Online/hybrid universities and Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
By Chris Anderson



The premise is that to cut through the clutter of advertising around online/hybrid programs for adults (see ubiquity of U of P in search engine and display ads) that we need to offer a compelling reason for potential students and potential student influencers to find us online. We can only do this if we “give away” something of value to them, in exchange for something of value to us (namely their contact info and potential to speak to them about our programs).

Things we could make “free” in higher education:

- Could we start a blog (a coaching blog) that focused on careers and skills/credentials necessary for people in middle-management to move to leadership positions? This is the group of people who are our natural student group…and maybe a blog like this (stocked with material from our courses, presentations etc.) would be both of value to the audience and serve as a connection to our programs. We could ask all faculty to be contributing authors…and to promote the blog in their various activities. The blog could live outside our pages – but be linked to the home page.

- Branded, creative-commons copyrighted materials of our faculty training and course development methodology. The more that QU / CPS can be seen as a leader in online/hybrid course design, faculty development etc. the better our chance of getting the attention of people in corporate universities and other learning types who both track this stuff and can influence people in their organizations. (A related idea is to offer free workshops on learning design methodology to corporate universities).

- Produce a book on Leadership and give away copies to potential students, corporate universities etc. How quickly could we produce a good quality book with each of our faculty writing a chapter on their specialty (correlated to our courses and program) within leadership? Give away as a an e-book.

- Faculty Breeze presentations that match to our courses and align with their subject matter expertise (these could be published on things like YouTube as well…goal is to get wider traction and currency).

Have we thought about moving our faculty collaborative space to a public area – say a Facebook Groups page? What would be the pros and cons of letting potential students interact with us in a forum such as Facebook?

We need to accept that what is valuable in what we do is the ability to give academic credit and bestow a University degree. The design and content of our courses are valuable to us – but not to the market – and we should be findings ways to “give away” as much of this as possible (which shows off our strengths!) – in order to connect with potential students and be able to talk to them about the advantages of getting their degrees with us (intimate classes, advanced technologies, high ROI etc. etc. etc.)