Could the future of education be taught by industry experts in an online setting? Udemy is trying to find out thanks to their new Teach2013 tool. It’s basically a call for experts and thought leaders to teach their own online courses.
They’re hoping a crowd of people will encourage people like Bill Gates, Michelle Obama, Richard Branson, and Biz Stone to answer the call. Udemy would of course stand to benefit from getting these big names, but it’s an interesting approach and it may not work. Only time will tell.
More Details via Press Release
Udemy, the leading online education marketplace, today launched Teach2013, a campaign designed to empower and encourage industry experts worldwide to create online courses and deliver them to people around the globe in 2013.
“Imagine what we could accomplish if every expert shared his or her knowledge with the world,” said Eren Bali, Udemy co-founder and chief executive officer. “Online instructors are now teaching millions of people around the world. But there are so many more subjects that students want to learn. We’re calling upon every expert to join us and teach the next generation, starting this year.”
Once experts express interest in teaching online, Udemy will provide an array of tools and resources to help them build and deliver courses that meet Udemy’s standards for course quality. Those resources and tools include access to Udemy’s proprietary Course Creation Platform and an invitation to Udemy’s online instructor community, “The Udemy Studio”, where experts can interact and discuss best practices for building a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Some experts will also receive production assistance from Udemy.
“It’s amazing what a good instructor can do with an HD camera, a mic, and some basic video editing software,” said Dinesh Thiru, vice president of marketing at Udemy. “We live in a new world where experts are building incredibly high-quality online courses with technology that often costs less than $200.. You couldn’t empower millions of experts to teach the world before this happened – the barriers to teaching online were too high. But that’s all changed now and that’s why 2013 is going to be the year of the online instructor. “
Instructors and their courses are evaluated through Udemy’s strict quality control measures, which score each course based on its level of instructional design, production quality, and the ability to deliver on learning outcomes. Only those courses that meet or exceed Udemy’s standards are featured on the site. Instructors can build courses on Udemy that can be either free or paid. If instructors choose to charge for their course, they keep 70 percent of the revenue from all course purchases. Instructors retain full control over course content, copyrights and pricing.
