Online education has been around for a long time. But massive open online courses are finally making it respectable. Maybe even cool. Lets not forget, though, that they are still experiments. And despite being massively overhyped (even in the eyes of their most dyed-in-the-wool supporters), they are not actually having a massive impact on students yet. So lets review what weve learned so far. Because if online education is going to be useful for learners, then its time for online learning to grow up.

Hundreds of courses are now available from dozens of the worlds best universities and professors. Theres been a steady stream of glowing public relations and growing credibility among employers. Theres even an acronym for massive open online courses thats gone mainstream: MOOCs. The four major MOOC platforms (Coursera, edX, Udacity and Udemy) have attracted at least 4 million sign-ups to date. Many of those people are working adults looking to pick up new technical or business skills, or update old ones, in order to advance their careers.

So far, though, online courses are not building a massively better-skilled workforce.

Sure, a few free, open, online courses have generated eye-popping registration numbers, upwards of 200,000 in some cases. However the average enrollment for MOOCs is more like 30,000 to 50,000. The real problem, though, is that more than 90% of these would-be learners dont finish. Many dont even start the courses for which they are registered. And a lot of those who finish dont take another one. That means the number of people actually learning anything substantial is much less massive than the PR suggests.

Not So Massive After All

So why are all these students falling asleep, virtually, in their digital classes? Mainly because the people putting education online are still thinking in terms of classrooms. And despite incorporating decades of research on how students learn best, the world has changed a lot in just the last few years. Heres just one example of how: Before smartphones, we went online roughly five times a day, in long chunks, according to Joe Kraus, a partner at Google Ventures. Today, with smartphones, its 27 times, in much shorter bursts. Twentieth century instructional methods just dont work as well for busy, distracted 21st-century learners.

Another big issue, especially for non-traditional students, is that learning has to fit in between life and work. In a recent Duke University survey of MOOC students, for example, the most commonly cited barrier to completion was lack of time/amount of time required. Yet most of todays online courses basically consist of reading assignments, lecture videos, homework problems and quizzes. They might be broken up into short lessons, but they still follow the same old linear, 14- to 20-week long structure of a semester. So is it really surprising that so many of the students in a recent University of California, Irvine massive online microeconomics course couldnt be bothered to read the textbook or supplemental learning materials?

To be fair, theres always going to be dropouts when learning is voluntary. According to the MASIE Center, a think tank focused on the intersection of learning and technology, only 32% of people even start on-the-job e-learning courses if theyre not required. Thats fine if nobody pays or expects much. But considering the stakes for learners, not to mention the massive amounts of money and brain power being invested in creating online courses, we should expect better. Companies paying for training or tuition reimbursement certainly will.

Fortunately, we wont have to wait long because a lot of smart people are already putting a lot of thought, work and money into making them better. The National Science Foundation, for example, is funding a study by MIT researchers to understand exactly why the vast majority of MOOC students dont make it to the finish line. Carnegie Mellon University, meanwhile, is spending $500,000 to $1 million to create each of 15 new courses based on up-to-date research into how adults learn online. And investments in next generation adaptive learning technologies are surging.

Before education can be effective, though, you first need to grab and hold learners attention. So these people would be smart to start by recognizing that learning online is not the same as it is in a classroom. And they should take some cues from the companies that are excelling at captivating easily distracted, constantly connected people on the same computers, smartphones and tablets where they will be learning.

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The dirty little secret of online learning: Students are bored and dropping out