Team

Daniel Aldana

12:43, Jan 22, 2016

Hi Briandy, thanks for your comment. 
We don´t think it´s as impossible as you make it sound. Remember that emptydesks is not so much about adhering to the actual rules of the university system but about disrupting them, at least a bit. We have talked to many college Provosts who understand that the higher education sector needs to change and innovate, and are willing to lead the way. We are already working with two of them who preside over high-quality universities who have agreed to partner with us to offer their courses through emptydesks. So far we are advancing very well with them and their teams and I´m pretty confident we will be able to surmount each obstacle in the way - all those that you mention and some others.  
So please wish us luck, maybe you can agree with us that the system needs to be much more student/client-oriented. Our best wishes to you. 

Team

Lucy Chen

07:48, Jan 26, 2016

 I am glad that Daniel Aldana and the team are doing well in negotiating with traditional school provosts. But also I agree with Briandy  that Emptydesk team may want to think more realistically, or give couple examples of what kind of classes empty desk students can possibly get from those universities.  HOWEVER, I think there is a fundamental assumption here: we need to stick to traditional idea of a degree, which makes up of couple credits. Credits are more of less one of the most bureauractic products to provide a reference point of a student's performance. And credit system has evoked all the prerequisites, co-requisites, etc. Are current design of how a degree is composed THE way to prove a student's competency in the world? I don't believe so. We have witnessed many other disruptive ways that show students' drives in learning, their intellectual exploration, etc. Those qualities are far more important than the simple credits that a school provides. If empty desk successfully form the student culture that they are learners and they seek opportunities for intellectual exploration + some projects that show their core competencies, basically put more design into the 'Emptydesk Degree', students would benefit more here. In that case, universities are more like partners of empty desk. We rely partially on the services that are provided by traditional colleges, so that the 1st gen students still get more recognition for their coursework than Coursera. (Social recognition is very important for 1st gen students). For me as a student myself, I wish to see Emptydesk not only provide opportunities to take classes on campus, I need to see a more tangible final product that motivates me to go empty desk rather than Coursera. Why empty desk degree would matter? be it social recognition, be it student value, be it projects. The inherent design of the values and components of such degree matters, although I do agree and hope for the growing social awareness that education system needs to be FLATer.  

Team

Eric Geisterfer

09:48, Feb 14, 2016

Since Briandy works in a university she has an insiders view and she has brought up very valid points. To these I would add:
1) Based on my memory from college, courses that are mandatory for a major are usually filled to capacity. How are you going to accommodate emptydesk students? 

Team

Scott Kennedy

06:40, Feb 15, 2016

Hi Eric, 

Thanks for the comment. There are a few things to consider here. Large core courses are often very scalable - it's not a decision of offering them or not, but usually how many TAs are needed to accommodate the final size. If a university would like to increase the number of students enrolled, as long as the main lecture hall can fit additional students, enrolling more can usually be done. Another factor is that a main group that we'd like to serve are students who've had to dropout of school. For this group, they would be most interested in the next level of courses that are more specialized and are less likely to be highly subscribed. 

In the end, we feel that creating this new channel into universities will provide value for the students and the universities themselves. If it does, we're confident the administrative procedures are solvable. 

Scott

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 18:15, Feb 01, 2016

Indeed it has been a great journey! The challenge has been instrumental in helping us give shape to our idea and get the validation that we required to fully commit to this exciting startup. With it, we hope to help transform the higher education sector and help it better serve young people in the US and around the globe. Thanks OpenIDEO, UBS and of course thanks to all the community! We will try our hardest to earn the support that each of you gave us with each view, comment and applause.

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 13:12, Jan 21, 2016

Thanks John. I liked very much your Tuition Heroes , best of lucks in these final weeks of the challenge!

With regards to your question, only those universities willing and eager to innovate will become part of our network. They would of course need to lower the restrictions and conditions for emptydesk students. We have talked to many college Provosts who understand that the higher education sector needs to change and innovate, and are willing to lead the way. Plus, many of them have the required process very close at hand, since they already handle admissions in a much more simplified way for their continuing education programs. Hope this helps to answer your doubt. 
Cheers.

Team

Lucy Chen

14:53, Jan 21, 2016

Hi Daniel Aldana and John Matthews , 

     I agree with the questions around credits. In the earlier ideo.org meetup in SF, Mansi, Philip and me had the same question. We were questioning if emptydesk is really for people who need a degree instead of most learners on Coursera. However, from what I see, outside of the whole question of accredition or the possibilities for students to get credits, the more important question for the users is why and how do these credits matter? The 'degree' that emptydesk is offering should not be the mere summary of the coursework students have taken. It ought to be a USEFUL one, regarding competitiveness in job market, etc.   Not sure if you have read the Google Doc I posted earlier in a relatively long comment, I have some to say about distinguishing emptydesk from cheaper alternatives to taking classes like coursera.  I personally have doubts that 'on campus' experience is a big enough trigger for the target users. Most of the peer support, communication between students and teachers and socialization do not happen in class. I wish to see WHAT TYPES of classes are more likely to be offered on emptydesk. As I would assume, many many of which will be lectures, as many universities can not satiate their own students' needs for seminars.  For student who want to take class through emptydesk, economic concerns are huge for them. It is realistic for them to see substantial benefits of taking those classes, given commute and other costs. From what I believe, the 'degree' that emptydesk can offer should be designed into a product, not just a piece of paper, but a more pragmatic package to show the competitiveness of students. Emptydesk students are LEARNERS, much more than people who are not formally enrolled in traditional universities. 

Team

Daniel Aldana

07:01, Jan 26, 2016

Thanks Lucy, this is great advice that we will definitely take into consideration. Sorry for my late response, these past days have been crazily hectic!

Team

Lucy Chen

07:23, Jan 26, 2016

totally. If you need some help in flashing out more about how to  make the degree more beneficial for students, I am up for it. Also, I can help with ideating how to make a tighter student virtual community. Let me know. 

Team

Daniel Aldana

07:30, Jan 26, 2016

Thanks Lucy, both of those would be awsome! 

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 16:27, Jan 21, 2016

Hi Rebecca. Yours is one of the most important questions with regards to emptydesks´ value proposition. Our biggest and upmost interest is to help students get a degree and advance towards a successful professional career. In order to accomplish this the universities that become part of our network will i. need to agree to provide academic credit to the students that take their courses, and ii. be open to validate the credits given by other universities of the network. Those universities not willing to innovate on their academic certification processes to allow for this credit validation will therefore not become part of our network. We have already talked to many college Provosts who understand that the higher education sector needs to change, and are willing to lead the way. Plus, the fact that all the universities in our network will be high-quality (e.g. regionally accredited institutions) will facilitate this credit validation among them. Hope this helps to answer your question. Cheers

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 17:08, Jan 20, 2016

Thanks Jim, that's very generous of you. I'm a fan of your contributions, maybe you don't know this but the OpenIdeo team constantly referred to your work as an example of the best practice, so there you go... Best of lucks with your idea, I was sad not to see @college as lenders in the final selection...

Team

Kaye Han

18:40, Jan 20, 2016

Thanks for your kind words, Jim. As Daniel has mentioned, you've been doing some amazing work yourself. Very excited to see the future of both these ideas. :) 

Team

Jim Rosenberg

19:43, Jan 20, 2016

Wow, thanks so much for sharing that feedback. I didn't know -- it's both very rewarding and kind of humbling to hear that. I really liked the Colleges As Lenders idea too. I think there is something there that could align incentives and make a big difference. Maybe next challenge :-) Best of luck with next steps!

Team

Jim Rosenberg

19:44, Jan 20, 2016

Thanks Rob, I really appreciate the support and the kind words!

Team

Lucy Chen

15:15, Jan 18, 2016

Hi Rob, 

A question. Why does the team think peer referral would be the most important way to attract fiture users of emptydesk?

Lucy 

Team

Kaye Han

18:38, Jan 20, 2016

Hi Lucy, thanks for your question. I would not say it is the 'most important' way to attract future users but it certainly plays well with organic growth and the fact that students currently do ask each other what classes to take. Referrals from friends are high converting and relatively low cost, this is a great way to grow the user base. This of course needs to be tested. If you have any alternative ideas, would love to hear your thoughts. 

Team

Daniel Aldana

16:08, Jan 20, 2016

Thanks Alex! We have sized our market and estimated a potential share both in the US and in Colombia, but as my grandma used to say "if I tell you everything then everything you would know" ;) Cheers!!

Team

Daniel Aldana

13:56, Dec 17, 2015

Absolutely Philip, that´s a great advice. Thanks!

Team

Lucy Chen

15:56, Jan 18, 2016

Hey Philip, enjoyed working with you too. Sorry for the very late comment. Was gone for winter break. On a second thought, I actually think the persona 'Teresa' the team came up would actually work for emptydesk too, so to differentiate Emptydesk from MOOCs, where there are more learners who already have degrees and dont care about obtaining a piece of paper from coursera. However, many cases like Teresa will still need a degree, which means that there is a value for emptydesk to create a some sort of 'certificate for the degree' as a way to recognize the accomplishments. I am brainstorming such a product and will update in a few hours, if you are interested. Daniel Aldana 

Team

Daniel Aldana

18:26, Jan 18, 2016

Definitely very interested. Thanks Lucy!

Team

Kaye Han

19:56, Dec 23, 2015

Bettina, you're amazing. Your constant feedback and thoughts are really helping to take this idea to the next level. To reply your points:

Having a meetup and community of some sort for EmptyDesks will be powerful. Very powerful. I believe this is a great solution to helping 1st gen students have a network that keeps them motivated to stay the course. 

Scholarships and awards would certainly be an easy integration into the system, absolutely. If anything, this would be a great channel for certain scholarships that target those in financial need, I believe the Gates Foundation has something like this. 

Overall our focus right now is to not expand the idea to incorporate too many features, but to distill it down to the core. So we're going to list our some core assumptions from our experience map, go and test those assumptions, and post it on here. We're really looking forward to your feedback when the times comes. :)

Team

Lucy Chen

Edited on 15:30, Jan 18, 2016

Hi Team!

I echo with Bettina Fliegel  about providing stronger peer support through emptydesk. However, I would challenge the idea that community is solely about proving an environment for people to meet, be it virtually or in person. One thing I see lacking in emptydesk. com is a shared identity of its student users. I firmly believe that a common spirit is crucial in building a student community, espcially given that the student body that emptydesk serves is mostly low income, maybe first generation students, who are in greater need of affirmative peer support and external recognition.  I am still writing up a longer idea on value-building for emptydesk community. I would love to share if you guys are interested. 

Team

Daniel Aldana

06:40, Jan 15, 2016

Thanks a lot Joel. We will study those carefully. I found some common grounds between our idea and your Unlimited Learning . Don't you?

Team

Daniel Aldana

13:12, Jan 14, 2016

Thanks Karen! We will look into it.
A good source for US statistics, we believe, is the IPED data center https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/login.aspx . Have you tried it?

Team

Karen Sorensen

13:30, Jan 14, 2016

Yes, I have used their data before but for a market analysis I created for the k-12 sector. I looked at the people, institutions, funding, and technology and developed a database from the information. I like using College Board data for Higher Education at this time since they combine different source, saving me time.

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 04:31, Jan 08, 2016

Hi Karen, congratulations to you too, your 1Gen2Fund idea sounds very interesting.

Let me try to answer your questions: Students registered at "emptydesks . com" would need to be different and have lesser "rights" or services than regular students. They would be registered with a different status, they could only take a few credits at each university with a top limit (say 1/3-1/2 of the total career), but most importantly they would directly not earn a diploma from any given university, but would only get a certificate for the credits taken. In that sense regular students would not demand the same treatment and the universities would not risk damaging their pricing strategy (or getting sued, as you mention). In a way these students would be similar to the airline passengers who buy the most economic tickets but have no right to choose a seat or change their flight date, while regular students would be more like business class passengers.

For our prioritized type of client who is a dropout, what we believe will happen is that emptydesks works as a safety net not allowing her to drop out completely of higher education, and provides her with the flexibility to keep enrolled for the next several semesters, each with few credits at a time in a college different to her original one. Once she has regained academic confidence and probably financial capacity to enroll again, we believe that her original college will take her back for the final credits and give her the degree, because she has demonstrated academic proficiency at good quality universities, has received the required credits for it, plus, the university gets to scratch her off its high attrition rates, and gets some extra income.

I didn´t understand very well your “dependent on the location of the student” question.
Let me know what you think, would love to keep this conversation open and get more of your feedback. 

Team

Karen Sorensen

09:05, Jan 08, 2016

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for replying to my questions. The location relates to the supply and demand, just like with airline ticket aggregators platforms,  the more supply the lower the cost, less supply leads to greater demand and greater cost and location plays a factor. An example, it is much easier to find low cost tickets to Las Vegas (many frequent flights) than Omaha NE, where there is less flights. With EmptyDesk, supply is based on the location of the empty sit. In markets like Boston and Bay Area, their are empty sits since they have an abundance of institutions, but in a market like Denver (3.4 million people) with only 4 4-year institutions, there is less supply and less open sits.  Technically in low supply markets , the cost would increase and be offered at a premium, since there is a scarcity of open desks.  This always applies to disciplines that have higher demand--like engineering, technology, bio-science, there is a scarcity of desks. In disciplines like psychology, philosophy, etc... there is lower demand so there would be open sits. 

The average cost of 4 year public school tuition in the US for 2015-16 is $9,410 per year, lets say that this is a semester school or $4700 per semester. Generally this charge is based on 12-15 credits, which would be about $313-$391 per credit, most class are at least three credits, would be about $1000 per class, at a 20% discount that is $800. Generally, high ed institutions charge more for less than 12 credits, but this gives us a number to work with. The question I have would your user have $800 in disposable income to pay for the expense?  The average salary for a retail store manager in LA is about $60,000- 22% leaving about $46,000 take home to pay for transportation, telecommunications, utilities, rent, food, clothing and entertainment. Average cost of rent in LA is about $2300.00, lets say she pays 1/2 of the rent leaving $32,000 to pay for other expenses. I know that transportation cost--car payment, gas, insurance, and maintenance would run your user about $500 per month or $6000 per year, taking this down to $26,000 per year.  The budget is really tight.

From my experience working in higher education, it is really hard to transfer credits, so I think that each University would need to agree to accept the others credits from the get go, in order to make it valuable to the student.

I cannot help but think about competency skills training when I think of the idea of EmptyDesks and what LinkedIn is trying to accomplish with their purchase of Lynda.com for 1.5 billion. They are taking Lynda's content and building a competency platform for particular skills. Right now they are in the process matching skills and job requirements. The idea is that when you complete the skill, you have a certificate from LinkedIn that you possess the skills needed to be successful in that career. Its delivered online not face-to-face, which historically is more expensive. 

Thoughts? K

Team

Daniel Aldana

04:54, Jan 09, 2016

Hi Karen, you are absolutely right, low income students face a very tight financial situation. That´s why this challenge and others similar to it are so important. They also face a dilemma that we think is false and will try to help solve: they either i) stay in school and aggravate their and their family´s financial situation for some years, or ii) they drop out and work and get some financial relief, but fail to access high-quality flexible education (maybe they can access online education, but that that does not solve the equation for many of them). We believe that on-campus education can do much more to help these students. Of course financial help is going to be very important. The whole higher education ecosystem has to step up to provide many more and more profound financial mechanisms to help the least favored. Ideas like yours are very important in that regard and I think that they should be complementary with emptydesks such that our students find easy access to financing their courses. We will also invest in providing rigorous proof that our students can perform well academically and earn a degree, so that they can access funding. We loved your number crunching, but we believe the average tuition that you are using is a bit high for this population. All in all, we are estimating that they would need to pay around $500 per course, which is still high, but it is not that high, especially if we can find mechanisms for them to pay in 6-month installments which are already in place in many colleges and universities around the world.
Finally regarding the credit transfers, of course it is not going to be easy and not all universities but specially not all university officials that we speak to are going to be willing to change. But as we said in another comment: It´s not so much about adhering to the higher education actual rules and institutions, it is about disrupting them. And we have already talked with plenty of universities and colleges that feel that innovation can no longer be postponed, and want to take the first step.

Best of lucks with 1Gen2Fund, would love that you keep us posted with its progress beyond the challenge!

Team

Karen Sorensen

09:24, Jan 09, 2016

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for the best wishes on 1Gen2Fund. The information that I used for the numbers was the college board statistics http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-published-undergraduate-charges-sector-2015-16  This is an average. Do you have a link that show lower tuition prices? If so, I would love to see it.

I agree the current state of online learning is not in the best learning environment for low-income, first generation students. It just does not provide the socialization they need to be successful in Higher Education. I think this hypothesis is confirmed with the MOOC trend, where the majority of users already have college degrees. The cost is low, but has not been a factor in increasing low-income students participation in the MOOC's.

I don't know if you are aware of the Milken-Penn GSE business plan competition, but here is the link http://www.educationcompetition.org/  They have a track for products at the Idea stage. I think EmptyDesk would follow under several categories of interest. I was a finalist one year and last year a judge.  The application is pretty straight forward.

The best of luck to you and EmptyDesk and hope we meet in person in NYC. K

Team

Bettina Fliegel

08:34, Jan 10, 2016

Hi Daniel and team, and Karen!
Daniel - How did your team come up with $500/class?  (To add onto Karen's numbers the cost to take a class for one semester at a private college can be between $3800 and $5000, for a 3 credit class.)
Have you prototyped the platform in the US?  When you prototype are you sharing examples of possible university sites, class types, and cost per credit or class?  I wonder if asking young people what they might be able to afford for one class/ semester might be one way to start the conversation?   What numbers are they imagining for costs as you present the idea?  
Might universities be incentivized in some way to provide the seats for a nominal fee for those in need if they receive some sort of tax benefit from the government?  Just trying to think about ways to get students back on track and also for universities to gain some revenue.

Team

Karen Sorensen

12:28, Jan 10, 2016

Daniel, your idea is visionary and I its a totally has potential to disrupt how education experiences are purchased on a global level. I see EmptyDesk as a type of Geo-location based Higher Education marketplace that could really disrupt the cost, the accessibility, and quality of education.  In order to have disruption all stakeholders must feel some pain for change in systems, behaviors and habits. I feel that in that US colleges do not feel the pain that EmptyDesks could solve in its current structure,  and would be highly resistant to adopt.   For them to take only $500 a class that would normally cost 50% more, it is not worth the possible legal, labor, and management costs  within the institution. However, there is another stakeholder that might make this worthwhile, and that is the raise of the adjunct professor in the US market.

Right now over half of all professors in Higher Ed are adjunct and do not receive the same benefits or pay as tenured, most work only part-time and have to supplement their incomes by working a multitude of different colleges, some of them are part of the educated poor, especially in expensive housing markets. Here is some links to read more about the higher ed labor market. http://www.forbes.com/sites/noodleeducation/2015/05/28/more-than-half-of-college-faculty-are-adjuncts-should-you-care/
https://www.noodle.com/articles/the-rise-of-part-time-faculty-and-its-effect-on-higher-ed131
Lots of adjunct professor have a existing financial pain. Colleges and Universities generally like to keep high preforming adjuncts since they know the quality of their work, so I believe that this could be a pain point for Colleges as well, that don't want to pay the instructors more.

 It would be interesting to see if Adjunct professors would be willing to receive $450 more a qtr/semester to have one additional student. The additional $50 would be EmptyDesk's fee.  And, how big of a problem adjunct professor retention is for Colleges and Universities. The adjuncts are starting to unionize which could indicate some problems for Colleges and Universities, so there might be some pain there to avoid. 

Thoughts? K

Team

Daniel Aldana

04:46, Jan 11, 2016

Thanks Karen.
We do believe that if we execute it well this idea has a BIG disruption potential. Hopefully it gets to be to on-campus education, what MOOCs are (or intend to be) to online/general education. 
Your ideas around adjunct professors are quite intriguing... food for thought.
We have thought of exciting ways to build a strong commnity with teachers but that will come a bit further down the road.
Thanks again for all that great feedback!

Team

Daniel Aldana

04:58, Jan 11, 2016

Thanks Bettina, those are great ideas, we´ll look into them.
The courses targeted to low-income, first generation students will probably (at least at first) come from colleges with annual tuitions in the range of the $7,000-8,000 dollars.  There are plenty of high-quality regionally accredited colleges in that range, and many have real problems to get the demand they intend to and therefore use very poorly their installed teacher and infrastrucre capacity. Karen Sorensen placed caution on  the fact that a $500 course might not be enough to interest colleges, but the financial models that we have built indicate that a college who uses emptydesks well could earn 2-5 additional percentage points of its EBITDA margin. The college CFOs that we have talked to would give a tooth for something like that ;). 
Best of lucks with ProjectEd, and hope to meet you futher down the road!

Team

Daniel Aldana

17:08, Dec 30, 2015

Thanks Alex, we´ll be working around these lines during the next weeks. Cheers!

Team

Shane Zhao

12:18, Jan 04, 2016

Loving all the progress Daniel! We're excited to see all the new updates on the milestones of Path to Pitching.

Here's a helpful tip. In addition to the executive summary you've created, it’d be great to also insert some of the key content from your attached docs into the main body of your idea post. (The attached docs may not be visible to community members who are reading through your idea for the first time.) For an example, check out Jim's idea post: https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/higher-ed/refinement/long-term-education-insurance

To echo Alex's comment about the MVP, it'd be help to clearly format your idea into different phases of implementation. I.e. Phase 1 MVP — Discounted course offerings, Phase 2 — Additional Features. Consider how the MVP can address the focus on cost and the targeted group of highschool and later stage college students (refered to in our previous OpenIDEO feedback comment).

Happy New Year and we're looking forward to seeing the next updates!

Team

Shane Zhao

12:58, Jan 04, 2016

Also, it'd be great to provide a live hyperlink to your online survey at the top of your idea post:)

Team

Daniel Aldana

13:53, Jan 04, 2016

Done!

Team

Shane Zhao

Edited on 16:50, Jan 04, 2016

Hi Daniel, for the prototype it'd be helpful to do more with less. Consider what the barebones version of the MVP can be to reach the goal of reducing the Cost for 1st gen college students. How can you validate your value proposition with the most important elements first? The additional features can be rolled out in a Phase 2 version of your product.  

I like how you've built off of the Expedia site to create a quick mockup for rapid prototyping - that's very clever:) As your incorporate feedback, it'll help to create some original mockups with sample images and text of what your target audience will see. Would the UX of a platform for discounted courses work the same way as one for air travel? How would 1st gen college students experience the site differently that someone who's booking airfare? What's the most important information to highlight? 

In addition to the online survey, it'd be great to highlight feedback from the in-person testing sessions. People often react differently when they test a prototype in person vs. answering a survey. What worked well? What can be improved? The Mural Prototyping Template is a helpful way to focus on testing one assumption at a time. 

Team

Daniel Aldana

03:56, Jan 05, 2016

Thanks Shane. We´ll be working on it these last two weeks

Team

Daniel Aldana

17:07, Dec 30, 2015

Thanks Alex,
our prototype is attached in the section called “Attachments”. Hope the communityt gets to try it and answer the short online survey at the end! Hope this helps, please let me know. 

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 09:26, Dec 18, 2015

Mansi,
Lucy Chen 
Philip Arca 
Thanks a lot for those great contributions!
Let me propose the following answers to your questions:
i. We think that in order to differentiate "emptydesk students" and avoid risking the status of a regular student (in the same way that airlines differentiate passengers who buy the most economic tickets but have no right to choose a seat or change their flight date from business-class passengers), universities will ask us to limit the total number of credits that a given emptydesk student can take with each given school; in that sense we don’t see one person taking all the credits in one school.
 ii. We will devote a great part of our effort to provide academic advice and offer career path guidance and alternatives to studenst, so that they can profit the most from the courses they register and build on them to follow a path that better suits their career and life purposes. We will do so with the aid of technology plus our own academic advisors who will have in-depth understanding of the universities and colleges program requirements, but at the same time will have a very modern vision of a higher education sector that needs to become much more client oriented, flexible, innovative and value adding.
iii. We will work very intensely to gain recognition not only with the academic sector by only allowing high-quality (regionally) accredited institutions in our network, but also by promoting our proposition with businesses and employers. We will hope that the same way that businesses already give high value to non-academic degree certificates issued by institutions such as Microsoft and Oracle, they would recognize our certificates for the seriousness of our work, the reviews from our customers, and the quality of each of the universities in our network. 
What do you think?

Team

Mansi Parikh

17:40, Dec 17, 2015

Hey Daniel,


On point number 'i' I think limiting the number of credits that a student can take from one school will be extremely beneficial. You would have to be very careful in setting the limits and while doing that I would urge you to look at it from the user's perspective. We posited that the students who would be most likely to use EmptyDesks for a full degree would be those who have no financial backing or the means to receive any. So they can't pay a full time tuition and may have little to no family support so as in the case of the user we 'sketched' they may have constraints on when and where they can take their classes so if you put too many boundaries they might not see the value of your platform and decide not to go to school at all.

I agree points ii & iii with you that a strong guidance will benefit students a lot and so will recognized certification courses. You could also look into gaining industry recognition for the "Emptydesks" degree since that will help not just the students but also the platform to gain acceptance.

I would recommend finding potential users and running a simple A/B Test with them. It might give you the answers you need or the direction you need to look in.
 

Team

Daniel Aldana

09:27, Dec 18, 2015

Thanks again Mansi, learning a lot from your advice. Cheers

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 02:22, Dec 12, 2015

Hi Bettina,

Thanks a lot for pointing us to Northwestern Connecticut Community College´s Highschool Partnership which I think is great. Many colleges and universities have those kind of programs as it serves the dual purpose of being a recruiting strategy and opening the campus to a more diverse population. It would be great if more universities and colleges follow that strategy and provide some scholarships for high-school students, at least where they have empty desks. I would hope that our website could be the platform where they could offer them, and by doing so, be much more client-oriented with their courses. 

As to your thoughts about non-degree students: ABSOLUTELY. We believe that our website will have three main types of students:
1) John, a 26 year-old who dropped out of a Bachelor in Systems Engineering after completing 6 semesters. During the next three years, and while he keeps his regular job as a programmer, he will use emptydesks. com to register for most of the remaining credits; at the end, he will register back to his original college to finish his thesis and get his diploma. His college will be more than happy to take him back and scratch him off its high attrition statistics.
2) Mary, she works, at a young age she is already the mother of two, and never thought of going to college. But now that she hears about this more flexible, non-expensive and high-quality education platform offered by emptydesks. com, she registers for credits over the next 12 years, in the three cities where she lives throughout that period. After that time, she surprises her boss with a degree certificate in Accounting from emptydesks. com. Her boss, who has heard about the website and knows that only high-quality universities participate in it, talks the owner of the small enterprise where they work into giving her a promotion.
3) Betty, she is an outstanding professional and has graduate studies from one of the best universities in the world. As she is approaching her retirement she finds herself with some free time and rediscovers her passion for sustainibility. She goes into emptydesks. com and finds a course called “Environmental Problematics” in a local university near her, which is rated 5 over 5 by 98% of the students that took it, has great reviews, and a couple of seats available. She takes the course, loves the experience and makes a couple of young friends who are her daughther´s age.

How does that sound?

Team

Daniel Aldana

05:00, Dec 14, 2015

Hi Bettina,
I attached a document called Personas and user experience draft, inspired by our conversation. Thanks!

Team

Bettina Fliegel

Edited on 06:39, Dec 14, 2015

Hi!  That is great Daniel.
I had written another comment but deleted by accident yesterday.  The crux of it was a Tip to post this information from your comment above, which are in the doc, in the Text of Your Post.   The User Scenarios really help bring the idea to life.  
I think that your focus on youth that have started college and dropped out is great.  It seems to me that someone who has already had some college experience would navigate and approach finding coursework that they need differently than a Freshman for example.  They might need less guidance, and if they need guidance it would be more targeted and they might have resources to find it more easily.   Might this be something to test with potential users?  
As many first generation students drop out emptydesks could be a vehicle for them to achieve the goal of getting a bachelors.   Do you envision any needs that may be specific for this group, in terms of using the site?  

Regarding highlighting the User Scenarios here:
You can enter them into the text of the post and indicate with a subject line:  
UPDATE : User Scenarios, 12/14 (as an example date)

You can also indicate that the post itself is Updated by writing : "Update,  12/14"   in the Title, next to EmptyDesks.    (see what EduHarmony has done in their title line)

Linking documents into the Post also makes access easy.   The Prototype that you have in the documents that you ask folk to look at - You can hyperlink it into your Post in the text.  
Maybe link it near the top of the texts and Invite folk to look at it there?  

Just some tips so folk moving around the Challenge Site can find things easily.

Bettina

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 10:03, Dec 05, 2015

A: Thanks Jim, great comments and right on many of the key issues of the idea. Let me try to answer with my proposal on how to tackle them initially (I say initially because emptydesks. com will need to evolve throughout its phases of launch, growth, etc.). My proposals are consistent with two principles that I would want to honor: 1) Simplicity – at least starting - is best. 2) It´s not so much about adhering to the higher education actual rules and institutions, it is about disrupting them. I believe that the higher education sector needs to become much more impactful by being more flexible, accessible, and customer oriented, versus the old institutions, old teaching habits, and the research orientation that it has today. Having said that this is what I propose around the points that you make:
i. Certification of degrees: I propose that emptydesks. com initially builds it´s own private certification committee that does not comply or adhere to the government-recognized accreditation system. Much like businesses accept and value the certificates issued for example by Microsoft or Oracle, we would work so that employers recognize the value of our certificates. There are also several countries where this kind of private certification is allowed and valued as highly as the publicly-ran or publicly-controlled certification system. In the future we could look at alternatives like the ones you propose where a specific university would provide the degrees. In any case, we would require the participating universities to provide certificates on the individual courses taken, so that those could be “banked” by a student who decides to register (or register back) as a formal student in a university after taking several credits in our platform.

ii. Paths to degrees: very important. Your ideas are just on the track of what we are thinking. We would have online tools and call-center advisory for students to plan their careers and even technical specializations or minors.

iii. Selectivity: we would like our platform to have plenty (if not the majority) of open courses. I believe that we have so little understanding of the true drivers of academic and professional performance that we have designed a very complicated and cumbersome selection and pre-requisites system, only to discover that some aspects that we don´t explicitly require such as resilience, social background (very unfortunately), or the teacher herself have more incidence than all the selection conditions that we impose on the students. Having said that, we will also give the universities the alternative of creating certain – not too complicated - selection conditions for some courses. Some courses might have prerequisites of other courses, accept students with only a GPA, GPA percentile or official test percentile above certain level, and some courses might even have a simple 10-question competency test designed by the university in collaborative work with us.

iv. Course capacity: there will definitely be a shortage of capacity for many courses, some which will be key for students to complete a degree, such as for example the initial 101s that are usually full up to the last desk. But, I believe that the most numerous type of user for our platform will be that student who did 3-4 semesters and then dropped-out. In that sense they will be demanding later courses, which due to the 40-50% average attrition of the higher education sector, usually have much more excess capacity. Nonetheless, we would work with universities to open up more courses where we measure that there is an excessive demand (of course in those courses that prove through our platform that have the best quality), and I believe that many will be happy to open it up. I have been interviewing Provosts, Vice-Provosts, and other university officials (I will attach the conclusions soon), and you would be surprised how much some of them understand the situation, understand the disruption that needs to come, and will be willing to lead the way.

I know that we have some difficult challenges to overcome with the idea, but the huge transformative potential that I see in it, I believe, makes it very worth giving it a shot. What do you think?

Team

Daniel Aldana

14:23, Dec 01, 2015

Thanks Barbara, great tip!

Team

Daniel Aldana

01:19, Nov 29, 2015

Thanks Dawn,
Emptydesks. com will not compete with MOOCs. It will join them in helping transform a sector that still has a long way to go in providing quality education for a large portion of the bottom of the pyramid population. In the future I can see a higher education ecosystem that provides flexible and hybrid degrees and continuing education with high quality virtual and in-campus experiences. 

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 04:00, Nov 24, 2015

Maria thanks for your question. The way "emptydesks. com" answers to the challenge of providing a consistent quality education is I believe one of its key success factors. I believe there could be alternative and complementary actions, that I would like to open up for discussion. A few preliminary thoughts on those to ignite the discussion:

• Action 1- selecting the universities: all participating universities would be selected based on their quality and no low-quality institutions would make part of the network

• Action 2 –selecting the students

   o Alternative 1: universities would study each student application to determine whether the student´s background and education is suitable for the courses she wants to take

   o Alternative 2: "emptydesks. com" selects the students based on either:
 A) competency tests
 B) study record

   o Alternative 3: no selection; "emptydesks. com" and the universities trust the student´s choice

• Action 3 –selecting both the students and universities: "emptydesks. com" includes community grading features such that students select only the best graded courses and universities select the most committed and/or competent students

Team

Daniel Aldana

Edited on 18:34, Dec 06, 2015

Thanks Elric. You are exactly right. What we are proposing is a BIG disruption to the Higher Education sector. In a way it is to in-campus education what MOOCs were (or intend to be) to online higher education.
But let me tone that down a bit. Students registered at "emptydesks . com" would be far different and have lesser "rights" or services than regular students. They would be registered as so, they could only take a few credits at each university, but most importantly they would not earn a diploma from any given university, but would only get a certificate for the credits taken. In that sense regular students would not demand the same treatment. In a way these students would we similar to the airline passengers who buy the most economic tickets but have no right to choose a seat or change their flight date, while regular students would be first class passengers.
Most probably high-end universities would not start these disruption. But I believe that good, but not so well renowned universities and colleges with excess capacity could be willing to give it a go.

Team

Daniel Aldana

09:13, Nov 05, 2015

Thanks Jerónimo. Great contributions.