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
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