For the past 10 years or so, I have been working off and on with the idea of creating an online course brokering system for distance education. Most of my experience in distance education comes from working with schools that use videoconferencing for synchronous distance learning and while these schools try to use their facilities to the maximum extent possible, they always have times of the day when their videoconferencing system is not in use and they could be sending or receiving a course with another school, if they could just find a quick and easy way to match themselves up with another school. Here is some of the background, examples and possible pathways to development. I’d be interested in hearing your feedback and input. And if you can take the idea and turn it into something useful, go for it!
Background.
School districts that want to maximize the use of their existing investments in educational videoconferencing technology face significant challenges. One of the biggest barriers they confront is the difficulty of scheduling classes between districts. Complicating this needs-matching process is the wide range of calendars and bell schedules that individual schools adopt. DLNexus is an idea for a web-based information-sharing and scheduling system that addresses this problem. While many institutions offer online enrollment for students (School to Student), DLNexus is unique because it will use the web for School to School transactions, brokering synchronous distance learning classes between districts on a regional, state and nation-wide basis. DLNexus will be a real-time online scheduling and brokering system that allows schools and content providers that have courses to offer to be matched with schools that need courses and have compatible schedules and equipment. Like eBay, which brings buyers and sellers together online to complete an auction transaction, DLNexus would bring senders and receivers of synchronous distance learning courses together online to complete an enrollment transaction. This online center for synchronous distance learning scheduling will be specifically designed to meet the needs of school districts and take into account the variations in school scheduling. Schools that use this system will be able to broaden their access to high-quality science and technology education and take full advantage of their existing investments in educational videoconferencing technology.
An Example.
DLNexus will be a real-time online scheduling and brokering system that allows schools and content providers who have courses to offer to be matched with schools that need courses and have compatible schedules and equipment. The primary users of this system will be high school principals and guidance counselors. Here is one example of how we envision the DLNexus system in action:
School A is offering a calculus course via I-TV to another school in their I-TV consortium. Only 5 students are enrolled in the course across the two sites and the teacher is willing to add up to two additional sites and up to 10 additional students to the class. The principal at School A logs into the DLNexus site and selects the “Offer a Course” option, enters information about when the course is offered, number of available sites/seats and the delivery method, uploads a course syllabus and other information about the required textbook, tuition charges, etc., and then selects a previously-loaded technical profile of the I-TV room to be used for this course. After confirming all the required information, the principal uploads the course posting to the DLNexus site. When this course is posted, it will be added to the listing of available (open) courses and to the search database. News of this posting will be send via email to other DLNexus users who have previously indicated that their school is interested in advanced math courses.
A guidance counselor at School B (which doesn’t offer any advanced math courses) receives an email about the course. After reviewing the listing, he finds that six of his local students would like to enroll in that course, and that the local superintendent will approve the tuition costs and textbook expenses. The counselor logs into the DLNexus site, and confirms that School B will enroll six students in the course. Once this has been done, the course listing will be updated to show that open enrollment is now limited to a maximum of four students at one additional site.
When this online transaction takes place, emails are sent to the principals, guidance counselors, and superintendents of School A and School B with the details of the transaction. Arrangements for tuition payment and exchange of student information will then be made directly between the two schools. In addition, an email will be sent to the technical contacts at School A and School B with the details about the connection and a request that they test their connectivity as soon as possible (a link will be included in the email that the technology coordinators can use to confirm that a successful test has occurred).
Questions Remaining
- Funding model for such a service, how is it sustainable? Can you just charge a fee per transaction, like the way that ebay does?
- How to get a critical mass of participants? There were several online auction sites in the early days of the Internet, but ebay reached a tipping points and became the de-facto resource for online auctions.
- Can you seed your site with enough resources to get people to keep coming back time after time? Prime the pump until it is self sustaining? Perhaps one would need to sit down one-on-one with schools to get them to use it for 6 months or so until it was self sustaining.
- Platform, hardware and software?
I originally thought of writing an SBIR grant to develop this technology/system. Attached is a .pdf document that outlined some of the steps that I think might have to be done if a course brokering platform was to be developed.
Like I said, I’d be interested in hearing your feedback and input. And if you can take the idea and run with it, go for it.
Scott
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