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My Vision for Online Education

Why I believe we still miss a platform

"I want to build one platform that enables everyone to teach collaboratively."

The platform should provide tools to easily create content of all types that can be enhanced and edited by others, contributing to a large collection of the best educational content in the world. All content should be translatable with 1 click to be available in every language. The large collection of materials makes the extremely fast creation of hyperspecific courses possible for the first time!

All of this should be embedded in a (potentially) open source learning environment that combines participation of students, discussion amongst students and gamification in an evolving learning environment powered by Web and Mobile Apps.

Long more chaotic version of my thoughts:

I believe there is the need for one platform to unite teachers and creators from all around the world and connect with their students.

One platform, that massively facilitates the creation of hyperspecific courses by providing an extensive evolving library with the best materials in the world.

In this post I want to focus on platforms that mainly facilitate exam preparation and learning for tests. Maybe I lay out the reason for this some other time, but in short I believe that the education of an individual is much more useful if it is easily recognizable by others (e.g. employers) which mostly always involves some kind of test.

I believe that equal opportunities are incredibly important, especially regarding formal education! Therefore, my vision is about achieving a ("self-")sustainable environment that enables everyone to learn AND teach together.

But first, lets evaluate some existing platforms and see what they are doing well and what they are missing.

Evaluating existing platforms

There are a lot of platforms to study online. Most of them are doing a lot of aspects exceptionally well while missing out on others.

Small subject-specific platforms

There are thousands of small websites, often by very small companies or single individuals that offer information or problem sets about certain single topics. Sometimes there is a comment section for some interactivity or even interactive quizzes.

The value provided for the given topic is immense. But they are not connected to each other. You pretty much need to find the perfect platform for every single topic that occurs in your curriculum. The quality of the content very hard to evaluate for students new to a subject. This will be a reoccurring problem in the next platforms.

Wikipedia

I love the idea of Wikipedia and do believe that it's concept can be the foundation of achieving my vision. More or less decentralized, open source, free, accessible for everyone, etc. Pretty much all human fact knowledge in one place.

Though, Wikipedia is not a platform for studying. There is no differentiation in the degree of difficulty, and it simply is not a learning platform. Again you need to look for a new article for every question you have. There is no interactivity or engagement with other students.

But most importantly, there is no variety in the way the content is presented. It's all text. While text works for a lot of people, it is not the best way to learn for everyone. I believe that the best way to learn is to combine different media and let the user choose the way they want to learn while providing an initial structure.

YouTube

YouTube is probably my favorite platform in the world. From Entertainment to Education, you can find almost anything there for free! While this is great for Google and YouTube, it is also one of the main problems with YouTube being THE platform to actually study.

There just is too much noise. Funny videos are mixed with educational videos, recommended right next to each other. Long ads are played before videos (even though less for educational content I believe).

Additionally, YouTube is way too static. A video put out just sits there. Only comments allow for interaction and once a video is put out, it is very hard to update. It is not connected to interactive problem sets or alternative types of explanations.

It also has the same problem as the subject-specific platforms. It is sooo big that you spend more time searching and evalating videos instead of actually learning.

Still it drove an education revolution and I think a lot of content should be embedded on my envisioned platform!

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is probably the most well known platform for online education. It is a great platform and I believe it is the closest to my vision. It is free, it is accessible for everyone, it is interactive, it covers multi-language content, it is structured, ...

BUT it is not open source. It is not decentralized. It is not free for teachers to create content. It is limited in the topics that are on it and hence does not allow for hyperspecific courses that I believe are the best way to study for exams.

I do not think that you need a Phd in a subject to teach something. Sometimes it is even better to learn from someone who just recently really understood a topic themselves. Interactions like this are very beneficial for both sides and play a main role in my vision.

Udemy, Teachable, ...

Platforms like Udemy, Teachable, SkilLShare, ... are very focused on creators, which I think is good for a self-sustainable system. No creators -> no content -> no learning.

While they also provide an actual learning environment, unlike YouTube or Wikipedia, they do not connect creators amongst each other. Also, a lot of the content on there is more focused on learning actual skills than on exam preparation.

Again, not a bad thing, just not my focus of this post.

Lastly I should mention that they are not free, but especially Udemy is pretty affordable so I do not consider this necessarily a problem.

Masterclass, Duolingo, ...

I just want to mention Masterclass here because I think what they are doing exceptionally well is motivating their students. I do not think education can actually become as entertaining as content purely created for enterntainment purposes, but if there is a platform that comes close to this, it is Masterclass.

I envision a platform that maxes out on motivation of students by providing the best content in the world, but also through gamification and other techniques.

Duolingo is another great example of this.

Document Sharing platforms

There are countless platforms like this. Chegg, CourseHero, Studocu, Studydrive. All of them started out as document sharing platforms where students share their notes, their solutions to problem sets, their summaries, etc.

At least from my experience they are the most platforms for exam preparation. They are also pretty self-sustainable and some of them offer an actual learning environment. But I think this is a point where they are lacking as well because they depend on the yearly contributions of new students who are not super incentivized to contribute and do not create actual learning materials like videos or interactive problem sets.

What about OER?

OER stands for Open Educational Resources and is a movement that aims to make educational resources available for everyone.

I love the concept, but I think it lacks interactivity and connection. OER are available at a lot of places but rarely well presented for more than one subject.

Also they lack incentive for excellence. I do not think that education necessarily has to be completely free. I think educators play a big role in our society and deserve to be paid for their work in a way that maximizes for reach rather than only profit.

For example in my project mawiwi.de, I almost never raised prices for my courses because I wanted to optimize for users reached, as the reason the create it was to offer an alternative to the super expensive courses that were available at my university.

I got a lot of joy from a higher numbers of learners, and I think I am not alone with this!

But this also leads me to a big problem! This mindset cannot be combined with venture capital. Building a platform that checks all the boxes I mentioned is a huge undertaking. While I also think that a project like this should not be VC-funded, this still poses a rather big problem to fulfill my vision.

My vision

I want to create a platform that caters to both, creators and students.

Present vision scenarios.

When I initially tackle a problem, I want to view it from the highest level possible and then break down each step into actionable tasks. Lets do this for my vision.

First there is a user, the student. This user has the goal to learn, understand or practice something. To achieve this goal, the user needs to be connected with the right content.

Secondly, the user can engage with the content in an impactful way.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the user should interact with content in an appropriate environment like a structured course on a learning platform where the next content piece or the next selection of content pieces is optimally just one click away.

Obviously, this simplifies the process a lot, but I think it is a good starting point.

From this I can derive 2 problems that need to be solved:

  1. How do we connect the user with the right content? This implies finding a scalable way to offer content to the user but leads us to further questions. 1.1 Where does the content come from? 1.2 Who determines what content is the right content? An algorithm, a machine learning model, a human? 1.3 In what format is the content presented? ...

  2. How do we create an impactful learning environment? 2.1 What type of learners do we want to cater to? Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic? Pre-school, School, University, Professional? 2.2 How do we motivate the user to engage with the content? 2.3 How do we make sure the user actually learns something? ...

As you can see, this is a very complex problem. But why not try?

1.1: Where does the content come from?

A mentor of me at a startup program, Dennis Birkhölzer once said that nobody is interested in your content as there is already everything out there. While my theory of hyperspecific courses is based on very specific content, I think that this is true for a lot of content out there. Alone the effect of connecting publicly available content in a meaningful way is a huge value add to the status quo.

Therefore, I enable linking web pages (obv warning the user before navigating of the platform) and embedding YouTube videos.

But I still think that there is a lot of content that is not available online, at least not open source. Therefore, teachers need to be able to easily create content on the platform. Videos, Explanations, Practice Problems and Flashcards come to my mind.

Lets enable video uploads and PDF uploads.

I also came up with vidify which is a tool to create interactive videos.

I created an interactive "Microsoft Word" like editor that allows teachers to create interactive practice problems, explanations and flashcards.

We need the best content of the world, available for everyone. So we need a way to translate content into different languages automatically.

Every single material should be editable directly on the platform to avoid a culture of persistent mistakes in content (like it is in books) and facilitate collaboration.

1.2 Who determines what content is the right content?

The answer is EVERYONE. Everyone should be able to create a collection of content based on the database of materials on the platform.

Add topics and immediately access all materials related to this topic. This makes the process of creating a selection of materials or creating content much faster.

The applications are endless. Students who teach their colleagues and simultaneously improve their own understanding. Teachers who are no longer limited by the immense amount of work to create digital content who want to create a course for their students. Professors who want to offer additional materials for their students and actively engage with them. Independent educators who want to feel the joy of teaching. Friends who want to help each other because one keeps failing a class. Parents who want to support their children. ...

Additionally, I would love to offer a global "Wikipedia"-like collection of topics. In case there are no suitable courses on the platform yet or someone wants to learn about one very specific topic.

1.3 In what format is the content presented?

As mentioned, I identified the most important material types that I deem scalable. I define scalable as "can be created and edited fast and easily without advanced technical knowledge".

2.1: What type of learners do we want to cater to?

My long-term answer is: ALL. By enabling everyone to create content, we can cater to all types of learners. Still I think, you should focus on one group in the beginning. Therefore, I try to start with university students.

2.2: How do we motivate the user to engage with the content?

I think gamification is a great way to motivate users. And I believe that I can learn a lot from existing apps like Duolingo. But I have to admit, that I have not put enough thought into this topic yet.

When I created a tool that created complete courses with the help of GPT-4 (including videos!), I realized that instant feedback for learning materials by users is necessary to keep the platform clean and attain a quality standard. Therefore, I added the option to rate materials and leave comments. This is a standard feature of most platforms.

What I am really excited about is the "Wikipedia"-edit feature I created. Hence the material editors are easy to use, every student can click on "Edit" and improve materials. And now... all users of a course can see the proposed change in a "Git"-like comparison and vote on it. If the majority of users vote for the change, it is automatically applied. Of course it can always be reverted due to the version control system that made it possible for creators to work on the same material together.

2.3: How do we make sure the user actually learns something?

This is the main question for learning platforms. I have seen many arguments that Duolingo is not actually effective in teaching for example. I have some experience teaching university students but do not know a lot about professionals or pupils. Therefore, I cannot answer this question yet.

My vision is for a platform that helps prepare for tests and exams. Maybe we will measure success by the grades of students, if they are willing to provide them.

The current state

I have developed such a platform and recently added localization. In the next step, I want to create more courses myself and inspire others to do so as well. I already have some professors on board and a rather big German company who wants to use it for their students.

Here are some more criteria that I want to optimize for:

  • Connection between students + between creators
  • Support for localized content
  • Creator experience (How easy/How much effort is it to create content)
  • Quality of content
  • Monetary Accessibility (How affordable is it + how is the value for money ratio?)
  • Learning Accessibility (How easy is it to find the right content)
  • Learning experience (How good is the platform for studying)
  • Engagement (How good is the platform for interacting with other students and creators)
  • Motivation (How good is the platform at motivating students to study)
  • Variety (What types of content are available)
  • Potential for institutional use (How easy is it for schools/universities/companies to use the content or the platform)
  • Safety (How safe is the platform for students and creators) + data security

You can see that this is a really tall order, so I am going about this step by step.

Please contact me, if you are as excited as I am about this project and want to help me realize my vision.

Or just check out the platform: https://studymaniac.de

Update

I sold Studymaniac to another EdTech company https://ecoreps.de. I am really happy with the selling process and am looking forward to see Ecoreps evolve!