My article deals with a brand new startup company called Brightstorm. Brightstorm is an entirely web-based company that offers online classes that range from high school to college prep classes. The classes are taught via video casts from their website, are $49 each, and consist of 15-20 classes of 15 minutes each.
Obviously this technology is not new. The University of Phoenix, and many others, is an entirely online university which offers college courses straight from the computer. Other colleges have implemented ‘hybrid’ courses, where students physically go to class once a week, and meet online the rest of the time. Brightstorm is different, however, in that they aren’t a fully operation high school or college. Instead, they just offer cheap, informative courses for no credit, which is brilliant.
Paying money for education that doesn’t give you credit seems like a scam, until you look at it from a different point of view. By running an online website, the company only has to pay its teachers once to do each lecture, and by only having to pay for the website, Brightstorm is able to avoid all the physical costs incurred by running a school. The lack of costs is relayed back to the customers in the form of cheap prices (only $49 a course).
Why would someone pay for classes that don’t offer any sort of credit? Originally I thought the same thing, until you look at the cost of $49 relative to college and high school costs. In order to get into a good high school, you must either pay high taxes of a wealthy town, or pay tuition of a private school. At the same time, when you attend one of these schools you are most likely learning math and English that is on the SATS early (freshman or sophomore year) and therefore need a refresher before the SATS, which many times means your parents are paying high costs for SAT tutoring. If you don’t go to a good high school, then taking these classes online can help fill in holes in the curriculum that your teachers might have missed. Of course the reason SAT prep classes are expensive is because getting a higher grade on the SAT can save you significant money on college tuition while getting you into better colleges, which can translate into you becoming more financially successful in the future.
At Loyola, each course we take is approximately $3,500. What if you could take a $49 course online (where most young people are comfortable and would want to) before you took it in college for credit? Could you get an A- instead of a B? That’s a .66 GPA difference. Not to mention that class is being taught by former engineers, authors, actuaries, etc. who are paid well and care about what they’re doing. The online classes are only 15 minutes so they keep your attention and enable you to be an active learner.
I’m not saying you should quit high school or college to go take these courses, but they do give you another option that you could use them in addition to school, not a replacement. And for $49, why not take one at the end of the 4 month college summer? It makes sense, and further proves that the world is flat.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/start-up-at-the-intersection-of-education-and-technology/
http://www.brightstorm.com/
2 comments:
There are many aspects of the online classes offered by Brightstorm that strike me as beneficial. Brightstorm offers a wide range of relatively inexpensive classes online, making it easy for consumers to explore different aspects of education. In my opinion, the most beneficial target audience is high school students who aspire to go to college. This age group could potentially figure out their future educational interests before they even step foot on a college campus by exploring Brightstorm’s offerings. This saves the student both time and money because they can focus their schooling on subjects that most interest them, rather than spend the approximated $3,500 on one college course only to find that they are not interested. Although no credit is offered for the online courses, Brightstorm’s goal is for extremely educated professionals to solely inform their students and make them interested. Therefore, I agree with Tom’s conclusion that this program is brilliant.
I completely agree with you. It essentially allows you to try (to learn) without failing; like when you save a videogame before a hard mission: if you complete the mission you can save again, if not just turn off the game without saving.
By experimenting with online classes using Brighstorm, you can better prepare youself for expensive college by making up your mind about your major/minors ahead of time.
Not to mention once Brightstorm puts up the initial costs of running the website, it takes very little variable cost per course (pay a high quality teacher) to add more courses, yet these courses could potentially bring in huge profits. Even more, Brighstorm could expand past high school/SAT prep courses to college prep courses for the BAR or CPA exam. Now, they can increase customer value by keeping him/her through high school, college, into grad school preparations.
To top it all off, the company could even sell advertising on its page during periods of low income and profit.
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