Team

Dawna Wilbert

22:29, Mar 16, 2018

They provide comprehensive and free information about everything an international student needs to know about studying and living in the United States, from college admissions and financial aid to clothing sizes and culture shock.

Team

Estela Sanchez

11:46, Jan 14, 2016

Hi Hermosa, GREAT GREAT idea! Everyone has been harping on accreditation, Right? Well the way I see it is that brick-and-mortar institutions have the accreditation EduPass would need. What if EduPass worked with students to enroll in classes online or at other institutions whose credit would transfer to the institution that they are currently enrolled in (whether that is a traditional college, community college, online college). EduPass could help students find cheaper alternatives to fulfill requirements than that offered by their university, that transfers! And it could reduce the amount of time it takes to graduate.

Wish you the best. What ever direction you go it'll turn out Amazinnng.

Team

John Matthews

Edited on 13:37, Jan 13, 2016

As a previous Assistant Dean at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, I can confirm that accreditation would be tough. This is, however, what students do these days. They "cherry-pick" the courses they want and try to get credits to transfer to the next institution. Sometimes they transfer, sometimes they don't. And sometimes, an accredited institution will grant them a degree. 

It would be nice if you could grant them a degree from EduPass that is accredited. But, it may be a project that you could strive for in the future.

Alternatively, you could use an open badging system like Credly. A student could submit courses they took, and have them verified by the university. The student would then have a collection of badges that they could include on their LinkedIn profile. It may not be as powerful as a degree from some institution, but at least the student would be getting credit for what they've achieved.

We actually went down this road with Learning Herd (http://learningherd.com) and a student's collection of non-credit courses, but took the idea off the table for now.

Team

Kevin Heller

12:03, Jan 13, 2016

Great idea; however, bureaucracy will prevent it from working. 
I hate to be negative about the idea, because I actually would like to see this come to fruition. However, I work at a University, and I can assure you that developing articulation agreements between universities is a major challenge. One of the questions is this: which university will issue the degree? That university has to approve all the courses that would be part of this consortium, and university committees, composed of faculty, typically make those kinds of approvals. And they take forever. And faculty are notoriously cranky, obstructive, and difficult to work with. Getting all the universities in one system to work together is next to impossible; getting un-affiliated universities to work together is a tremendous challenge that I don't see a solution to. 

Team

Dave Zinsman

12:39, Dec 31, 2015

Hi, Hermosa!
I love this idea; lots of great threads around the idea of flexibility. Flexibility is a big selling point for students, institutions, and teachers; this represents many ways EduPass can be shaped to solve problems. Lots of ways problems can be solved = lots of ways to pattern a product for students, and a business case for institutions. 

I second Alexandra's comment. Let's start bringing this bad boy to life in some lo-fi sketches; get feedback from the OpenIDEO community; and try to mock it up somehow!

Team

OpenIDEO

11:25, Dec 22, 2015

Welcome to the refinement phase Hermosa! We’re excited to see how this idea can standardize the accreditation of online courses on a widespread scale.

In the upcoming weeks we’re looking forward to learning more about the business model, value proposition, and user journey of this idea. In particular, we’re curious to learn how EduPass degrees can be certified and recognized by future employers. How might you standardize the accreditation of online courses across universities? Also, can there be a hybrid version of this idea where students are able to receive a part of their college education in traditional classrooms? In the Refinement phase we’re also interested in how this idea might meet the needs of 1st generation college students. Studies have shown that 1st gen students are more likely to graduate with the support of a strong peer-network and amenable campus setting. How might you address this issue when students of EduPass will not have traditional classroom experiences? Some thoughts from our experts are that perhaps EduPass might be a great option for high school juniors and seniors who can take discounted college courses to save tuition on credits later on. This idea can also be suitable for juniors and seniors in college after they’ve acclimated to their campus environment during the first two years of enrollment - reducing the risk of early dropout from 1st gen students.

Here are some key questions and milestones we encourage from all ideas in the Refinement:
1. How might this idea address the unique needs of low-income families and first generation college students?
2. Clearly summarize the value proposition of your idea in 1-2 sentences
3. Identify assumptions that need to be answered in order to validate your value proposition.
4. Collect feedback from potential partners and users to answer the assumptions you’ve identified.
5. Communicate your idea in a visual way with user experience maps http://ideo.pn/UX_Map

Lastly, here's a useful tip: When you update the content of your post, it'd be helpful to indicate this in your idea title by adding an extension. For example, you can add the extension " - Update: Experience Maps 12/22" to you idea title. This will be a good way to keep people informed about how your idea is progressing. We’re excited to see this idea progress in the next weeks!

Team

Adam Smoot

20:33, Dec 16, 2015

Great idea Hermosa, the feature that immediately jumps out to me about your idea is that it leverages current infrastructure to create a tailored learning experience for each individual, based on their interests. I think that there is opportunity for you to expand the infrastructure beyond traditional institutions and incorporate online learning vehicles. Online learning such as Kahn or Coursera could be an important part of making a college degree accessible to a broader population. I agree with the comments regarding accreditation - and, I think that finding the right organization to partner with could help apply credits to a select number of these online course. It's not uncommon for colleges to recognize experiences such as military training towards college credits, I don't think this would be any different.  This organizational partner could serve as a clearing house, categorizing and validating available courses. 
I look forward to seeing how you grow and shape this idea! 

Team

OpenIDEO

15:53, Dec 15, 2015

Congrats on making it to the Refinement Phase Hermosa! In the next few days we'll be sending you additional feedback to help you take this idea forward - so be on the lookout for that. We're looking forward to how this idea will grow!

Team

Vidur Uthappa

14:37, Nov 30, 2015

Hi Hermosa, I love the Idea. Just a couple of inputs:
1) Accreditation is must, it is something which will standardize the education gained by each student from EduPass, also give some security to land a job. This is something that EduPass and the contributing universities can work on, since most of the universities are accredited and their courses will be upto the required academic rigour. Maybe they can setup a curriculum and set of required courses to be completed to receive a degree with a particular major.
2) This is for the Point # 7 in benefits from the idea: 
There are tons of students across the world taking similar courses which involve very similar course work and material. We can create a crowdsourced platform as a part of EduPass like a wiki for class notes where students can upload their class notes, useful resources for R&D etc. This would create a very useful repository of resources course-wise with different perspectives coming together and this platform would act as a one stop shop for students to access this wealth of information which is closely relevant to their course.

Team

Alexandra Alden

15:34, Nov 24, 2015

Hi Hermosa! Alex here from Path to Pitching, good start! Glad to see you’re interesting in making your idea real and pitching it to our network of accelerators! To get your idea pitch ready you'll need to form a team, then get out in the community and talk to your users to validate your problem and customers. Once you've done that start prototyping as soon as possible.

Check out our Human Centered Milestones, they are intended to help you develop your idea: http://bit.ly/1N6hgbQ

Learn more about the Path to Pitching: http://bit.ly/1HzPkeV

Team

Nicole Cote

17:25, Nov 10, 2015

Thanks for posting this interesting idea! After reading, I have a couple of queries you might consider:

1) Does this program follow a structured degree path per major? Normally, all degree programs have certain required courses that need to be taken. Would this system work in the same way? If not, how would future employers be able to judge the rigor of one student's work or degree versus the other?

2) Similarly, what would be the incentive for numerous universities offering a joint degree, when they would lose money by students not taking all classes at one place? Further, does that in some way limit the necessity of the existence of the schools on a whole?

Just a few logistical thoughts that I had when reading! Thanks for sharing this interesting idea.

Team

Katerina Bohle Carbonell

19:30, Nov 08, 2015

I like your idea. I have two points for you to consider while further developing your idea:
1. Have you looked into accreditation? This is currently done on a university-basis.
2. In what way is it different from following a specialization or verified certificate on coursera/edx/udacity?