I don't sign up for courses that have self paced study unless I feel like I want to take the final exam which may at some point mean something.
But courses with deadlines I spam subscribe the hell out of. The majority are available indefinitely once you subscribe and I may be interested in revisiting them at some point over the next year or so. Even if they delete the content after the class finishes I just use a small script to keep track of the dates and download everything once the final lecture is delivered.
You can try and recreate scarcity online but it will backfire. I only complete about 1-5% of the classes I've signed up for because I want the option of picking one that might turn out to be interesting later. Places like udacity and coursera would be much better off having class material public forever while having recurring deadlines for submissions only. The only people who would sign up to classes then would be those who are interested in submitting materials.
But courses with deadlines I spam subscribe the hell out of. The majority are available indefinitely once you subscribe and I may be interested in revisiting them at some point over the next year or so. Even if they delete the content after the class finishes I just use a small script to keep track of the dates and download everything once the final lecture is delivered.
You can try and recreate scarcity online but it will backfire. I only complete about 1-5% of the classes I've signed up for because I want the option of picking one that might turn out to be interesting later. Places like udacity and coursera would be much better off having class material public forever while having recurring deadlines for submissions only. The only people who would sign up to classes then would be those who are interested in submitting materials.