Fee or Free College... Facebook University ( F.U. HAHA!)

If you've been following this blog you are aware of this idea already.  Basicialy... I'm using facebook as a platform  to launch a free (ish) college. For everyone.

This post is a quicky. I just want to define two types of class pages.

Unmoderated.  These are classes like simple math courses and simple science classes.  Basicaily that could be completely unmoderated and the class could simply be video lectures reading and multiple choice quizes that could be taken without a proffesor at hand for grading.

I'm thinking that these courses could take on an unlimited amount of users/students at a time. And so a revenue sharing program of the ad revenue that facebook would make off these engaged users would work fine for the class creators.

Moderated. Creative writing, english, any class that would require a paper to be graded. The class creator has to be able to set a limit to the amount of users that can be enroled in their class at a time. Also the creator should be able to set a moderation fee that the user or student would have to pay. 

This would let the teacher decide how much work ( aka grading papers ) they would like to do in a month. 

say 20 bucks for the grading of a final paper.  30 students enrolled at a time. 600 a month to the prof... I mean sure facebook would take a platform cut from this fee... but a teacher could really figure out how much they want to make a month, and set the limits of there class to let them acheive this figure.

ehh... I'm tired. So thats it for tonight.

and to add insult to injury on this short post...

No spell check tonight. 

Facebook University (laying out some rules?)

Facebook University (F.U.) Basicaily the idea is Free Education for the world. If this is the first time you've dropped by this blog check some other posts and get caught up. (Slacker.)

OK so let’s start banging this out. Today I'm thinking about this in a math, or history class setting. Of course this format might not work for all types of classes but it's a first draft.

I'm thinking it would go down like this.

1. A teacher would have to apply to become a F.U. class creator. Some fact checking would be in order on Facebook's end to assure that this person is a teacher.

2. The teacher then can start creating his/her class page.

The page itself would be split into units or weeks. The amount of units or weeks could be decided by the teacher. Each unit would have an uploaded lecture that can be viewed on the page. A PDF of the readings for the week, an option for a quiz. Possible that a minimum score on the test would be needed to progress to the next unit. Also homework questions could be made available in PDF format and an answer key to said homework.

3. A Mid term and Final exam. I'm thinking at first we probably could only handle multiple choice type tests.

4. The class then would have to be checked and rated by a quality board... (Not impossible)

5. Class goes live

6. Users may now learn. Yes this is a at your own pace independent study type of class... but I think you could teach allot of lower level math classes this way, Art history, history, Most lecture classes, chemistry, etc...

7. Users may rate the class and leave review comments after completion.

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Teacher could possibly be cut in on some of the ad revenue facebook makes while users are engaged on the class page.

OR...

Charge 10 bucks a class, split it down the middle, 5 to the prof, and 5 to facebook. ( I know this sounds like very little cash, but think about it, your class is open to the entire world... population of what 6-7 billion now? times 5. that’s some sweet sweet cheese.

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Now for some pictures from my sketchbook!

(These contain some really raw ideas, and such, I feel its important to drop this post this incase anyone in a position to make this happen drops by the blog and I'm like in a coma or something.)

LEAVE COMMENTS

Facebook University ( or linkin academy?) criticism response

In my first post on this topic I just wanted to get this idea out there and get some responses and I got some so... SUCCESS! We've got people starting to think about a new model for college education. (If you haven't read the last post on this topic here it the short of it. I'm trying to create an online college that is free for the user/student that still generates enough profit to pay the instructors. )

Now its time to flesh out the idea a bit. As I said I am explaining this idea using the Facebook platform for a couple reasons.

1. People are generally familiar with the Facebook platform.

2. It has a large enough user ship to launch something like this effectively

3. Facebook started as a college networking site so it seems like the idea would fit with its roots.

4. F.U. is a funny name.

I just want to make it known this idea could be developed by other social media sites, or as a stand alone service.

A few of the criticisms this idea has received at present are.

Number 1: How do you suppose you could stop one bored or scheming individual who simply sat and took classes all day long, or worse, enlisted the help of countless individuals to try to reach some unheard of number of degrees? Who would do this, you may ask? Dumb people, Braggarts, people looking for notoriety in the form of a Guinness Book of Records for number of degrees achieved.

Good point... Part of me wants to ignore this question for the time being because it is hard to create a way to stop people from gaming a system until that system has been created. Its like how do you stop people from cheating at poker until someone comes up with the rules for the game of poker?

But.. Off the top of my head, you could lock your F.U. account to one IP address and limit the amount of classes that a user can be openly enrolled in at a time.

Number 2: I feel that the caliber of teachers this would draw would be somewhere between unsavory and incapable. In my opinion, a teacher wants to feel as though their students care. While, yes, online schools exist and will probably increase in number in the future, I believe there is a strict curriculum regarding mandatory group forums at set times- is this something a Facebook University would require? I feel like what you're suggesting is something of a stop by when you log in kind of joint. I'm not sure many full-time teachers would like the idea of finishing one school to immediately log on and mediate and online class at a set time each day. Perhaps I'm wrong and not completely understanding your idea.

This question has a couple of points in it so let’s go one by one.

As to the quality of teachers that might be interested in creating a class for F.U.

I would like everyone to check out what some instructors are doing at a tiny little unheard of College called. M.I.T. MIT already has created a site called opencourseware where it makes available lectures and homework from its courses to the public completely for free. Now, in no way is this site set up to be a free MIT education. You cannot receive a degree or certificate from it. Heck, it's not even that user friendly. However it does show that some of the leading professors in the world are in fact in favor making knowledge accessible to the entire population.

Here is a quote from MIT's President Susan Hockfield ( read the rest here )

The goal of advancing education around the world is shared by the MIT Faculty. Indeed, we owe the existence of OpenCourseWare to the foresight, dedication, and generosity of our faculty. In the year 2000, a faculty committee first proposed this bold and innovative idea, and since then, the vast majority of our faculty–over 90%–have voluntarily contributed their teaching materials for free and open publishing on OCW. MIT faculty are passionate about their teaching and they are keen to see their work benefit global society...

If MIT is already doing this then I don't think the statement "this will only attract crappy teachers" is true. We will have to wait and see.

The rest of this question goes on to ask about exactly what I have in mind for how F.U. would operate. All I am going to say is I am working on it at the moment. I have been working on some designs and ideas and I will be posting them up here shortly.

Number 3: I don't feel that Facebook would give "kickbacks" to these teachers unless they were rigorously screened to be sure these people were actually able to impart knowledge and not just in it for the buck- and really, is that something the would happen? Doubtful. You and I have both seen Facebook start as an exclusive, and thus, desirable thing to be a part of. Now I hear they are opening it to kids under 13? They're not doing much monitoring of users, are they? More likely, Facebook would simply promote this person's class with sidebar ads if they had a certain number of "students". I'm sure sidebars have their market, but as a consumer, I find myself skeptical of visiting any website advertised on my FB page.

I disagree, I think we have already seen other internet companies realize that to keep engaged users you have to have some content. These Content Creators are the reason people keep logging in. YouTube has YouTube partners, basically when your videos get such and such hits and you have enough fans they cut you in on the ad revenue. Heck this blog even has a Google ad sense account hooked up to it, the ads you see on this page are here because I have made a deal with Google to let them be there, and Google cuts me in on some of that sweet sweet cheese.

As to how Facebook is conducting itself... as I said I am only using the Facebook platform as a setting for the idea of this online school. It could work on other platforms. So I won't waste time defending or debating the current way a specific site is operating because it isn't really relative to the main goal of creating a free or super cheap college alternative.

Wow this post was long and full of rambling. I want to thank you all for the emails and comments on the last post. Keep them coming! The more issues you guys point out, the more I can be aware of said issues and work to resolve them.

Thanks for reading. Now get involved and start following the blog or follow its Facebook page or something. Also sharing these posts and ideas with your friends would be very cool. You can kill a man, but it’s another thing entirely to kill an idea.

Love,

Drew

Remember Napster? (I want a nobel peace prize for this one.) Part 1 (working title)

I'm going to explain this idea as if I was explaining it to Facebook but if Google or Linked in or anyone else wants to talk about it please get in touch.

I'm also going to reach out to some teachers and college professors about it to see if their might be any support for it in that community.

Without any further explanation...

FREE COLLEGE EDUCATION!

I know I know... but listen. What if.

Facebook put together a process to apply to get a new type of Facebook page. From here on out I'm calling this page a Facebook University page. (Yes this make believe college would be called F.U. and yes I think the name is funny.)

Here is the deal, any professor or teacher that already is qualified to teach in the United States could apply to get a F.U. page. On this page they could create an online class. Complete with video lectures, weekly readings, quizzes and a final exam. Any Facebook user could then take said course and work there way through the material. At then end of the course the user would be given a chance to give the class a review which would let others know if this class was worth taking. This idea could develop into degree programs where each course would be worth an amount of F.U. class credits.

Now yes I understand that you couldn't have technical degrees taught this way. No one would ever want a F.U. Chef of Surgery. But how many other degree programs are already being taught completely online?

Here is the awesome part. The teacher after setting up his course gets a small kickback from Facebook. Kind of like a Google ad sense account. Facebook sells ads down the side of the page and the teacher gets a little kickback from that.

So the teacher wins by getting a little extra cash in his or her pocket.

Facebook wins by getting users engaged again. Also it gets to go back to its college roots.

The Facebook User wins by getting an education.

The world wins, basic college education is now free... and it always will be.

Big College loses and has to adapt like the music industry did back when Napster was cutting into their profits.

I plan to expand on this idea more... allot more. I'm even going to put pictures on the future blogs that expand on this idea. So look forward to that. But now I've had enough to drink and I think it might be bedtime.

Love,

Drew

PS. If you’re a teacher, please comment.

PPS. I'm often wrong about things, so if I'm wrong let me know so I can be right in the future.

PPPS. I have some serious Spelling and grammar issues and I drink when I write this blog.

This one is an idea for Facebook... ( Yo Google + pay attention)

I could start this post off with a trip down memory lane about how cool and new Facebook was in 2008... but we all saw the movie right? So let’s skip ahead a bit shall we? Facebook changed. People don't really like it as much. Fair enough?

Facebook needed a revenue stream so ads started showing up. And then business and brand pages started showing up. Over the past year, my bank, Wal-Mart, every restaurant in my city created a page and asked me to "like" them. Does anyone really like their bank? Really?

Facebook... here is a quick idea. Bands have Facebook pages to connect with their fans right? But then they sell their MP3's on iTunes. Why not give the band pages a tab where they can upload the mp3s and then sell the download on Facebook?

Another idea along the same lines... Why can't authors sell the digital copies of their books on their Facebook sites?

Why cant restaurants sell gift cards on their Facebook pages?

You give them a way to connect with their fans, but you don't give them a way to run their business on your site... You have the content producer (band, author, restaurant, comedian, etc...) on Facebook. You have the Fans of said content producer on Facebook. You have them connected in an interactive way... and then YOU FAIL TO GIVE THEM A MARKETPLACE!

Facebook Marketplace.

You don't always have to sell ads to cash in.

Quick get on it before Google plus or someone else gets there first.

Love,

Drew

PS I have bad spelling and grammar issues. Sorry. I also drink while I write these.

PPS I'm often wrong, if I'm wrong I'd love to hear about it so I can be right in the future.  Please leave comments people.