Thought leaders in Online Education: Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC Irvine (Part 6)

Sramana: Even in the future, this is something that will have to be done with technology. Teachers need to be empowered to use that technology. I just don’t see how teachers can be required to architect the design.

Gary Matkin: It is going to have to be done more and more by teachers. They are going to have to get more involved with the design of courses than they are now.

Sramana: They may be involved in the course design process but that does not necessarily mean that they are going to have to do learning architecture design. I think we disagree here. I just don’t see ‘teachers as architects’ being scalable.

Gary Matkin: I don’t agree with you on that point of view. The most effective teachers we have right now are those who are involved with design. They are coming up with very creative solutions to convey information that our designers would not have otherwise conveyed. Our designers do not have the domain expertise to know that the content should have been there. Teachers, when they understand what the design elements are, can produce some wonderful stuff. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 5)

Karen Francis: To that end, we are paying a lot of attention not just to the individual course certifications but series certifications. edX is leading down this path. One of the next things that we’ll be introducing on our site in the next couple of months is the ability to upload your certification and then attach it to your official transcript. You might go to high school and you have a transcript from your high school. You don’t want to go to college the way that other people might think about it. You know which skills you want and you want to be able to prove to an employer that you’ve mastered it. You will be able to take that certification and attach that to your official transcript.

Sramana Mitra: You are maintaining consumer records on their certifications and transcripts?

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Thought leaders in Online Education: Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC Irvine (Part 5)

Sramana: Let’s explore your continuing education business in greater detail.

Gary Matkin: Continuing education is dominated by people who want convenient, high quality material that is very relevant. Cost is not the primary concern. If you can provide courses that meet those criteria, then you are in the market, and that is what we service. Convenience is enhanced by putting the courses online. We also have those classes on the evenings and weekends, but the online aspect makes it possible for working adults to take any class online.

Sramana: What percentage of your continuing education courses are delivered online today?

Gary Matkin: A little over half. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I have a bunch of questions on that. These are, again, trend questions. One of the big problems with the Internet, in my view, is that it’s a free-rider and free-loader population. What percentage of your traffic are paying users as opposed to people looking for free courses?

Karen Francis: The only way I could answer that right now would be to give you metrics on the paid course sales. I would say we’re too early for that. Most of the people on our site are connecting to free courses. I think that’s largely because they don’t know that they’re available yet. We’re really at the early stages of adding the courses. We’re just getting exposure now for those people who are willing to pay.

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Thought leaders in Online Education: Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC Irvine (Part 4)

Sramana: Are there other models that you could envision being successful?

Gary Matkin: Another option would be to start selling advertising. Somehow they should use the names they have for advertising or marketing.

Sramana: Everything you have mentioned works well for UCI. For Coursera, that is a scary thought that nothing monetizes significantly in the short term. That is a problematic situation for a venture-funded firm.

Gary Matkin: It is and I don’t think Coursera, edX, or Udacity will last very long. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Does that mean that you catalog Pluralsight and TrainSignal and all of these course providers?

Karen Francis: Not everyone but if we don’t, it’s because we just haven’t contacted them yet. We’re really out there. We have a business development team seeking new course providers. You can also go to the site and say, “I have five courses. How do I get them on?”

Sramana Mitra: Now you get to pitch me why I should put out a course on your site.

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Thought leaders in Online Education: Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, UC Irvine (Part 3)

Sramana: You are making the claim that often people are looking for a specific piece of information and that they do not need to complete an entire course. It is not necessary to complete an entire course just to supplement a specific skill gap.

Gary Matkin: We all have learning projects every day. Those learning projects can be decisions to enter into a degree program that will take you three years to complete or it might be something that takes you 15 minutes to understand like how to prepare a pot roast. All of those learning projects are legitimate, even if they are shallow or momentary. If they have a positive impact on your life, then they are perfectly legitimate responses to human learning desires. That is why universal access is needed. To complete MOOCs with courses that have high completion rates is really missing the point. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 2)

Karen Francis: We’re seeing the emerging trend of students saying, “This is why I want this track and this is what I’ll take. I’m not going to take the rest of it.” They are able to customize what they want either from a broad perspective of choosing colleges and institutions or saying, “I’m going take a blended experience. I don’t want just online or just in the classroom. I want to be able to mash it all together.” There’s enormous activity and investment in education technology today. We’re seeing lots of experimentation. I don’t see a clear winner yet, which is exciting. More and more people are saying, “What is the result I want from my education?” Then, work backwards and say, “How do I then use the technologies available to gain that result?”

Sramana Mitra: How does CourseTalk fit in to this picture?

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