Tag: Royal Roads

Open courseware: yes, Royal Roads: no

This is my evaluation of the Royal Roads pitch. The open courseware initiative at MIT is successful, and the creation of  the open courseware consortium both points towards the concept of open courseware as being successful. The pitch for RRU is asking for money without a cash return – not in itself a problem since I believe investing in education is a smart move, but for the reasons outlined below I feel this pitch is weak.

Criteria Royal Roads University open courseware project
CEO Credibility Presenter was committed, but no indication given as to her position in the project. Style was conversational, did not give me the feeling of confidence in her ability to guide the project through development and success.
Management Team Presumably the faculty at the university, but little information was given and no information was given about who would oversee the IT end of the development.
Business Model The goal of the open courseware project seems to be to increase enrolment and attract faculty by using the free courseware as a marketing tool. No information was given regarding how this has worked in other universities – no statistics about MIT’s enrolment since the inception of their open courseware project. No information given about what kind of marketing will be required to get students to try the courseware – interesting since the presenter talks about how RRU is a niche university that has a history of not sharing its ideas and research with the world.
Competitive Products The presenter avoided talking about the competition that MIT and 200+ other open courseware providers would create. If the concept is not new, and a large successful institution like MIT is in the picture then it would be important to cover how RRU will compete against them for students and faculty.
Market Readiness From the presentation I concluded that what they are asking for is money to develop this project from the beginning. It would take several years to create the technology and then at least a few more to create the courses within it. This is a very long-term investment. If they are planning to use the technology of the open courseware consortium that would take several years off the plan, but reduce the innovation factor.
Technical Innovation This plan has already been put into place at MIT. The only avenue for innovation that RRU has was hinted at when the presenter talked about being in a niche market. This was not elaborated on, so it is difficult to evaluate whether RRU would effectively solve a market problem that has not been addressed by any of the other open courseware universities.
Exit Strategy Presumably, success would be an increased student body, a decorated faculty, and a well subscribed open courseware project. Unfortunately the presenter did not address this, so the EVA is left to speculate. There seems to be no way for an investor to recover their investment, so this must be a “social wealth” style proposal where the investor is being asked to be altruistic.
Overall Investment Status? I like the idea of open courseware, and I think there is some possibility that it would attract paying students and faculty. I am also not opposed to investing in education for the social good it involves and the benefits to the economy of a well educated population. Unfortunately there was not enough detail about how all this would work for RRU in the presentation, which leads me to believe that there has not been enough investigation and planning to support this pitch. I would not invest in this project at this point. If there were to be a more evolved plan and pitch I would consider putting funds into it.

Royal Roads OpenCourseWare Pitch

Mary Burgess states that the Royal Roads OpenCourseWare venture would have both an altruistic value and a benefit to Royal Roads University. I think it is difficult to argue with the altruistic benefit of sharing knowledge and promoting informal learning. As an EVA, I believe that people would still pay to be accredited and to receive instruction. I don’t think that there is a problem with competition from members of the OpenCourseWare consortium because OpenCourseWare is offered for free and to benefit from the venture it isn’t necessary to lead people away from using OpenCourseWare offered elsewhere for free (such as MIT) to get them to use Royal Roads OpenCourseWare for free. Furthermore, from what I can see, for the most part Royal Roads and MIT offer different kinds of programs and I’m not sure that there would be much direct competition between them.

The intention to make Royal Roads courseware available for free online indicates confidence in its value, a sense that its quality speaks for itself. It is possible that being able to see the course material before enrollment may attract potential students and possibly prospective faculty, but it would be difficult to establish this kind of cause and effect relationship by looking at the experiences of universities in the OpenCourseWare consortium because there are many factors that can affect student enrollment. I agree that offering courseware for free could enhance the reputation of Royal Roads.

I have questions about what the venture would involve. Is it just a matter of posting course syllabi and handouts online and advertising that they are available, or will it involve creating new content such as videos of lectures, podcasts, and so on? The answer to this would have consequences for the cost of the venture, its viability, and how excited I would be about it. As other EVAs have mentioned, there are also questions about who would be involved in the venture and what their qualifications are.

My main concern is with the issue of licensing. Much more would need to be said about copyright issues and how likely the creators of course content would be to get on board with the project. Other EVAs have mentioned that it isn’t clear what the audience for this pitch is. If it is to faculty, who would be concerned about their intellectual property, then, as a faculty member, I am not persuaded that people will not steal my course content just because from a legal standpoint they should not steal it.

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