E! College now costs only $30.

(An e-college idea)

Ross Woods, Feb, 2006

Provide an e-learning website

Students could use the website for a flat, low fee paid per semester.

They apply over the Internet and pay by credit card. They automatically get a login name and password valid for the semester. This gives them access to all the resources, which would mainly be toolboxes, an e-library, and wiki communities. It could also include other Moodle features.

Depending on the fee, it would probably be a small margin, high turnover business to break even. In one sense it's a steal: college for (say) $30 a semester. It's just that students don't get help; individual assistance is labor-intensive and therefore expensive. On the other side, it might look like they're paying to use a website.

They would have access to the portfolio assessment system for real credit by distance education.

Critical success factors:

  1. Easy to use:
    • Easy to pay and get a login code.
    • Easy induction process: "Look around the college"
    • Easy to find what you want
    • Good clustering to optimize presentation.
    • Useful task templates with "how to" steps.
  2. Sense of community with other students (group common-interest wikis)
  3. Sense of ownership (own homepage)
  4. Credibility especially of more advanced courses: Sound information, introductory stuff but advanced too.
  5. Ability to teach rather than just provide reading materials.
  6. Effective continual improvement
  7. Unified purpose and concentrated target market
  8. Maximize value of existing resources:
    • Synergies between toolboxes e.g. link related business toolkits.
    • Relate e-books to learning environment
    • Good examples and model answers (reduces need for tech support)
  9. Marketing for enough students to pay for infrastructure
  10. Adequate tech support
  11. Ability to generate higher profit business:
    • Ability to transfer to a tutored system (at a different fee scale).
    • Accessibility of existing RPL assessment scheme (including the templates)
    • Group enrolments
    • Merchandizing

Possible enhancements

  • Collaborators with good information.
  • What about the eastern states, SE Asian, and North American markets?

Financial risk management

  1. Antifraud systems to prevent multiple users sharing a password:
    1. If two people try to be logged on at the same time with the same password, that password is deemed compromised and then cancelled.
    2. Timeout for inactive use.
  2. Need a grant to get it going.
  3. Collaborating institutions (to spread the risk)
  4. What is critical mass/break even point?

Payment

An on-line credit card direct payment system would be preferable, as the goal is to automate the system as much as possible.

Credit card payment inside Australia is perhaps easier. The challenge is overseas payments. PayPal is an international system, but the only way to avoid excessive fees on a large number of relatively small transactions is to have the funds deposited in a US bank account, such as a New York account of ANZ. (Most other Australian banks don’t have a US presence.) Otherwise, we’d have to pay a fee on every transaction. Moreover, non-Australian students do not pay GST.

Levels

  • High school technical institute (Certificate II/III)
  • Pre-college: Certificate IV
  • College Diploma/Advanced Diploma
  • Graduate school and research

Development risks

It would probably follow the normal trajectory, with different stages incurring different risks.

Stage1. Hardware and software would be in place and running for existing students. Risk is fairly minimal if all capital costs are already paid.

Stage 2. At first, it would be a small, with few students and lower profitability. The risk at this stage is probably financial, especially if it required more labor that envisaged. Promotion could be a significant cost. It would need to identify a breadth of offerings that established critical mass, that is, wide enough to attract and maintain students, and then add those courses.

Stage 3. Later, when demand and student number increased, students and prospective students would probably request various kinds of improvements and an increased range of courses. Extra bandwidth would be essential. At least some of these would be necessary (or at least highly advantageous), and would incur high costs of course writers and technical staff. The system could collapse under its own weight if growth outstripped profitability.

Stage 4. The e-college would, one expects, establish itself in a market niche that covered all its costs and made a reasonable operating surplus. At that stage, it would need to re-appraise its market placement and determine the next set of strategic goals. It is too early to seriously entertain becoming established in the US, but that is currently the worldwide core of the Internet services market.

Bulk Marketing

As a high-volume low-margin business, it would be well suited to marketing in bulk to schools and colleges. This would result in bulk rates with increments for size of order such as 10 – 49, 50 – 99, 100 – 499, 500 – 999 and 1000 or more students. For example, the US company Plato has contracts for entire school districts.

At a retail level, it would also make sense to have family rates.