"Flexibility" is a magic word in online education. It's what platforms sell, what students seek, and what institutions promise. "Learn at your own pace," "Study whenever you want," "Adapt your education to your life." Sounds good.

But what if flexibility was actually the Achilles' heel of online education?

At Circles, when we started, we believed in total flexibility. Forming a study group was optional for students. And once the group was formed, meeting was optional. Flexibility upon flexibility. The result was an alarmingly low level of commitment and participation, with attendance and completion rates well below our initial expectations. It turns out that flexibility can be counterproductive.

In the world of online education, we've been selling a fantasy: the idea that you can learn anything, anytime, without commitment. But real learning requires commitment and structure.

Think about the world's most prestigious educational programs. They're not flexible at all. Harvard, MIT, Stanford - they all have fixed start dates, mandatory class schedules, strict deadlines. Even their online programs, like MIT Professional Education courses or the more expensive courses from extension schools like Catholic University and University of Chile, maintain this structure.

Futurama's Fry meme looking skeptically at two floating phrases: "Learn at your own pace" and "Study whenever you want", suggesting his distrust of these promises of educational flexibility. — "Learn at your own pace", "Study whenever you want" sounds good. But does it work?

They do it for two reasons. First, because logistically it's necessary for the business model to be viable. Courses must group a significant number of students at specific times to maximize teacher time utilization and justify associated costs. A completely flexible model would require virtually unlimited teaching resources, which isn't economically sustainable. And second–more important for our analysis–is that schedules work. When students are given a schedule, they actually show up to class. People need structure. Structure makes commitment possible.

At Circles, we had to unlearn what we thought we knew about flexibility in remote education. Our first step was to make group meetings mandatory. At this point we didn't change anything in the app, just an instruction in the first class: "You must schedule recurring meetings." Engagement improved, but we still faced two problems.