Rationale

= = Rationale

One of the problems faced by Noosphere Media in marketing its Noosphere University product is a potential credibility gap with our prospective clients. What makes Noosphere Media an authority on what colleges and universities need in terms of a publishing, marketing & social media presence? What expertise does Noosphere bring to the table? How can Noosphere be a partner in making my institution successful?

If we start with core competencies, Noosphere Media has got internet marketing down in spades. We come from successful internet marketing backgrounds (our CEO ran search advertising for Kayak.com; our president launched a successful search marketing division in 2007 which had an investor valuation of $35 million; our CTO was Chief Technologist for that division). Noosphere is currently running many search and social media marketing campaigns successfully for its clients and is heavily involved in search engine optimization (SEO) for these companies.

So the marketing, social media and search engine optimization expertise of Noosphere Media is not in question. But wherefore our academic creds? Two of us are in graduate school (Marlboro). One of us has a background of marketing and alumni relations for higher education. We need more academic cred.

So I conceived of the eLearning portal to leverage my growing skills and knowledge base in educational technology and eLearning in the service of promoting Noosphere Media’s academic credibility and to establish a footprint for us in a space where most higher ed institutions are either active or looking to become active.

Here are some stats on online learning from the latest Sloan Consortium survey:


 * After remaining steady for a number of years, the proportion of chief academic officers saying that online education is critical to their long-term strategy took an upward turn in 2010.
 * Sixty-three percent of all reporting institutions said that online learning was a critical partof their institution’s long term strategy.
 * Online enrollments have continued to grow at rates far in excess of the total higher education student population, with the most recent data demonstrating continued substantial growth. The twenty-one percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the less than two percent growth of the overall higher education student population.
 * Over 5.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2009 term; an increase of nearly one million students over the number reported the previous year.
 * Nearly thirty percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.
 * Over three-quarters of academic leaders at public institutions report that online is as good as or better than face-to-face instruction.
 * Three-quarters of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased demand for online courses and programs.
 * A majority of institutions continue to report that there is increasing competition for online students. 1

In the process of identifying this vehicle for Noosphere’s entrée into higher ed, ed tech and eLearning, I was also identifying a more generalized need based on my own experience. I am a great believer in eLearning and am constantly seeking out new classes and programs that I can dream about taking online, or recommend to others (my kids are often the target of these recommendations). When I search for eLearning offerings I routinely discover a plethora of sites catering to for-profit schools such as the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and many more. I wanted to find public and private colleges and universities, and found them to be very difficult to locate. I later discovered, through my day job in advertising, that these sites were basically lead generation sites that would capture contact information from interested parties, call them to vet them as ‘clean’ or ‘qualified’ leads, then sell them to the for-profit schools. Also, these sites would often engage in ‘bait and switch’ tactics, siphoning interested parties to the institutions that paid the higher bounties rather than prioritizing leads based on areas of interest. So I decided that to provide a site that specialized in providing free, non-monetized information for individuals seeking eLearning or blended classes and programs from private and public colleges and universities. The need is palpable for such a resource, as it seems that these institutions frequently do not actively promote their eLearning offerings and are not that easy to find.

Also, I found that I have a tremendous, ongoing interest in ‘what’s out there’ in terms of eLearning offerings among public and private colleges and universities. After all, I am an MAT candidate, this is my field of study, and this is what I intend to do with the next stage of my career. So I also have a strong personal interest in becoming somewhat of an authority in what’s going on in this space to be a marketable resource in eLearning and ed tech.

Branching out from listings of public and private college and universities’ eLearning offerings, I also percieved a need for a one-stop information hub for all things eLearning related. Where do I find information on eLearning development and authoring tools? I do Google searches, and usually end up at sites like Adobe.com and other vendor sites. A ‘test tools of 2009’ article; and a few scattered sites that specialize in eLearning tools information, often specialized (“best iPad educational apps”) and frequently ill maintained (latest entry some time in mid-2010).

So I would also publish information for eLearning developers and organizations and institutions about the current crop of tools, their capabilities, their strengths, their weaknesses, etc. Again, in the spirit of a non-monetized information hub, I would not promote one tool over another, and my reviews and assessments would be impartial, save for my own honest assessments and those of my contributors.

Along these same lines, and since I was creating a hub for all things eLearning, I would also need:
 * Book reviews
 * eLearning news
 * eLearning blog RSS feeds
 * Events: Conferences, Symposia, etc
 * My own blog: The Future of eLearning

I also envisioned a portal capability to a number of sandboxes where users could try out eLearning tools and platforms. While I still intend to do this, I believe it is best to make it a phase 2 goal, as I already had more than enough on my plate for the initial build and rollout.

My rationale for developing the eLearning hub under the auspices of Noosphere Marketing come from 3 motivational sources:
 * 1) The need to establish credibility and expertise in higher education and educational technology for Noosphere Media as part of our Noosphere University platform offering and also for future intiatives in eLearning services.
 * 2) A perceived need for the general populace to have a reliable one-stop hub for all things eLearning.
 * 3) A strong personal desire to become an authority on al things eLearning and thus launch me on my new career path.

1 From Class Differences Online Education in the United States, 2010 ** Elaine Allen, Ph.D., ** Co-Director, Babson Survey Research Group Babson College ** Jeff Seaman, Ph.D. ** Survey Director The Sloan Consortium A survey of over 2,500 Institutions of Higher Learning:


 * |offline marketing training**