How Would You Promote an O/S Education System? 25
mgkimsal2 asks: "We've put together a distance learning system for a college and the system is being released under an open source license. Given the budget we had, it was a decent sized system with enough features to go toe-to-toe with Blackboard in many situations. The biggest problem we're having right now is trying to find the appropriate people at colleges/universities. How do you go about reaching decision makers on something like this when the primary benefits of it is its open source nature? Cost/freedom are great, but many schools wouldn't be getting anything they don't already have, and would also have to go through the pain of migration. In a perfect world this becomes something that other schools could contribute to and build on, but getting that kind of buy-in seems relatively difficult. What types of academic positions would Slashdot readers recommend approaching (Deans? Presidents? Webmasters? Teachers? IT People?) What types of approaches might work best? Better yet, what's worked with -your- school to get them to adopt an Open Source Education System?"
High-placed tech types (Score:2)
Ask Slashdot, Slashdot provide answer (Score:2, Funny)
See the previous article about "Gangs Extort Companies With DDoS Attacks" for tips on increasing enthousiasm for your product almost as if by magic.
Our uni loves commercialware (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I wish I could tell you what would work. It's strange, but our university opts for commercial apps every single time.
We use a tool (which might sound familiar) called WebCT, which is commercial - it provides notes & discussion boards for every subject a student takes. Actually though, the lecturers have to use it for the students to get any benefit, and many don't! It's a shame, and so I cannot imagine most lecturers taking their time to master your system (however appealing it might be).
It's
Re:Our uni loves commercialware (Score:1)
Accountability. Who do you call and scream at when things break?
Re:Our uni loves commercialware (Score:2)
Re:Our uni loves commercialware (Score:1)
Re:Our uni loves commercialware (Score:2)
heck, almost
Barking (screaming) up the wrong tree (Score:2)
Your sole commercial supplier, who knows that it will now be too expensive to convert all of your systems to a competing application, and who has no clue what's really going on inside the applications he's flogging. And he's probably a David Hannum fan [historybuff.com].
With an Open Source app you could pick almost whatever support company you liked, and they'd know that their longevity with you was a function of their performance. But that could be considered boat-rocking
Me. (Score:2)
My story (Score:2)
Colleges are very prag
Influential professors (Score:2)
Sell him on it, and set it up for his department. Once you do that, you have a shot at getting at the administration that way.
Please help with marketing plan. (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Give the software itself away. I mean give it away like AOL gives away sign-up CD's. (OK, not nearly so spammy as that but you get the idea.) Only charge by billable credits. In other words, regardless of grade, dropped class, whatever, if the school charges a student for 3 credits of distance learning, you get 3 very small units of payment. This allows the school to bring the system up and use it with less risk. They only pay you after it generates revenue. They only pay for it if they use it. In return, you get paid for a LONG time. Schools have been quite happy with the subscription model for a long time now.
2. Seek out schools that do not currently have a decent solution in place. There are many.
3. Seek out the administration, they're the ones who sign Purchase Orders.
4. Make sure 'Open Source' isn't the only great feature. Or even the only 1 of 3. Toe-to-toe with Blackboard isn't really enough. Also, the primary feature is not "Open Source", it's that "Students and professors can build on it in and out of the classroom. They can add as many features as they can dream of." So it's "Much better than Blackboard."
5. Get buy in, via references at least, partnership at best, with well known, highly respected professors. (timely non-O/S example [yahoo.com]) Your ultimate marketing goal is to get professors to want it, and ask for it by name. Easier said than done, but there are some O/S enthusiastic professors out there. Find them.
6. Don't preach O/S to anybody who doesn't already get it and love it. You don't see a car salesman explaining torque or automotive industry practices to a soccer mom customer.
7. Write a manual in textbook style. Make it good. Allow the school to copy it and sell it at cost. Now they can make migration to your system a student project. Free labor is a good thing. Having your labor pay you per credit hour is even better! This concept doesn't end with migration. This might be the only time you mention O/S to the administrators who make the final decision and sign the P/O. This is where O/S saves the school the most obvious and significant money.
Good luck.
Start at the top (Score:2, Informative)
One: Trickle up. Whereby professors, students, etc would download your software, play with it, and may create a buzz
Two: Trickle down. The decision makers are notified, showed the system and make a decision to use the system.
Typically I think you should approach the trickle down method if you are looking for people to adopt the system quickly. Going witht the trickle up method is great if you hav
Re:Start at the top (Score:1)
For me, pedagogy should drive technology, not the other way around. I consider the courses I'm assigned, how I like to teach, and what I would like to teach---then look for the specifics that match my pedagogical frame.
cbd.
Say again? (Score:2, Informative)
Post more info here and elsewhere (Score:2, Informative)
One way: when you post something to Slashdot, reach the many, many faculty and graduate students who read it by including a URL. Two others:
I regularly read all of these sites looking for courseware news. I know other folks who do the same.
cbd.
"Elsewhere" to include SEUL/SchoolForge (Score:2)
Google has another list of likely targets [google.com].
...and a SchoolForge book Wiki (Score:2)
Re:Post more info here and elsewhere (Score:2, Informative)
The author's name of the original post is a link to something called LogiCreate [logicreate.com], a commercial content management system. There's a news announcement on that page about the educational version, but no link to it.
Meanwhile, I'm curious about what they mean by open source. There's a few notes about an LCPL open source license, but I don't see any terms for the license anywhere. The closest is this explanation that it's similar to the Qt license [logicreate.com].
I wonder what the terms of the license are???
JA-SIG (Score:2)
Sell "It doesn't suck" (Score:2)
They have already paid for this thing that sucks, and are bitter.
So, assuming yours doesn't suck, talk about how they can get this thing installed in time for next semester, without any additional licensing costs.
You're going to dig them out of the hole they made and turn their failure around (but don't say it like that!). They might pay you for your help.
Not difficult to compete (Score:2)
The organization I was working for spend LOTS of money developing a system that would allow teachers to collaboratively create courses online (the LMS, reversed). They set it up so that it would output SCORM [rhassociates.com].
It turned out that while Blackboard SAID it supported SCORM, we couldn't actually find anything SCORM-related in the software... or the documentation.
The best example of online lear