Does free education pay? A conversation with Mary on MOOC business models.

People use education online in very different ways. Some use it entirely to learn, others as a platform to help them to have a better job. Others use online education just to mingle around trying to decide what to do. The ones that don’t like the idea at all and feel threaten by it and just go and look for flaws in the system. The moles, that are the intentional ones, and the ones that are just saying out loud whatever they please everywhere. Other users of online education are the owners and/or associates of other institutions that have been looking at massive learning as a menace to destroy their own training services business and the competition. Well, that is the market... How to convince them that this is an enormous effort that needs everybody involvement, participation and will? How to make them realize that is a win-win situation with prosperity and gain for everybody? Sometimes people see only one part of a situation instead of looking at the whole transformation of a system… How dare you to threat well established institutions? One thing that is totally favorable is that many excellent universities are having an online model; with the hope that they are going to be recognized as equal as the traditional certification of knowledge. The thing is that we cannot have a better world if we don’t have educated people. How can we have a critical mass of humanity going in the right direction, taking the right decisions, doing the correct activities and make money with it? It is already perfectly established that for the students is free or almost free. There is going to be a head-hunter situation and kind of an employment agency to have revenues. There are online shops with memorabilia with logos of the institutions for fans. There is going to be special contracts with firms that required special training. Also worldwide renowned universities that are participating are going to have agreements with other universities or branch out the online model in different continents. So, what else? There are online students that are using the online classes to get better grades in the institutions they are studying, so that goes underground. How about the persons that are going to continue their entrepreneurship and use the knowledge acquired for their solely benefit; that is another absolutely one side free benefit. How about countries where the black market is a mayor way of living and they are going to copy, use, translate, make profit of the knowledge that is shared. That is another way of not getting pay for the efforts and it can also destroy the good will of some people. I think negotiations, talks, agreements, tailored contracts, and advertisement need to be involved. I rather have in the side of ads of my Facebook full of things that I like and promoting permanently my online school than other institutions that are already there just annoying me. Or in all the other sites I participate. Why are people so reluctant to advertise? Like Pinterest, that is a site that could easily sell the pins… which is already happening but with many steps to follow and to search for. Ads can be very muted or not, I would like to choose from a set of different styles of adds of the brands that I like than to have imposed things that I don’t even care about. And that is a completely change of structure of how online marketing is imploding in the costumers instead of showing off and promote brands. I know there are some people doing that already and they get paid, because they need to write or do something that involves the promoted brand. I think it should be the option for everybody to choose what is going to be done with the ads that are in their sites without further compromise or not.

Other thing that it needs to be accurate is if a real living person is using the online services which can be corroborated with many tools, and it is happening right now.

 In a final thought I would like to share with you, that, the other day I was listening a TED talk about how other online educational institution is doing. The talk was informative, but at the end the way that people reacted was totally uniform in a matter of seconds which only you have that kind of reaction if people is going just to pledge adherence?! To move crowds, to be in tempo with the masses is a talent that needs to be cultivated by online educational institutions. To inform people, to send news, to prepare events is something that gives the character of any school, to feel the alma matter  can move mountains and make prosperous agreements.