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Chris Anderson, author of The Long-Tail and editor of Wired magazine has an article worth reading, Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business in this month’s issue of Wired.
I think there are lot of things that apply to the education and training world.
There are probably a lot of conclusions that could be drawn from the article, and I am sure that there will be criticism, but here are my thoughts.
First it’s interesting that many of the areas where we can see obvious growth towards free are the collaborative, community based businesses like YouTube, Social Networking, and Wikipedia. While there is no doubt that organizations are potentially putting a lot into running these sites, it is also true that these sites wouldn’t work very well with out contributions from the community.
So one thing that we have to consider — even though there isn’t money involved – what is the cost of participating?
I think the cost can take place on several levels. First, there is a personal cost to be involved as a user or contributor. Of course the benefit often out weighs the cost. There is the potential of the cost in information that is gathered by some sites – that information is creating opportunities for those organizations – which is good them, and if we like their service and they keep improving it, maybe it’s worth sharing. There is also the idea that they give us a basic model until we use it enough and have a need to use it that we pay for premium services.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying any of this is wrong – I just think that really aren’t many things that are free. There is a cost, that cost just isn’t always financial.
So a couple questions:
Will consumers come to export more and more, but also want to give less? Or will we just keep giving more and more (specifically information about our tastes, habits, and who we are)?
What impact does/could this have on learning/teaching models?
We already have open universities (like MIT) giving away content – how does this affect for-pay-programs? (Maybe it can’t compete now, but what about in a couple years?)
Can free ever provide the same quality of paid in education? (All else being equal, such as a student’s dedication, commitment, and involvement…)
Could an organization potentially give away training modules, with some type of premium tiered content or advertising model? Would main stream organizations tap into these resources would they not be used because of lots of internal reasons that usually come up when corporations want to use open materials…?
NeverCouldLearn… is an opportunity to talk about learning, instruction, technology – 3 topics that are extremely interesting.
So why is a blog about, learning, instruction and technology called never could learn? Well, in my life there are many things that I felt like I just couldn’t learn them- it just seemed out of my reach. Usually some instructional device (in the broad sense of the term) or technology made it possible. I believe that with concerted efforts and good [insert the best word here: design, instruction, technology, mentoring, theory, development methodology, etc..] learning will happen.
Goal: I want to create a place to think and creatively attack education and instructional problems in realistic ways. Theories are great, application is great – I’m looking to tackle ways that work…
About me: Well I have a Masters in Science from Indiana University in Instructional Systems Technology. I work in the field of training/education at a software company (TechSmith Corporation – creators of SnagIt, Camtasia Studio, Morae, UserVue, & Screencast.com – and by the way I know way represent them in my views or posts (and other standard clauses about employers apply here) during the course of this blog.
