In SMARTHINKING's early days, I used to compare us to a well-respected art film -- we had won the art festivals, but we needed to show the box-office returns. Basically, the thought leaders and innovators of higher education agreed that SMARTHINKING was a great idea. However, we had to figure out a way to translate their approval into local sales. Fortunately, we did manage to show the returns for our online tutoring service.
Today, we are in the same situation for our new product, StraighterLine. We officially launched this about 2 months ago. Since then we have had rave reviews. Clayton Christensen, noted Harvard business school professor and expert on innovation called StraighterLine "disruptive." Richard Vedder, a former member of the Spellings Commission and noted expert on college cost and affordability, published an insightful blog post about our approach to academic labor. Tony Seuss a well-respected blogger and community college professor in Georgia published praise of the business model. For StraigtherLine, this is a terrific introduction to the national spotlight. Before you can win the popular press, you need to win the approval of the experts. We seem to have convinced the experts. Now, we need to convince individual students and schools.
While one would suspect that colleges might be very resistant to enrolling their students in someone else's developmental and general education courses, there seem to be a number of factors at work that could change that. First, state budgets are in woeful shape. This translates to budget cuts for colleges. These budget cuts are coming in a time of recession which usually causes enrollments to increase which means that colleges have to serve more students than ever before. With more students and less resources, StraighterLine is a powerful option to fulfill general and developmental education delivery. Second, the Gates Foundation just announced a signficant committment to community colleges. They are focusing on exactly the things that SMARTHINKING and StraighterLine have been built to support -- increasing student success, serving developmental students, and lowering costs. SMARTHINKING and StraighterLine are some of the few truly innovative approaches to these problems.
So, stay tuned as we try to take StraighterLine to a theater near you!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Is Higher Education for Students or for Professors?
The Chronicle of Higher Ed just reported on StraighterLine’s launch. Titled “Who Needs a Professor?”, the article takes a mildly peeved attitude toward the new product. In this article and in the comments and blogs that it has spawned, it seems the benefits to the student are being roundly ignored. Perhaps this should be expected from a publication that serves professors, however StraigtherLine’s benefits to students, the ones actually paying for college, are profound. Here are the primary ones:
1) Affordability – The media is filled with laments about the rising cost of college. Well, StraighterLine is a way to dramatically reduce the price of the first year to year and a half of college. At $399 per course (just imagine if the government subsidies that support public colleges were applied to this price), this is dramatically lower than most 4 year colleges, private colleges and for-profit schools. It is even lower than many in-state community college tuitions. The next natural question is what do you get for $399?
2) Support – Students in StraighterLine courses get up to 10 hours of 1 on 1 instruction. This is more 1 on 1 instruction than is provided in most other online or face to face courses. Further, this is instruction on-demand. By using SMARTHINKING’s tutors, StraighterLine students get access to an instructor with a master’s degree or PhD within minutes. In a typical course, office hours are often provided limited, inconvenient or provided upon request, if there are office hours at all. Lastly, every SMARTHINKING tutor is screened, trained, and continually evaluated. Colleges typically do not offer their own professors and adjuncts this level of pedagogical development. So, students get more instructional support that is more convenient, more immediate, and more consistent.
3) Flexibility – Students in StraigtherLine courses can start a course within 24 hours of deciding to enroll and they can complete anytime within 6 months. In a traditional course, students are confined to the start and stop dates determined by the school and typically have to wait to start after deciding to enroll.
In addition, it would be helpful to compare the StraighterLine courses with the construction of many (maybe most?) freshman and sophomore general education courses in both online and face to face formats. Given that these courses are frequently taught by adjuncts or teaching assistants, with little or no training, with little or no availability to students beyond the lecture, and students are being charged 2 and 3 times what StraighterLine charges, it seems to me that StraighterLine courses are a welcome option for students seeking to reduce their cost of education.
1) Affordability – The media is filled with laments about the rising cost of college. Well, StraighterLine is a way to dramatically reduce the price of the first year to year and a half of college. At $399 per course (just imagine if the government subsidies that support public colleges were applied to this price), this is dramatically lower than most 4 year colleges, private colleges and for-profit schools. It is even lower than many in-state community college tuitions. The next natural question is what do you get for $399?
2) Support – Students in StraighterLine courses get up to 10 hours of 1 on 1 instruction. This is more 1 on 1 instruction than is provided in most other online or face to face courses. Further, this is instruction on-demand. By using SMARTHINKING’s tutors, StraighterLine students get access to an instructor with a master’s degree or PhD within minutes. In a typical course, office hours are often provided limited, inconvenient or provided upon request, if there are office hours at all. Lastly, every SMARTHINKING tutor is screened, trained, and continually evaluated. Colleges typically do not offer their own professors and adjuncts this level of pedagogical development. So, students get more instructional support that is more convenient, more immediate, and more consistent.
3) Flexibility – Students in StraigtherLine courses can start a course within 24 hours of deciding to enroll and they can complete anytime within 6 months. In a traditional course, students are confined to the start and stop dates determined by the school and typically have to wait to start after deciding to enroll.
In addition, it would be helpful to compare the StraighterLine courses with the construction of many (maybe most?) freshman and sophomore general education courses in both online and face to face formats. Given that these courses are frequently taught by adjuncts or teaching assistants, with little or no training, with little or no availability to students beyond the lecture, and students are being charged 2 and 3 times what StraighterLine charges, it seems to me that StraighterLine courses are a welcome option for students seeking to reduce their cost of education.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
StraighterLine
On May 15th, SMARTHINKING launched a new product called StraighterLine. In many ways, this is the product that SMARTHINKING has been building toward for 9 years. While this may seem hyperbolic, I think this product has the potential to transform the cost structure of higher education. Here’s what it is, why SMARTHINKING is the one to bring it to market, and why it has so much potential.
StraighterLine provides general education courses – the ones that everyone takes in the first or second year of college – that are more affordable, better supported, and more flexible than most other online courses. Regionally accredited partner colleges agree to award credit to students that successfully pass these courses. Each course is $399 (without a government subsidy), comes with up to 10 hours of live one-on- one SMARTHINKING instruction, and can be started and stopped at the student’s convenience. McGraw-Hill (one of the world’s largest textbook publishers) provides the course content and Blackboard (the world’s largest Learning Management System provider) provides the course infrastructure. By inserting MH’s content into Bb’s LMS and integrating with SMARTHINKING’s online tutoring services, we have a course that is better than most of what is out there today. Partner colleges work with us because students taking StraighterLine courses will need to complete their degree somewhere. This becomes a lead generation engine for our partners colleges.
Offering online courses may seem a little far afield for an online tutoring provider like SMARTHINKING. However, when you take a closer look at the course ingredients, you realize that all of the course elements are, more-or-less, commodities except for the labor. For instance, college algebra course content is readily available. There are dozens of LMS providers. However, there are very few companies that can provide on-demand instruction. For the provision of online general education courses with on-demand instruction, SMARTHINKING is the only company that has the industry credibility to do this.
As I mentioned earlier, I think StraighterLine has the potential to transform higher education. I believe this because StraighterLine overcomes the three largest barriers to cost reduction in education. These barriers are
1) The deployment of an alternative academic labor model
2) The creation of a legitimate course provider outside of the traditional accreditation model
3) The delivery of cost reduction benefits to students (instead of to the institutions)
As I’ve noted in other posts, technology has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost and increase the quality of education. However, evidence to date points to the opposite. What technology should be able to do, in theory, is to reduce the price of content production and distribution to close to zero, the cost of software to close to zero, and the cost of communication to close to zero. In theory, the cost of course should only be the amount of academic labor consumed during the course. However, such a radical pricing model has never been tried because there has never been a labor model that could be implemented like this, and colleges are accredited at the degree level, rather than the course level. Enter StraighterLine
The StraighterLine model incorporates SMARTHINKING’s tutoring as instruction, thereby offering an instructional model that provides greater availability, better service levels, more consistency, and greater record keeping. Further, the amount of instruction is limited by how much the student wants or needs, rather than by how much the professor is willing to give.
The StraighterLine model only provides general education courses. By working with partner colleges, StraighterLine can carve out these high enrollment courses. The courses that are the best candidates for standardization and commoditization at volume. In this way, students that successfully pass StraighterLine courses can receive real college credit at a fraction of the cost of traditional college courses. If students buy these courses like we hope, then the cost savings will pass to them, thereby reducing the cost of higher education.
If all goes well, in 3 years or so, StraighterLine will be a primary provider of general education courses. Students will contemplate coming to StraighterLine first, and then continuing their coursework at a college of their choice.
StraighterLine provides general education courses – the ones that everyone takes in the first or second year of college – that are more affordable, better supported, and more flexible than most other online courses. Regionally accredited partner colleges agree to award credit to students that successfully pass these courses. Each course is $399 (without a government subsidy), comes with up to 10 hours of live one-on- one SMARTHINKING instruction, and can be started and stopped at the student’s convenience. McGraw-Hill (one of the world’s largest textbook publishers) provides the course content and Blackboard (the world’s largest Learning Management System provider) provides the course infrastructure. By inserting MH’s content into Bb’s LMS and integrating with SMARTHINKING’s online tutoring services, we have a course that is better than most of what is out there today. Partner colleges work with us because students taking StraighterLine courses will need to complete their degree somewhere. This becomes a lead generation engine for our partners colleges.
Offering online courses may seem a little far afield for an online tutoring provider like SMARTHINKING. However, when you take a closer look at the course ingredients, you realize that all of the course elements are, more-or-less, commodities except for the labor. For instance, college algebra course content is readily available. There are dozens of LMS providers. However, there are very few companies that can provide on-demand instruction. For the provision of online general education courses with on-demand instruction, SMARTHINKING is the only company that has the industry credibility to do this.
As I mentioned earlier, I think StraighterLine has the potential to transform higher education. I believe this because StraighterLine overcomes the three largest barriers to cost reduction in education. These barriers are
1) The deployment of an alternative academic labor model
2) The creation of a legitimate course provider outside of the traditional accreditation model
3) The delivery of cost reduction benefits to students (instead of to the institutions)
As I’ve noted in other posts, technology has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost and increase the quality of education. However, evidence to date points to the opposite. What technology should be able to do, in theory, is to reduce the price of content production and distribution to close to zero, the cost of software to close to zero, and the cost of communication to close to zero. In theory, the cost of course should only be the amount of academic labor consumed during the course. However, such a radical pricing model has never been tried because there has never been a labor model that could be implemented like this, and colleges are accredited at the degree level, rather than the course level. Enter StraighterLine
The StraighterLine model incorporates SMARTHINKING’s tutoring as instruction, thereby offering an instructional model that provides greater availability, better service levels, more consistency, and greater record keeping. Further, the amount of instruction is limited by how much the student wants or needs, rather than by how much the professor is willing to give.
The StraighterLine model only provides general education courses. By working with partner colleges, StraighterLine can carve out these high enrollment courses. The courses that are the best candidates for standardization and commoditization at volume. In this way, students that successfully pass StraighterLine courses can receive real college credit at a fraction of the cost of traditional college courses. If students buy these courses like we hope, then the cost savings will pass to them, thereby reducing the cost of higher education.
If all goes well, in 3 years or so, StraighterLine will be a primary provider of general education courses. Students will contemplate coming to StraighterLine first, and then continuing their coursework at a college of their choice.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Breaking Radio Silence
It's been a loooong time since I last posted. Why? Well, I said most of what I wanted to say in my first posts. Now, however, SMARTHINKING is about to launch a new product that warrants another posting explosion. We plan to launch a new product called StraighterLine in May.
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