A look at China's online education hub and why we need one in North America.
Though a North American native might first think of Amazon or Ebay for their online market, Taobao is an established contender in the Asian markets. Leveraging this power and their share of the market, Taobao launched Tongxue (Translation: Classmates), a massive online education and training resource.
Users can create their own courses and are paid as if they were selling anything else online. Sources, videos, exams and more are uploaded onto the hub. Even offline material can be purchased through the site, such as textbooks or equipment.
This seems like an excellent opportunity for companies and other organizations to share and use the employee training materials of other organizations on the cheap. Similarly, individuals looking to advance their careers can take courses by companies in the marketplace they are targeting.
Reports on the revenues for Tongxue are in the millions, and the user base is reportedly in the hundreds of thousands. This leaves me to wonder if North America is dropping the ball when it comes to online education.
I have mentioned before that world of online education is vast; an online course could easily be made on the topic of searching for online courses alone. Introducing a hub type marketplace to North America could do much to aggregate the market and ease the transition for would-be students.
LinkedIn’s automatic MOOC recording system does much to keep track of your own online transcripts, but it doesn’t help to search for others; something you need to do when the world is your University. When we have classified hubs like Kijiji, garage sale hubs like Ebay, and retail sales hubs like Amazon, online education sales hubs just make sense.
The hub would also go a long way in increasing the regard of online education in North America. The hub can verify the legitimacy of the programs themselves and students can rate the courses on accuracy and credibility. Websites like Coursera go a long way toward this, but as they mainly focus on Universities and organizations, the “produce your own course” portion of the market remains untapped.
I remember a time when buying online was considered risky; I’m sure Ebay’s feedback rating system was a major contributor in reducing that fear. In the case of North America then, offerings such as Tongxue are just the first step towards increasing confidence in the possibilities of online learning.
