Online courses as a potential marketing tool for China.
View the full pitch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nsRROhSv8&fmt=18
Author: Jeff Laird
In a move that shows collaborative software is really hitting the mainstream, the city of Los Angeles is dropping MS Office in favour of Google Docs (with many native collaboration features). The beautiful irony is that the 7.2 million dollars they are spending on the project comes from an anti-trust lawsuit settled against Microsoft in 2006.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/29/1211236/Los-Angeles-Goes-Google-Apps-With-Microsoft-Cash
While Noah Burdett has already completed an entry on this venture, I thought I would expand and look at the project from a different angle. I have closely followed the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project for a number of years now; the philosophy and controversy behind the project fascinates me. Negroponte and the program have struggled to get the devices produced, on budget (the XO no longer referred to as the $100 laptop), and adopted by countries.
However, after finding this video:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nicholas_negroponte_takes_olpc_to_colombia.html
I think Negroponte may have found a buyer that typically has much deeper pockets than the educational branch of government one would expect this product would be marketed to. Here, Negroponte partners with the Columbian Ministry of Defense to bring laptops to children in remote areas.
Depending on the motivations of a country’s military, having a wired, educated, distributed network of users in remote locations that have traditionally been under the control of guerrillas or insurgents could prove a boon to these isolated areas.
As adage goes, the military rarely holds bake sales to fund its operations and the paltry $200 cost per device compared to other communications systems typically employed by the military could make this a very interesting experiment – and most importantly, will get these device into the hands of the kids.
Running this through the cube we get:
Market: Developing Nations (and philanthropic individuals in developed nations who participate in the buy one, give one program).
Offering: this is a hardware offering and arguably a service as the mesh network created by the laptops for a community web.
Buyer: Still a national level – only large scale purchases can produce the low price of these machines. If Negroponte can “pitch” the benefits to branches of government other than education, we will see some significant development of this project.
Piece of the global market: Definitely targeted towards underserved, developing nations with established education system but little other supported technology.
Development of the market: This is a contentious piece. Many think this project can revolutionize education in impoverished areas – many think that $200 per child could be better spent on teachers, food, clean water, shelter, etc…. The market seems to be still in the pioneering phase.
Integration of learning technology: The environments that these laptops are entering have, almost by definition of the marketplace, little integrated learning technology as we would see it from a western perspective. The laptops offer a quantum leap in environments where they are placed.
I use it every day and still find it fascinating.
Moodle is an open source Learning Management System (LMS) that provides a framework for elearning course delivery. The LMS is a shell through which “customers” offer course content. Moodle provides a wide range of tools to facilitate online interaction between students and offers the administration functionality required to enroll, grade, and monitor student and teacher users.
Face 1 – Market Type
Moodle is being used in the K-12 sector and corporate training but has found its biggest niche at the post-secondary level in fully online courses and blended classrooms.
Face 2 – Offering
Moodle offers two services. The first , branded as Moodle.org (the product) is a completely free and open source software platform. The second, Moodle.com (the service) is a company that offers hosting, support, and customization through country-based Moodle partners that pay royalties to Moodle (which are then used to support development of the product).
Face 3 – The Buyer
Moodle the product is usually acquired at an institutional level (school, school board, university, corporation). Due to the free nature of the product the decision to utilize Moodle does not always come through the usual channels and often takes a grassroots approach as instructors and technicians pilot the platform.
Moodle the service is purchased by organizations who wish customization of the product, in-house training, and feature development.
Face 4 – Global Markets
As an open source project, Moodle has the benefit of a large client based contributing back to the product. As such, the Moodle interface has been translated into 81 different language interfaces (Moodle, n.d.). Since content is developed by the customer, the product is viable in any wired market.
Moodle partners offering a wide array of paid support services operate out of 33 different countries offering a wide range of language support and local suppliers (Dougiamas, 2007).
Face 5 – Development of the Market
Within the scope of the wired marketplace, learning management systems are well-supported and in growing demand as institutions look to offer online or blended learning environments. Additionally, acceptance of open-source software is gaining acceptance for use at the enterprise level with successful products like Linux, Apache, Firefox, and OpenOffice being recognized as equivalent or superior to their commercial counterparts.
Face 6 – Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning
While the impetus for competition varies globally with jurisdiction, there seems to be a trend in wired markets for elearning technologies to augment or replace traditional classroom settings (Howell, Williams & Lindsay, 2003). Whether this is market driven where students are demanding the flexibility to study at their convenience and maintain work schedule; or government/corporate policy to reduce cost in infrastructure spending on brick and mortar learning spaces.
Dougiamas, M. (2007). Moodle: A Case Study in Sustainability. Retrieved Sept 24, 2009 from
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/cs-moodle.xml.
Howell, S., Williams, P., & Lindsay, N. (2003). Thirty-two Trends Affecting Distance Education: An Informed Foundation for Strategic Planning. Retrieved September 28, 2009 from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall63/howell63.html.
Moodle (n.d.). Moodle UTF-8 Language Packs. Retrieved September 24, 2009 from http://download.moodle.org/lang16/.
A VERY new (pitches are not quite public yet) addition to bplans.com this section of the site allows users to post video pitches to the community to be evaluated (looks like 522 has some competition). With a host of other free information on pitches and business plans, this site would be well worth a browse in preparing to develop your own pitch. Welcome video by Tim Berry gives some solid thoughts on developing a pitch.
To open with full disclosure, I am a huge fan of Open Courseware (OCW), Creative Commons licensing, and the notion of free knowledge. However, as an Educational Venture Analyst I would have to turn down the Royal Roads University (RRU) proposal based on the pitch.
One of the main thrusts of the pitch is that opening RRU courses will raise the university’s profile. MIT OCW became widely known because they were MIT – they already had a significant global profile. Has the profile of the Dixie State College of Utah (also an OCW member) been raised since they started opening their online courses? Burgess gives little data about the affect opening their courseware has had on other institutions nor does she address the technical requirements or costs of this initiative.
Burgess (2008) also makes the bold claim that “being open can really help us with learner recruitment”. However, MIT’s freshman enrollment before OCW was approximately 1050 students (Arnaout, 2000). The freshman enrollment eight years after OCW? 1051 students (MIT, 2009). Perhaps there are other recruitment metrics Burgess is anticipating for the small university but she doesn’t mention any.
While I appreciate Burgess’s passion for a very noble venture, the pitch simply did not establish sufficient details on the benefit to the institution to warrant pursuing.
Arnaout, R. (2000). MIT Cuts Size of Class of 2004 To Prepare for Housing Crunch. Retrieved September 16, 2009 from http://tech.mit.edu/V120/N8/8enroll.8n.html
Burgess, M. (2008). ETEC522 Assignment 3. Retrieved September 16, 2009 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1avzWv3_JDw
MIT (2009). MIT Facts. Retrieved September 16, 2009 from http://web.mit.edu/facts/enrollment.html
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Jeff Laird Introduction
My name is Jeff Laird.
I currently teach Information & Communications Technology and Digital Media at the high school level in Victoria, BC. My background is wide and varied in education and I have taught K-12 and was given the illustrious title of “distributed education applications specialist” while working at the college level.
I have always had a strong focus of using technology in my teaching practice and over the past few years have focused on creating a blended learning environment migrating coursework to Moodle and allowing students to blur the barrier between time and space in their classroom.
I have a great interest in the use of games, emulation, and social networking in education with a strong bent towards open source philosophies the delivery and development of educational technology.
Ack! Which module should I choose?