A few days ago I stumbled upon an interesting e-learning platform. On learnable.com there are “ordinary people” giving courses in things they are good in and for what they have a passion. So learnable turns the everyday normal guy into a teacher. Right now I did not take a course so I am not sure about the quality standard so far, but nevertheless the idea behind it seems quite interesting.
learnable.com frontpage
Learn – take courses
When you try to widen your knwoledge or digg deeper into some of your favorite subjects, learnable offers a great variety of courses. The biggest variety – due to learnable.com’s roots – is still the technology area. Nevertheless topics like “business” and “lifestyle” are closing up.
Courses are structered in different ways (up to the teacher) and can be completely in text, with videos or other media attached, completable in one rush or with interactive assignments and consecutive lessons. The courses are, of course, not for free. The prices I saw so far reached from 15$ to 30$ per course. Every course (at least those I checked) has an introduction (e.g. video) so that you can gain a short overview over the topic and gain a first impression of the teacher.
As I mentioned before I did not try a course so far since I am not sure about the competences of the people that offer courses I would be interested in. I will have a closer look at it during the weekend and will update this post when I finished my first course.
learnable.com overview
Teach – give courses
If you feel you are very good in some special field or very passionate about a certain talent of you, you might want to let others be part of that passion and pass your knowledge in your favorite area.
Learnable.com provides you with an easy to understand guide for creating your first courses. A course usually consists of different lessons which all consist again of different steps. Learnable guides you through each step of creation and gives you the chance to add video or further media material to your lesson plans.
I guess nobody will get rich over night by teaching on learnable.com since the enrollment fees are usually split 50/50 between the lecturer and learnable. But I think becoming rich should not be the drive behin the decission to teach (yep, there’s the teacher speaking).
At the moment I am planning my first course (see screenshot). I will keep you updated after it is finished and after the first students enrolled. Right now I can already say that creating a course is really easy and you can quit at all time and continue whenever you please. So far it really is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Quite good for a learning platform.
The way learning should be
Learning from people who have a real passion about what they teach. Sounds nice and is, in theory, the best thing that can happen. Nevertheless there still are some doubts regarding the competences of all assigned teachers. There are so many bad advisory / teaching sites out there in the web. I guess a lot of those “teachers” or “coaches” will sneak their way into learnable.com as well and offer their “magical how to become successful over night courses” or stuff like that there. Let’s see if learnable will be able to cope with this kind of spam. However the idea behind learnable, to say it again, is really cool!
