Overview

=Overview=

Noosphere Media, a startup company specializing in publishing, marketing and social media for higher education, is embarking on a major product/service development initiative called Noosphere University. Noosphere Media currently has 10 employees which includes myself as Chief Technology Officer. My sponsor is the President, Kathy Hipple, who is also a student in the Marlboro Graduate School MBA in Managing for Sustainability program.

Noosphere University will produce a platform for colleges and universities to publish content and engage in a dialog with the global culture while at the same time furthering their 'brand', bolstering enrollment, and increasing alumnae involvement and giving. All of the current paradigms and practices of social networking, rich content and digital media, and search engine optimization will be 'baked in' to the platform, which will take client academic institutions far beyond their current web presence and exponentially increase their audience and intellectual community as a result.

As a part of this initiative, I propose to create an eLearning hub (elearninghub.org) that will:
 * publish a directory of e-learning initiatives world-wide
 * provide information on e-learning: software solutions, vendors, how-to, demo's, open-source offerings and more
 * showcase articles about e-learning: theories, projects, experiments, tools, comparisons, critiques and more
 * connect client academic institutions with the greater world of e-learning experts, authorities and resources

 This list is not exhaustive but will serve as the basis for the intial creation and deployment of the hub. Noosphere's eLearning hub will focus on open source resources and solutions as cost-effective ways for academic institutions to create or enhance their e-learning offerings. The portal will also eventually serve as a marketing tool for Noosphere's own eLearning consulting business, which it plans to offer in conjunction with Noosphere University to client academic institutions who are looking to get started with eLearning or improve or enhance existing eLearning offerings.