Brij’s One More Idea

First MIT caused a major disruption by launching Open Courseware project. It received tremendous response and still growing in influence.

Now thanks to growing iPod economy, Stanford University is jumping in this “goodbye to walled gardens” strategy of offering free lecture courses. They have got visiting lectures, technology venture program lectures etc. Go ahead and listen to Geoff Davis talk about microfinance and Jeff Hawkins talk about enterpreneurship.

This is the power of podcasting. However, this content was available before as well but now it\’s getting distributed via time shifted model. This time shifted nature is ideal to make podcasting a must-have feature of any online based self-learning model. We just cannot imagine the impact this quality content will have on the global audience.

Geography is increasingly less relevant and old cherished goals like MBA from elite institutions could be  questioned. How much you will be willing to pay for the rolodex and brand name in a learning world where barriers to knowledge access is getting removed everyday.

As more and more usable content gets added to the free pool, attention will shift to building forums and destination sites where this course content can be discussed to generate critical “shared experience” and “shared learning”. There is tremendous amount of quality content floating around and challenge (significant business opportunity as well) lies in aggregating all that content and funneling it in a context based learning environments. Think Pod University and Pod School !