Startup step by step: the future of online education

Hello!

We are a young team trying to predict what will be the next step in online education, and moreover, we are trying to take this very step.
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Most recently, we ourselves have read a variety of stories about startups, and now we have our own. We are at the very beginning of the way, we do not have much experience, but we already have something to share with those who are not indifferent to startups, online education, educational applications and games.

In a series of articles we will go through the steps from the idea to the implementation on our own example. How to start, how to find like-minded people, where to find money, how to build a business model, etc. All this from the point of view of beginning startups. We will also tell about mistakes and difficulties and give advice, based not on theory, but on the experience gained.

Moreover, we encourage everyone to try their hand at online business - if only because it’s very interesting. If you have the desire and opportunity - just do it. Who knows, your startup may be a big success.

Where to begin

For us, a free online course from Stanford University (located, by the way, in the heart of Silicon Valley) was the impetus for the launch and startup. The course is regularly repeated, so here's the first tip for those who want to become a startup - sign up for the next Technology Entrepreneurship course at NovoEd .

By the way, course videos are available on YouTube:

The value of the course is that the emphasis is on practice. In addition to training videos, for each week you get a specific task - to find common features of successful projects, create your own team or join someone else, find a mentor, generate an idea and build a business model for it, make the first prototype and marketing research.

When we enrolled in the course, we hoped to gain knowledge, but did not suspect that the result would be the creation of a real product.

If you take it seriously, then at the end of the course you will receive at least an excellent push, and at the maximum - the first prototype that can be turned into something real. And one more thing more valuable is the command. It is not so easy to find people who see great prospects in some idea, are inspired and work with enthusiasm, believing in success. The ability to find such people is another value of this course.

Idea

Before you try to invent something of your own, you should look at successful projects. A simple but effective model is to find projects that have proven the success of your model in several countries (and not just one), and implement such a project in your local market. This is called copycat. ^[1] It seems to be copying, but you can always add something of your own, especially if it is something more efficient in your market.

If you want to come up with something new, you should still start by studying the projects that have already taken place.

Find common features of successful startups and use them.

What did we use? A good idea is to try combinations of popular trends. We take global directions - social networks, mobile applications, messaging, online education, geolocation, gamification. As well as areas of great interest - a healthy lifestyle, games, travel, music, movies, photos, news, food, finance, etc. - and try to build interesting combinations. You can use Google Trends .

For example, adding news and technology, you can get an idea - an aggregator of interesting news and articles about the Internet, technologies and gadgets. Actually, there is already such - The Tech Block - we start from it, as from an example. How about a similar news aggregator, but on a different topic - for example, about cinema or health?

Mobile application + movie = application that recommends movies by keywords. For example, we introduce “2000s, an action movie, cars” - we get the movie “Fast and Furious”. Or "1990s, thriller, maniac" - we get the film "Seven". Similarly, you can make advisory services on other topics. For example, you can do the same with books. Or enter the foods that you have in the fridge, and the application gives you recipes of dishes that can be prepared from them. And so on.

How about something bigger? Social Network + Food = Gourmet Social Network. The idea is not the newest, but what if you take not food in general, but only something specific? Social network for pizza lovers, for wine lovers, for cigar lovers. And so on. We are looking for something that has not yet been implemented.

Here is such a simple technique. You can try and 3-4 directions together. What combination worked for us? We decided to speculate about online education.

Now you can see a large increase in online courses, many began to use them as a source of knowledge. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were a breakthrough, but what will happen after them, what is the next step?

It turned out that online courses are not as effective as we would like. And this is putting it mildly. Less than 10% of students complete the course, and only about 5% show satisfactory results. ^[2] What is the matter and how can the situation be improved?

One of the main problems of training courses is that they are boring.

If you have tried at least a few courses, you understand what I mean. Many of them are regular lectures, very similar to those that you had at the university. Yearning. Every time you have to force yourself to watch the instructional videos and pass standard tests. It is not surprising that with each week the number of course participants is reduced.

Many course authors understand this problem - videos become more interesting - but in most cases this is still passive learning: the user just sits and watches the video. What can be done? A simple solution is to engage the user, make learning interactive. ^[3]

A simple example. How unloved by many chemistry can become fascinating and interesting. And all just need to focus on visualization and interactive.

Less text, more entertaining elements - and not the most interesting content turns into a nice application:

Another example is interactive books. Alice in Wonderland was an interesting book and became even more interesting. But what prevents the same thing from doing with textbooks?

What to add to the interactive to make it even more interesting? What will be interesting to people and will not let you get bored? Of course, the game. Many people are now engaged in gamification, and we are no exception. The game component does not just increase interest, it increases the effectiveness of training. ^[four]

Learning in the form of a game has been used for a long time, but there are few interesting and at the same time useful educational games, most of which are fairly standard and boring.

If you make the game too educational, it will be boring. If you make it too entertaining, it will not be useful.

In addition, in terms of entertainment, an educational game is never compared to ordinary games. The secret of success lies in finding the golden mean - you need to have something pleasant with useful, and also in the right proportion.

What to add to interactivity and games to make it even more interesting? Sociality After all, more fun together. You can learn and play with friends, helping each other or competing with each other.

Thus, discussing how to improve online education, we came to our idea. Our startup Learzing = online education + gamification + sociality = educational platform with learning applications and games, with a social component.

To come up with an idea is the first and important step, but who will implement it? In the following articles we will talk about the team and business model .

Links

[1] Generate Business Global Start for Up-Up Incubator
[2] Sebastian Thrun, Godfather Of Free Online Education, Changes Course
[3] The Problem with Learning Apps
[4] Do Serious Games Work? Results from Three Studies

All articles of the series

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/226483/

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