Create an eLearning system where ANYONE can learn the way they want to learn. For example, if I am comfortable learning with the help of a person, I click on a subject and poof! appears a window with a live person web-camming with you. It is an interactive session on-demand, when you need it, in the language of your choice.
Or, imagine that I am reading a book and need some clarification on a concept. I go to the website and either chat or have an audio or video call with the person who can help. I will be able to search for the availability of such a person on the site. When I search, I can specify the topic, language etc. so that the search will throw up the available persons. I could even look for people who have read the book or professors and teachers who teach using that book.
I can of course learn about these topics on the self learning module and at any time of the learning ask a live person for clarifications, as if I am one-on-one with a private tutor who is available 24×7.
While reading an article on the system, I might get tired and just want to hear the rest of the stuff. Can I do it? Yes of course. I just click the point till which I have read and an audio starts from that point.
The system is a also a wiki; so whenever people learn about new concepts in their own way, they can add to the learning system. So, you have a wiki-banking, wiki-maths, wiki-physics and so on. Naturally, I believe in the goodness of people and that they will not post useless or malicious content. In case they do, then there will be bots who will identify the garbage and throw it out.
I can also broadcast my query to all the members of the learning system and people would respond at their convenience. I would then find the best answer and add to the wiki so that others can benefit. People could also respond by posting audio/videos.
Is this idea possible to execute or just too impractical? Is there a real need for such a system? How can we create a huge community of subject matter experts on just about any subject from nuclear engineering to philosophy. It will obviously require a lot of storage and capability to deliver large amount of data in an efficient manner.
Any thoughts….?
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While reading this post, the first thought that came to my mind was elearning in virtual world such as Second Life (mirroring what Raghu said earlier. One of my mba profs is actively researching this field). Such a virtual world platform is ideal for such a highly interactive platform and there are a lot of initiatives and ideas coming up in this field in the US.
I think the biggest challenges of such a system would be building an always available set of experts always ready to answer questions. If this is made into a social platform where experts emerge from the members (“wisdom of the crowd” cliched philosophy) based on their reputation, this scalability issue can possibly be addressed.
May be I risk oversimplifying it. Wouldn’t an audio plug in feature for the Wikipedia material (as it exists today) solve most of what is considered here ?
Shashank,
Since it is both capital and technology intensive, if you can take care of the capital part, I guess I can help you with the technology part! 😉
Kidding! On a serious note, this definitely interests me as we are into the education space. Drop in a mail (raghu@conceptwaves.com) and lets discuss a little more on this.
~raghu
Raghu,
I like your inputs esp on the extension of the eco-system to book vendors, libraries.
Also, if this can be pulled off, then I am sure that people will not mind paying a small sum for memberhsip in order to make this a viable business model.
S
Need can definitely be ‘created’ if you can really pull off a great experience for the learners.
When you offer such a huge amount of information to your users, usability and navigation become extremely critical.
Somehow I like this idea. I guess the primary reason for me to think it is exciting is the interactivity and freedom (to choose the mode) that such a place would offer.
And yes, it would be computationally resource intensive too to support so many ‘channels’ of interaction and so much content.
Wondering if you could view this as a “second life” equivalent targeted at the specific education vertical?
Do you realize you could end up building an entire “eco-system” based on this idea? Apart from people like professors, students etc I would assume that other interesting players (book vendors, libraries, content providers etc?) can participate too.
It is not ‘impractical’ but execution would require lots of capital and technology I guess. 🙂
~raghu