Coursekit in, Blackboard out
Joseph Cohen, Dan Getelman, and Jim Grandpre- students at the University of Pennsylvania- left the school to launch a new education system startup called Coursekit. Coursekit was thought in June of 2010 and has officially launched 6 days ago (on November 29). The history of Coursekit is very interesting. Coursekit founders frustrated with blackboard like many students and they think to create social service instead of blackboard. Coursekit founders slogan is that ‘make your course come alive’. This system lets teachers create student groups to work on project, email students, post the syllabus and reading materials for their courses, and record their grades.
Co-founder and CEO Joseph Cohen points out in the article by Techcrunch that “It is really a Blackboard replacement with a heavy emphasis on social networking” and he adds “Our goal is to turn courses into communities online. Because when that happens, amazing things follow: people share ideas, make new relationships, ask questions, and get to know each other”. It resembles the Pointcarre system in VUB. In VUB’s online system, students share ideas and ask questions to each other or professor in forum and professors share files, videos or documents in document box and they adjust the online syllabus according to their calendars and announce it. So online systems like Pointcarre and Coursekit are academic social network that these systems help professors and students communicate with each other easily.
No comments:
Post a Comment