As a first step to thinking through what cryptocurrency can do for education, this post will be a look at what a platform for making online courses could look like on the Steem blockchain.
Existing Education Platforms
Khan Academy is a non-profit site that offers a ton of free courses on a wide range of subjects — usually video lectures where the teacher writes on slides as they discuss the topic.
Udemy is a for-profit site that offers courses in a similar format. They are usually made up primarily of videos of the instructor talking over slides or a screencast. There is also a community where students can ask questions and get answers from other students or the teacher. Unfortunately, they offer a deceptive pricing model, with courses priced at upwards of $200, but constantly discounted to $10.
Education on Steem
If an education site was created on the Steem blockchain, I can see it having three main functions:
1. A system for creating and posting video and/or text based courses
2. A Stack Overflow style question and answer section for each course
3. A marketplace where teachers can offer tutoring services as well as question and answer sessions to students (free or paid)
Due to the seven day payout limit with Steem, it would make sense for teachers to release courses in pieces. Students could follow the courses to get notified when new sections are released, or follow the creator to get notified of updates from all of his or her courses.
Each course would have it’s own community — a question and answer system similar to Stack Overflow and a section to post material created for a course, such as study guides or lesson summaries. Upvotes in these sections would allow students to earn money, which would both encourage their participation and let them buy services in the connected marketplace.
The marketplace could offer video tutoring services similar in structure to sites like italki (foreign language tutors), but with the benefit of allowing students to use the currency they have earned to buy one-on-one help with the courses they’re taking. Teachers could also offer google hangout style Q&A sessions where students can pop in and ask questions.
There’s also the potential to make a site like this open source similar to Github. Students could fork a course and make changes to it, or submit requests to add content. A forked course could route some of the payout to the original creator and added content could reward the contributor like on Utopian.io. It’s so fun to think about a system where students are paid for their hard work instead of forced to go deep into debt.
What do you think? Would this idea work? How could it be better? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this type of website in the comments!
I’m learning web development now and I’d love to be able to start working on something like this. Unfortunately, it’s beyond my current ability level. If anyone is interested in taking on a similar project and wants some help, please let me know because I’d love to be a part of it!