Google has unveiled plans to use its Squared Online course to disrupt the education system, as it says it is “successfully” merging classroom and online learning styles, something it claims rival tech firms have failed to do.
“Squared Online bridges the gap between the classic classroom experience, where you can’t get scale, and e-learning that can sometimes be a bit dry. It offers a more experiential learning experience,” says Shuvo Saha, director of the Google Digital Academy.
The course focuses on digital marketing and is split into five modules which look at disruption, how tech is changing businesses, the rise of social and mobile, data analytics and insights.
Squared Online originally began as a face-to-face class, but the tech giant soon realised it needed more scale and so decided to create an online interactive classroom. To do this it collaborated with Avado, a professional coaching company.
This allowed it to move from 30 people attending classes three to four times a year to working with up to 400 people at a time, in a much more collaborative way.