Online university units around the country are cutting back staff or outright canceling their programs. Two recent victims are Colorado State University with cutbacks and U of Illinois pulling the plug on Global Campus. Led by MITs OpenCourseware initiative a number of school’s have started putting course videos online, but once the hot-new-feel cools how many will be willing to continue to pay for a program with no revenue stream? Even commercial partnerships like YouTube University could have an iffy future as Google starts to realize how much the service costs, and how dim the prospects are for profit. So where is the future of the i-University and who is going to pay for it?
What about the fate of online ad-supported models? Consider that one of the first browser extensions for Google Chrome is one that blocks online ads on web pages — a similar extension for Firefox is already pretty popular. And while the use of these programs has raised claims of foul from site managers, they make sense — who really wants to see those annoying ads — I know I don’t. So the ad model is in the process of breaking. Even online sponsorship is declining. Brian Ibbot’s long running podcast Coverville is sufferring. As sponsor support has declined he contemplated stopping the show, or taking it all subscription. He has settled on a third option, offerring premium content to Coverville Citizens while still providing his basic content for free. Seeing as I’ve been a loyal listener since something like episode 12 (he’s up in the 500s now) I joined — hopefully he’ll get the support he needs to keep going.
Perhaps TweetDeck is onto something. The twitter desktop client just announced a Blink-182 version with other offerings on the way. And the free-basic service plan with a premium upgrade is working already for companies like LinkedIn. The pro advantages as services such as Vimeo and Flickr are pretty reasonable, and if you’re a dedicated video/photo person it is a very attractive option. I’ve been a Flickr pro client almost since the service started, and always felt my money was well spent (even after Yahoo bought them!) So there are web 2.0 models that don’t rely on advertising and can be a commercial success.
I think the best models for the iUniversity are in the open source world. Automattic is the group behind WordPress.com, a for-profit company based on an open-source software product. They lead development of WordPress core, and are the biggest user of the WordPress multi-user version. But they are more community organizer than software company. And a success.
So after all this I must admit that I don’t know how we’re going to pay for educational technology initiatives. The future is going to require greater collaboration between institutions, and rely on more bottom-up, community-based contributions. Control is out, collaboration is the future.
The First Google Chrome Extensions: Block Ads, Check PageRank, and Use IE8 Accelerators
Already, there are a handful of extensions available including an ad-blocker called AdSweep
Has TweetDeck Found a Business Model? Launches Blink-182 Themed Version
TweetDeck, the popular desktop Twitter client, launched a Blink-182 themed version of its application today.
Wired Campus: Rocky Start for Colorado State U.’s Online-Education Start-Up – Chronicle.com
Colorado State University’s new Global Campus online-education venture laid off more than 25 percent of its operation in recent months as the start-up failed to bring in money at the pace officials had expected, according to the program’s leader.
Despite massive growth, ubiquitous global brand awareness, presidential endorsement, and the world’s greatest repository of illegally-pirated video content, Google’s massive video folly is on life-support, and the prognosis is grave.
Coverville Citizenship Announcement « Coverville
A quick “fireside chat” edition of the show – just to let you know how you can help Coverville by becoming a Coverville Citizen!
Comments / 2 COMMENTS
Cassandra added these pithy words on Jun 01 09 at 6:14 pmPerhaps the biggest problem stems from the incapability of online education and traditional Universities. It is clearly an oil and vinegar venture that has not figured out a workable mix. Online education is not the future, The future is here and the “for-profits” have figured out how to do it well by running education as a business instead of focusing on the business of education. The former understands the way to add an egg to make it blend, the latter just keeps adding more vinegar and wonders why it is not more palatable.
Randy added these pithy words on Jun 02 09 at 8:34 amExcellent point. For-profits like Capella University offer quality on-line education. And in Capella’s case they do so by centralizing much of the work in creating a course. Faculty are hired to teach a course, and I think add their own spin to it, but it is not their creation as it so often is in non-profit academic departments. It is a pretty unappealing to contemplate giving up the handcrafted quality of education, but continuing pressure to trim costs may force it. It may be that the richness of the experience will be created more by the students and their learning community than the faculty member or the institution.
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Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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