Fast Feedback Services in Education
Sometimes I ask myself why modern students go to lectures in universities? After all, exactly the same and even better, you can see on youtube or on free online resources: coursera, edX, etc.
Salman Khan from khanacademy.org generally suggested that education should be done the other way around: you watch video lectures at home (after all, 90% of the time students really just watch and listen to lectures), and at school you do homework and practice, that is, the most difficult thing.
')
There were many projects that positioned themselves as a "breakthrough in education." Numerous online resources that should destroy the classical education system and offer something new and more efficient. Maybe.
But personally, I came to a simple thought - the education system, which we call “classical” and which is already hundreds of years old, is unlikely to change dramatically in the near future. The best thing you can do is to complement it in various aspects, without trying to destroy, compete or replace it.
In a few lines below, I’ll talk about services that increase the speed of feedback for offline education and conferences. In the meantime, a few thoughts, why the "classic" is still alive and winning. Here are the main reasons, IMHO.
Any normal person, if he has free time and money, would rather spend it on vacation in Turkey, than to study in a university or school.
Classical education is built on violence. People are forced to come to a certain closed room and for a long time in an uncomfortable position to watch not very spectacular monologues of bad actors. Moreover, their parents are forced to pay money for it.
That is why it is so effective. If you don’t learn or skip, you’ll get a “two”, you’ll call your parents or join the army.
Try to do the same thing in online schools? They are all passionate about “gamification” and other “rations”. But you know, if I want to “gamify”, then I will just play good spectacular games like GTA, throw chickens into pigs or like pictures of cats. And I will certainly not try to entertain myself with algebra, even if in a gamified form.
Online projects are trying to improve the "carrot", but they simply do not have a "stick". Therefore, they are at least 10 times less effective than offline.
And another important plus offline - note-taking. When a person physically writes something on paper, he remembers the essence several times better. Let even stupidly repeating the lecturer and writing off from the board. All because of motor memory.
Simple viewing of video tutorials or answers to computer tests or even knocking fingers on computer keys does not give such an effect. Therefore, “paper foulness on lectures” - was and still remains out of competition before other methods of memorizing material.
Direct analogy with the music industry. Music for people has become shareware online (especially in Russia, where 90% of the content is pirated). At the same time, the cost of concerts has grown and the main money musicians earn from corporate events.
Against the background of the trend towards cheaper one “side of the coin”, there is always an anti-trend towards the appreciation of the other side. And as you know, smart people follow the money, not from them.
This is true for music and for books and for education. The average tuition fee at HSE or MSU is more than $ 10k per year. Stanford and Harvard for the MBA program takes about $ 100k per year. And those and others with sales more or less (as long as there is a competition for more than 1 person.).
At the same time, exactly the same knowledge as in the best universities of the world can be found and obtained online absolutely free. Some people try to sell content to individuals, but then they understand that it’s a bad job and puts everything in free access (as MIT did recently).
Online projects work great for generating leads (potential customers) for universities, but not for sales directly to education.
It would seem online much faster. You can instantly exchange messages thousands of kilometers away. But to surpass live chat is still not possible. Offline, where people are next to each other - the speed and quality of feedback is maximum. Naturally, if the training is based on the principle of dialogue, and not a monologue.
For the same reason, working in an office, when people from 10.00 to 19.00 sit in the same room within eye contact, will always be more effective than remote work (other things being equal).
If you dig deeper into the theory (see, for example, J. Forrester's “System Dynamics”), you can easily see how strongly the reaction rate influences efficiency. Dependence is nonlinear. For example, if in one company people answer by email for 1 hour, and in another for 2 hours, then the second one works not even 2 times slower. The speed of the 2nd company falls by 3-5 times (!) Compared to the 1st, all other things being equal (the figures are conditional, the relationship is more complicated).
That is why there is tremendous potential in improving the quality and speed of feedback, especially for offline events.
In this field, I found several projects worthy of attention.
Also, twitter is partially suitable for this purpose - it is used at conferences, with a request to tweet with the # conference hashtag.
But in fact, we have so far been used wherever. This means that there is an unoccupied niche and many interesting tasks.
Now the most important thing. Why so many letters. I want this service to appear and safely be introduced into most universities, schools and conferences. Maybe I can take part in this story, and maybe someone else will. Never mind. It is important that it once appeared and worked.
Ideas of the sea and they cost zero. Only implementation is valuable. And the implementation depends entirely on the team. At the initial stage, large investments are not needed, but only 3-5 energetic people who can "play" into a productive team and draw this project.
In short, I wanted to put on your court a brief description of the project. And put together a team. Perhaps someone project "hook" and you want to participate in it. For this you just need to write me a personal message. Below is a description of the project and at the very end possible options for participation.
So let's go.
Service for quick feedback on offline lectures and conferences. For groups up to 10 -100 people.
How it works:
As with any educational service, there are 4 main users: Teacher (lecturer), Administrator (Conference Organizer, School Principal), Parent (or the boss of the student) and Student (child, student, student).
One of the problems of the Teacher and his Administrator is to somehow stimulate a large number of questions from the students and receive live feedback. In short, to manage to combine a monologue with a dialogue on a massive scale and directly during the lecture.
Just as for restaurants, reviews of visitors about their cuisine are important. They could be “hammered”, but then you won’t understand why people suddenly stopped coming to you.
Feedback and feedback is desirable to receive as quickly and honestly as possible, but on a personal basis without publicly publicizing the problems and with the ability to publish positive feedback.
If we talk about the target client, for whom it is critical: the Administrator (it is important for him to understand how well his teachers work) and the Parent (it is important for him to see how his child learns).
These people are willing to pay for such a service on a subscription model of $ 5-10 per month per class / student, etc.
So, 3 customer segments:
• Schools: headmaster + parents of children.
• Universities: Dean of the Faculty / Rector of the University + parents of students.
• Corporate conferences, seminars: training center head / trainer + department / department / company / HR.
Stimulating students for quick and honest feedback is also not a trivial task. In ordinary classes, it is solved by the “whip” method - “I did not ask a question, it means you were not in class”.
Sometimes it is solved by the “carrot” method, especially at conferences. For example, who asked the most tricky question, gets a book, etc.
In Russia, about - 3 thousand universities. They are gradually combined into 1 thousand. You can reach them through projects that implement various IT systems there.
In Moscow - about 1 thousand schools and you can reach them through projects that already work with them dnevnik.ru, etc.
Various events / conferences - in Russia there are about 2 thousand different events every day.
See above. There is also a project lectometer.info in beta.
FireChat (p2p chat of direct communication. It works without an external network within a radius of up to 70 m) with the help of this chat recently people in Hong Kong organized themselves at rallies.
Minimally necessary functions to run:
• Web service, creating and editing event / class
• Entering an event (ask a question / like dislike / respond to a survey). Poll functionality to take ready.
• Analytics for the administrator.
The ability to network together in the absence of the Internet (by wifi within a radius of up to 50 m) - as firechat does, as well as many other functions - can be safely brought beyond the scope of MVP
Development mob. applications can also be moved beyond MVP
Testing. For the first time 100 clients - universities, schools, conferences in Moscow, collected in manual mode. They are given a free test account for 3-6 months.
Growth driver: the number of connected institutions (universities, schools, etc.). Depends on a) sales, which will connect institutions b) opinion leaders c) the presence of virality.
Bonus program: users get honest bonuses from organizers for honest, prompt feedback.
Enter the first in schools and universities.
Focusing on certain niches. (education, conferences, etc.)
The most convenient service / product.
The team and its speed - perhaps the main "barrier". If we succeed in forming a fast-fledged team with a full set of competencies, it will be almost impossible to catch up with or beat on the Russian market, except to buy in full.
Freemium model: free functionality, plus full functionality on average $ 10 / per month. from 1st grade.
On average, the institutions have about 100 classes, that is, about $ 1000 from a connected institution per month.
Available market - about 1000 institutions (1 sales can connect up to 50-100 institutions per month). The goal for 1 year to go up to about $ 1M per month.
Operational costs: team 5 people + office. Up to $ 30k per month The model does not involve the purchase of paid traffic: mostly direct sales + affiliate programs.
Operating payback - 30-50 institutions.
4 main roles for the project:
Mentors / advisors for this project can be:
Marat Akhmeshin - Edmodo in Russia, Gabriel Levi - the founder of Dnevnik.ru, etc.
Crunchbase company profiles: tophat , remind , socrative
Who wants to participate in this project and is suitable for any role - write to me.
The important thing is to respond only if you live in Moscow, as offline communication is expected. Remote work will not work.
Further steps will be simple: I will make a small selection and we will meet in the Co-working Workstation (Moscow, m. Leninsky Prospect) and discuss the conditions.
Default. Conditions for participation in the project - 3-5 people in equal shares.
It is assumed bootstrapping (development on their own) at least for the first time. Until the prototype and first sales are made.
No investors. No accelerators, incubators, state support, funds and other things. Perhaps further growth will need an investor or partner, perhaps not.
PS I will be grateful for the constructive feedback and advice
Salman Khan from khanacademy.org generally suggested that education should be done the other way around: you watch video lectures at home (after all, 90% of the time students really just watch and listen to lectures), and at school you do homework and practice, that is, the most difficult thing.
')
There were many projects that positioned themselves as a "breakthrough in education." Numerous online resources that should destroy the classical education system and offer something new and more efficient. Maybe.
But personally, I came to a simple thought - the education system, which we call “classical” and which is already hundreds of years old, is unlikely to change dramatically in the near future. The best thing you can do is to complement it in various aspects, without trying to destroy, compete or replace it.
In a few lines below, I’ll talk about services that increase the speed of feedback for offline education and conferences. In the meantime, a few thoughts, why the "classic" is still alive and winning. Here are the main reasons, IMHO.
Education is 90% "stick" and 10% "gingerbread"
Any normal person, if he has free time and money, would rather spend it on vacation in Turkey, than to study in a university or school.
Classical education is built on violence. People are forced to come to a certain closed room and for a long time in an uncomfortable position to watch not very spectacular monologues of bad actors. Moreover, their parents are forced to pay money for it.
That is why it is so effective. If you don’t learn or skip, you’ll get a “two”, you’ll call your parents or join the army.
Try to do the same thing in online schools? They are all passionate about “gamification” and other “rations”. But you know, if I want to “gamify”, then I will just play good spectacular games like GTA, throw chickens into pigs or like pictures of cats. And I will certainly not try to entertain myself with algebra, even if in a gamified form.
Online projects are trying to improve the "carrot", but they simply do not have a "stick". Therefore, they are at least 10 times less effective than offline.
And another important plus offline - note-taking. When a person physically writes something on paper, he remembers the essence several times better. Let even stupidly repeating the lecturer and writing off from the board. All because of motor memory.
Simple viewing of video tutorials or answers to computer tests or even knocking fingers on computer keys does not give such an effect. Therefore, “paper foulness on lectures” - was and still remains out of competition before other methods of memorizing material.
Online is becoming cheaper - offline is more expensive.
Direct analogy with the music industry. Music for people has become shareware online (especially in Russia, where 90% of the content is pirated). At the same time, the cost of concerts has grown and the main money musicians earn from corporate events.
Against the background of the trend towards cheaper one “side of the coin”, there is always an anti-trend towards the appreciation of the other side. And as you know, smart people follow the money, not from them.
This is true for music and for books and for education. The average tuition fee at HSE or MSU is more than $ 10k per year. Stanford and Harvard for the MBA program takes about $ 100k per year. And those and others with sales more or less (as long as there is a competition for more than 1 person.).
At the same time, exactly the same knowledge as in the best universities of the world can be found and obtained online absolutely free. Some people try to sell content to individuals, but then they understand that it’s a bad job and puts everything in free access (as MIT did recently).
Online projects work great for generating leads (potential customers) for universities, but not for sales directly to education.
Offline has maximum feedback speed
It would seem online much faster. You can instantly exchange messages thousands of kilometers away. But to surpass live chat is still not possible. Offline, where people are next to each other - the speed and quality of feedback is maximum. Naturally, if the training is based on the principle of dialogue, and not a monologue.
For the same reason, working in an office, when people from 10.00 to 19.00 sit in the same room within eye contact, will always be more effective than remote work (other things being equal).
If you dig deeper into the theory (see, for example, J. Forrester's “System Dynamics”), you can easily see how strongly the reaction rate influences efficiency. Dependence is nonlinear. For example, if in one company people answer by email for 1 hour, and in another for 2 hours, then the second one works not even 2 times slower. The speed of the 2nd company falls by 3-5 times (!) Compared to the 1st, all other things being equal (the figures are conditional, the relationship is more complicated).
That is why there is tremendous potential in improving the quality and speed of feedback, especially for offline events.
In this field, I found several projects worthy of attention.
- tophat.com - more than $ 20M of investment, used by more than 300 universities and 200 thousand students.
- remind.com - sms from teachers for parents about the success of children. They have already raised more than $ 50M, including from Yuri Milner.
- socrative.com - creating quick surveys in the offline class, to which students respond from their phones.
- polleverywhere.com is about the same as socrative. You can vote sms or twitter. Project YCombinator - a.
Also, twitter is partially suitable for this purpose - it is used at conferences, with a request to tweet with the # conference hashtag.
But in fact, we have so far been used wherever. This means that there is an unoccupied niche and many interesting tasks.
Why am I writing this here?
Now the most important thing. Why so many letters. I want this service to appear and safely be introduced into most universities, schools and conferences. Maybe I can take part in this story, and maybe someone else will. Never mind. It is important that it once appeared and worked.
Ideas of the sea and they cost zero. Only implementation is valuable. And the implementation depends entirely on the team. At the initial stage, large investments are not needed, but only 3-5 energetic people who can "play" into a productive team and draw this project.
In short, I wanted to put on your court a brief description of the project. And put together a team. Perhaps someone project "hook" and you want to participate in it. For this you just need to write me a personal message. Below is a description of the project and at the very end possible options for participation.
So let's go.
Brief essence and how it works
Service for quick feedback on offline lectures and conferences. For groups up to 10 -100 people.
How it works:
- Teacher / lecturer - creates an event, for example, No. 3452 + wifi access point (in those places where there is no wifi).
- Anyone who is in a lecture should connect to the wifi network and enter this event from their phone.
- Student In the course of the lecture, he may a) write questions to this event; b) put likes / dislikes; c) answer questions / quizzes of the teacher.
- Teacher. During the lecture can ask polls. At the end of the lecture receives a list of questions that are answered + statistics of answers and listeners interest.
- Administrator. He sees attendance, activity of the student and teacher. Statistics of questions and activity of listeners.
- Parents / leaders. See the questions, assessments and activity of their children / employees.
What problem we solve, who is the client
As with any educational service, there are 4 main users: Teacher (lecturer), Administrator (Conference Organizer, School Principal), Parent (or the boss of the student) and Student (child, student, student).
One of the problems of the Teacher and his Administrator is to somehow stimulate a large number of questions from the students and receive live feedback. In short, to manage to combine a monologue with a dialogue on a massive scale and directly during the lecture.
Just as for restaurants, reviews of visitors about their cuisine are important. They could be “hammered”, but then you won’t understand why people suddenly stopped coming to you.
Feedback and feedback is desirable to receive as quickly and honestly as possible, but on a personal basis without publicly publicizing the problems and with the ability to publish positive feedback.
If we talk about the target client, for whom it is critical: the Administrator (it is important for him to understand how well his teachers work) and the Parent (it is important for him to see how his child learns).
These people are willing to pay for such a service on a subscription model of $ 5-10 per month per class / student, etc.
So, 3 customer segments:
• Schools: headmaster + parents of children.
• Universities: Dean of the Faculty / Rector of the University + parents of students.
• Corporate conferences, seminars: training center head / trainer + department / department / company / HR.
Stimulating students for quick and honest feedback is also not a trivial task. In ordinary classes, it is solved by the “whip” method - “I did not ask a question, it means you were not in class”.
Sometimes it is solved by the “carrot” method, especially at conferences. For example, who asked the most tricky question, gets a book, etc.
Available market. Places where customers are already collected and spending money
In Russia, about - 3 thousand universities. They are gradually combined into 1 thousand. You can reach them through projects that implement various IT systems there.
In Moscow - about 1 thousand schools and you can reach them through projects that already work with them dnevnik.ru, etc.
Various events / conferences - in Russia there are about 2 thousand different events every day.
Competitors, analogues, possible partners
See above. There is also a project lectometer.info in beta.
FireChat (p2p chat of direct communication. It works without an external network within a radius of up to 70 m) with the help of this chat recently people in Hong Kong organized themselves at rallies.
Solution and Value (MVP - Minimum Viable Product)
Minimally necessary functions to run:
• Web service, creating and editing event / class
• Entering an event (ask a question / like dislike / respond to a survey). Poll functionality to take ready.
• Analytics for the administrator.
The ability to network together in the absence of the Internet (by wifi within a radius of up to 50 m) - as firechat does, as well as many other functions - can be safely brought beyond the scope of MVP
Development mob. applications can also be moved beyond MVP
Marketing, sales, scaling plan
Testing. For the first time 100 clients - universities, schools, conferences in Moscow, collected in manual mode. They are given a free test account for 3-6 months.
Growth driver: the number of connected institutions (universities, schools, etc.). Depends on a) sales, which will connect institutions b) opinion leaders c) the presence of virality.
Bonus program: users get honest bonuses from organizers for honest, prompt feedback.
Chip, exclusive barriers from competitors
Enter the first in schools and universities.
Focusing on certain niches. (education, conferences, etc.)
The most convenient service / product.
The team and its speed - perhaps the main "barrier". If we succeed in forming a fast-fledged team with a full set of competencies, it will be almost impossible to catch up with or beat on the Russian market, except to buy in full.
Metrics, financial assumptions, investments, business model
Freemium model: free functionality, plus full functionality on average $ 10 / per month. from 1st grade.
On average, the institutions have about 100 classes, that is, about $ 1000 from a connected institution per month.
Available market - about 1000 institutions (1 sales can connect up to 50-100 institutions per month). The goal for 1 year to go up to about $ 1M per month.
Operational costs: team 5 people + office. Up to $ 30k per month The model does not involve the purchase of paid traffic: mostly direct sales + affiliate programs.
Operating payback - 30-50 institutions.
Minimum team required
4 main roles for the project:
- Sales - to connect universities, schools, conferences. A person who has contacts of top universities and / or schools. Or a person who does a lot of conferences.
- CTO - development of web-service and a bit later applications for iOS, Android.
- Service / Support - the one who will be responsible for operational work and user support: parents, students, administrators.
- Marketing / Content / LeadGen - generation of leads from various sources (blog, etc.)
Mentors / advisors for this project can be:
Marat Akhmeshin - Edmodo in Russia, Gabriel Levi - the founder of Dnevnik.ru, etc.
useful links
Crunchbase company profiles: tophat , remind , socrative
The terms of participation
Who wants to participate in this project and is suitable for any role - write to me.
The important thing is to respond only if you live in Moscow, as offline communication is expected. Remote work will not work.
Further steps will be simple: I will make a small selection and we will meet in the Co-working Workstation (Moscow, m. Leninsky Prospect) and discuss the conditions.
Default. Conditions for participation in the project - 3-5 people in equal shares.
It is assumed bootstrapping (development on their own) at least for the first time. Until the prototype and first sales are made.
No investors. No accelerators, incubators, state support, funds and other things. Perhaps further growth will need an investor or partner, perhaps not.
PS I will be grateful for the constructive feedback and advice
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/361899/
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