We presented the mLearning project at a recent meeting of the heads of our schools of leadership around the world. Our development partner in the academic world made a very strong point, in a presentation of his, about the transition from academic labor to educational capital. His point is that under the older academic labor system, the cost of preparing a course was very low, but the cost of training thousands with that course was very high, based on a professor’s salary to teach students 25-50 at a time.
The newer model of educational capital reverses the this. The cost of preparing a course is high, but the cost of using the course to train thousands is very low.
At this conference, Dr. Richard Pratt shared that Third Millennium is finding this to be true. The cost of producing their courses is expensive on a per-minute basis for final course material. That means a 30 minute module will be very expensive to produce, but it is very cheap to distribute on the Internet or even by DVD.
Our mLearning Project in East Africa is a pilot project to address several questions. One major question is how good is good enough for a distance learning course? The goal is transforming lives, not only transferring knowledge or producing quality courseware.
We will be creating educational capital with a desire to transform lives at the lowest cost possible so that we can create large amounts of educational capital.
