Most definitely yes. As of 2018, the best Online courses for CAT are an order of magnitude better than the average classroom coaching. Some of you might be wondering straight-away that it is unfair to compare the best online course with your average classroom course. It seems unfair to compare the best in one category with the average of another category. It like saying Kumble is a better batsman than Tendulkar as his highest test score is nearly twice Sachin’s average.

Best of online vs. Average classroom - this is the right comparison

However, the comparison is spot on. And therein lies the compelling, devastating advantage online coaching for CAT holds over classroom coaching. When you think of classroom coaching for CAT, what a student receives in city A could be dramatically different from city B. In fact, what a student receives from a particular center in a particular city could vary from one week to another. Some teachers have flair for teaching, some leave you cold; some are on fire one day and run on auto-pilot the next.

A teacher can explain something in a fashion that can cement it in your mind. The teacher matters; the pedagogy matters. In an online course, almost all the teaching is done by a narrow set of teachers. This is vital.

Consistency is a vital plus

For instance, in the 2IIM online course, I have handled all the Quant, DILR and RC classes. I built the content for all of these. So, if you see some 2 hours of classes taught by me and like the way I teach, chances are you will understand and like all of the 400+ hours of learning that is available in the online course. You sample some content and you can take with you the guarantee that this course will be useful for you. This is huge.

The biggest price you pay while enrolling for a course is in terms of time, not money. If you take up an online or classroom coaching, you might pay Rs. X. This is important, but pales in comparison to the idea that you are going to spend ~400+ hours learning from this place and 400 hours of your time is likely to be worth 10X. So, learning from a good teacher matters. A lot.

Technology offers big advantages as well

The simple points first - an online course lets you learn anywhere, so travel is out of the equation. The better ones let you learn any time as well. Some online courses conduct specific classes at specific times, but the better ones put the course together as a buffet of options. So, you can pick and choose your timing as well.

More than this, the well-designed online courses let you set your pace of learning. In a classroom setting, most teachers generally set the speed at slightly lower than median. As a teacher, I want to bring in almost everyone into the class and offer something more for the top few. The best strategy would be to aim for median (or slightly lower) and give some tougher bits for the top quartile to have fun with. An online course lets the students choose the pace.

In an average classroom, a good student wastes about 40% of his/her time because the class is yet to catch-up. Some might even lose interest and become distracted. An online course can fix this brilliantly.

Online courses beat the best classrooms out there

So, online courses have a compelling advantage over average classroom courses. Is an online course better than, say, the top 10% of the classroom courses? Of course it is. The actual teaching part has three components - the material, the pedagogy and the teacher. In a classroom course, the question is created by one group, the idea transmitted by another group and then the teacher usually delivers to this script. In a good online course, the designing and teaching are done by the same person.

A short detour for bragging

Generally, I am not given to personal examples, but I think it is relevant in this instance. For 2IIM online Course, I designed the pedagogy, created the questions to fit within this pedagogy and then did the slides and videos over a period of 4 years. I have taken the CAT 8 times, taught more than 10 batches of students, spent more than 4000 hours in classrooms and uploaded more than 1500 videos. I usually bin 2 videos for every one that gets uploaded so every bit of delivery is well-rehearsed.

The point I am trying to make is - I have ginormous amount of experience in this thing. I am not good because I have flair. I have put in not hours, but years into teaching for this specific exam, for this specific pattern, for this style of testing, for this level of difficulty. I take this exam every year not merely to keep updated, but also to compete. So, chances are that I know my stuff when it comes to this exam.

I spend hours trying to deconstruct an idea, even more hours in putting together a slide pack that makes sense and flows well. Finally, I shoot and re-shoot before we edit, remove noise, clean up and then upload the course on to one of the best Learning Management Systems in the world. There is a damn good chance that what you need to learn gets hammered home in the course.

It gets even better - you can test everything out before you pay a dime

I claim to be good and I have taken this exam a lot of times. This need not necessarily imply that I teach well, or that the course could work for you. This is where the other compelling advantage of an online course comes into play. You can evaluate whether the course ticks the boxes for you. 2IIM runs a Youtube channel that has 300+ videos, we offer an online course where you can learn for free for about 20 hours. You can set aside 2 hours and evaluate an online course in a way you simply cannot do for a classroom course.

Not all online courses are good. Do your research.

So, is there a catch? Should one just buy an online course and forget about this whole classroom malarkey? Of course not. You need to pick the right online course. A great many are merely test series, a few are marketing front-offices, and most have not yet taken the effort to use all the advantages that technology offers.

An online course that is a series of classes at designated times misses the point; it misses a vast set of advantages that technology offers. It is like using Brian Lara of his 1999 pomp to play a T-20 match in the Chennai league. Or, to give an analogy more suited to our times -

A good online course should let you learn at your time, your place and at your pace. Most importantly, from a teacher you ‘get’. This is important.

Online course has to satisfy 3 conditions 1) It has to be modularized so that you can learn at your pace 2) It has to be on an LMS system that gives you sound analytics and helps you both to learn and to assess and 3) A chance to check out large sections of the course (in the course UI, not merely on Youtube)

So, what have we got here

Long story short, the advantage of online course is not merely technology. It is pedagogy. It is the advantage of having one teacher with you throughout this preparation journey. Teaching has always been about the teacher. Technology is an enabler, it puts good teachers right at the doorstep of the students, it keeps them at the beck and call of the students. And you can spend your first Rupee after you have evaluated if the teacher you select works for you.

P.S: Some times I wonder if the Ed-Tech industry has gotten the whole shebang wrong by forgetting this one simple point - that teaching is primarily about the teacher. That the technology in the world should help the teacher do her stuff. It should not look to bypass her, or substitute her, or ‘enhance’ her or any of the other new-fangled gibberish. But that is a fabulous piece that I would want to pontificate about in excruciating depth another time.