I started my online guitar course at www.kitarrikool.ee in May 2007. Now,  5 years later it has 11 000+ registered users. Of course, not all of them are studying. The easiest way to determine whether someone has actually learned is to see if they have uploaded their recorded exercises.

Sending the recordings of the course’s first level has always been free. The rest of the online course w feedback is free for the book owners. There are many users who learned but didn’t send exercises.

Facts

• Total amount of registered users – 11077
• Uploaded files – 2502
• Sold books – 1900 (192 registered their book to enable the feedback feature)
• Users who uploaded anything – 430
• Users who studied with the help of my materials and did not attend my classes before uploading at least the full 1st level and (4 exercises) – 233 (75 female, 157 male)
• The course is made up of 8 levels
• Number of control exercises per level to be studied and recorded – 0 (8th level) to 4 (1st level), mean number of control exercises being 2.625 per level
• Number of feedback e-mails written – 1000+

Why e-learning and how is it designed to work? If questions are WHY and HOW, then a case study can help (Yin, R. 2003)

The higlighted 233 people are the ones who can help to get a picture of how and why an online musical instrument course works. The next question is: what to ask from those people?