What I'm looking for is advice on getting this into the hands of someone who might be interested in assisting/funding this. I've looked at the crowd-funding sites and none of them seem to be appropriate for something of this type and scale. I shopped it directly to Richard Branson's charitable org since he's deeply involved in the Caribbean, but, as they explained, they really only fund going-concerns.
I might be able to crowd-fund the Cost Analysis for Phase 1, but it seems for most of these sites I'll be on the hook for a percentage nevertheless. Maybe it is yet another idea, but there should be a site "Billionaires Looking for Good Charities to Fund". I feel pretty passionate about this idea, but I'm open to handing the idea off to anyone who can make it work; i.e., get the money and get it off the ground.
Feel free to comment/criticize, too, on the actual proposal substance.
MOOC-Center:
Document
Control Information
Date
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Description
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Version
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Amended By
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Reviewed By
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29-Dec-13
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Initial
version
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0.5
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Joseph
Sadove
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14-Jan-14
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Revisions,
additions
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0.6
|
Joseph
Sadove
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08-Feb-14
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Revisions,
additions
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0.7
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Joseph
Sadove
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31-August-14
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Revisions, additions
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0.8
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Joseph
Sadove
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Name
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Organization
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This document outlines the proposal to create
“MOOC-Centers” (see Section 2 for complete definition and overview) on the
island of Saint Lucia in the city of Soufriere and other locations throughout
the Caribbean and elsewhere to enable greater educational opportunity in
developing countries.
The scope of the document is to provide
background and reasoning on Saint Lucia as a starter MOOC-Center and the basic outline
of the design a MOOC-Center in the town of Soufriere Lucia and a basic plan for
implementation.
The document covers
-
Concept and Overview of a MOOC-Center
-
Motivation, Context and Purpose for the Soufriere, St. Lucia
location
-
Initial Design Proposal
-
Funding and Organizational Support
-
Detailed Requirements Inventory (This is the working part of the
document)
A MOOC is a “Massively Open
Online Course”. The term was coined in 2008, but online instructionals and
training began earlier. However, by 2008 the term and the current widely
understood reference is to websites that provide online courses and courseware
that offer presumed substitutes for university lectures and, in many cases,
university accreditation for successful completion. Many prominent American
universities are participating in the sites or hosting their own and are
expanding the breadth of offerings. The nature of these online offerings is
no longer limited to university level courses and subjects. There is a large
and growing K-12 participation, in addition to various specialized subject
areas and vocational/professional types of training.
The MOOC-Center is proposed to be
a physical building that would provide:
1. An indoor air-conditioned
facility with shared work/study spaces equipped with modern, powerful
workstations (multi-OS: Windows/Linux/Mac) with high speed internet connections
2. The MOOC-Center would be
staffed with individuals trained to support the operation and use of the
facility and would be augmented by a volunteer corps (local and visitors). Some
of the trained staff and volunteers would be educators and/or professionals
capable of guiding not only the general learning experience, but would also be
specialized in highly desirable subject areas. The sourcing of experienced
teaching personnel could be extended to include a volunteer tourism component.
3. The MOOC-Center would be made
accessible to individuals of all ages and backgrounds, but would primarily be
targeted at those with little or no prospect of furthering their education on
their own or little opportunity of reaching their potential for successful
study with the existing resources outside of the center.
4. The MOOC-Center would use
screening methods to evaluate and select participants in an open fashion to
assure that access to the limited space and resources would be given to those
both most in need and those most motivated.
Wikipedia offers a good history,
overview and listing of additional resources:
The location of a MOOC-Center in Soufriere,
St. Lucia would be a prototype and model for providing access and assistance to
local residents who would like to:
1. Supplement the courses and learning at the
secondary level
2. Extend their education beyond the public
secondary system
3. Acquire skillsets that would be
immediately useful (so-called vocational training)
4. Build out skillsets that could be part of
integrating St. Lucia into the world's information economy
The MOOC-Center prototype in Soufriere would
be founded as the first of many MOOC-Centers that would be opened in further
locations in St. Lucia and throughout the Caribbean and later, beyond, to bring
educational opportunities unavailable through a given country’s existing
systems or capacities.
The basic set of assumptions regarding the
need for MOOC-Centers is:
1. Access to higher or advanced education or
paths to higher or advanced education is restricted most by cost and
convenience. Traditional formal centers of learning are inherently expensive
and inconvenient because they are centralized and can only serve those able to
live on campus or nearby.
2. Access to technology and online resources
is far too limited in the target countries and territories and the centers will
provide it to those unable to afford it.
3. A MOOC-Center will provide not just the
technology, but the expertise and training to learn how to use the technology
and the capability to assist and augment the MOOC experience with trained
educators and subject area experts.
4. A MOOC-Center provides not just the
technology and on-ramp expertise and training, but also an environment of
comfort and shared experience with other learners. This shared experience is an
undeniable success feature of a college or university setting and or other
conventional learning environment.
The MOOC-Centers will be designed and
operated by a non-profit that will seek funding from charitable private and
government institutions and individual sponsors. The centers will be designed
and set up to be run locally.
3.1. Overview
In many ways, the profile of Saint Lucia is a
reflection of the challenges to development and integration with the wider
world that other island countries in the Caribbean face and in many ways those of
other developing countries in general. Nearly all of these countries and
territories are dependent on companies and consultancies from the developed
countries of North America and Europe to plan, design, build and maintain their
basic infrastructure. There are few to no practical educational paths to the
engineering, science and technology disciplines that would permit these
countries to assume greater responsibility and ownership of their basic
infrastructure. In addition, the dependency on the aforementioned companies and
consultancies present too many opportunities for corruption of government and
other administrative authorities in approving and overseeing infrastructure and
development efforts. This can, in turn, evolve into a pattern that has the effect
of reinforcing the dependency on these services and discouraging efforts to
become more self-sufficient.
Another major challenge is expanding Saint
Lucia’s and other similarly situated countries’ participation in the global
information and innovation economy. Without the base of a reasonably accessible
and results-oriented system of higher/advanced learning for a sizable segment
of the population, the ability to staff first stage development platforms such
as offshore call centers, offshore support operations or offshore development
centers is completely precluded.
The choice of location for the MOOC-Center
prototype in Soufriere, St. Lucia is based on a number of factors that make it
both an ideal place to test the model and an ideal place to experiment and
improve on and adapt the model for use in other locations in St. Lucia, in the
Caribbean and other locations in the world. These factors are addressed in
summary in the following subsections but details will be supplied in Appendices
to the document.
Saint Lucia is located in the east Caribbean
just north of Barbados and Saint Vincent and just south of Martinique. It is
one of 13 independent countries in the Caribbean. Saint Lucia is among the
smaller countries by size and population (616 sq. km., ~165,000), but its
population density is in the middle of this set of smaller countries (around or
less than 600 sq. mi., 804 sq. km.).
Saint Lucia can be reached from New York
direct in just over 4 hours, from London in just over 8 hours and from
Frankfurt in just over 9 hours.
The island is almost entirely dependent on
tourism. Previous to the current political administration, agriculture also had
a prominent role in the economy, but internal and external political developments
have diminished its role to the point of near economic irrelevance.
Soufriere is a mid-sized Saint Lucian town
that is, like the country, almost wholly dependent on tourism. It is also the
largest tourist destination on the island. To support the resorts and the local
tourist industry, agriculture that serves this industry still holds on and even
manages to modestly participate in remaining export markets.
Saint Lucia has an official unemployment rate
of 24%, but is likely upwards of 30%. Even with a lion’s share of tourism,
Soufriere almost certainly has the same proportion of its population
out-of-work. With such a high number of unemployed, of which a large proportion
have good secondary education (see next section), the opportunity to funnel
talent toward technical and engineering disciplines and, in addition, develop
the basic skills to staff offshore call centers and support centers is very
considerable. In many ways, this circumstance is what has enabled countries
such as India and the Philippines to drive their development.
Like many of the former colonies
of the United Kingdom, Saint Lucia has a relatively good primary and secondary
education system with 73 primary schools and 23 secondary schools. Although
attendance rates have been declining for secondary school (particularly among
male students), they are around 80% for females and 60% for males, there is a
high completion rate, approximately 96%, among the attendees. This means there
is a quite large cohort of students who would likely be capable of continuing
their education beyond public secondary school. [UNICEF, Division of Policy and
Practice, Statistics and Monitoring Section, www.childinfo.org, May 2008].
However, the island has only one
institution of higher learning, the University of the West Indies Open
Campus (UWIOC). This is an outpost of the public university system that serves
18 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean.
The campus is located in Castries, the capitol and largest city in Saint Lucia.
Although the tuition fees are relatively modest, the cost and convenience
(travel, room and board, etc.) of the institution is way beyond the
capabilities of the overwhelming majority of Saint Lucians.
The “Open Campus” concept of the University of
the West Indies was launched in 2007 to expand educational access. At the time,
only between 3-7% of the population of the 18 English-speaking countries and territories in
the Caribbean achieved a tertiary level of education and the “Open Campus” was
part of a 10 year plan by The
Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Education Reform Unit (OERU) targeting
17% of the population completing a tertiary degree. Current actuals on this for
Saint Lucia are hard to come by, but the 2010 census (http://www.paho.org/saludenlasamericas/index.php?id=54&option=com_content&Itemid=&lang=pt) reported
that 4.4% of males and 5.7% of females had pursued university education. There
are no recent figures that say anything about completion rates. These figures
point to a significant failure of the effort behind the Open Campus and its
mission.
Apart from this shortcoming, even
the fortunate few who make up this small percentage of higher education
enrolees are offered only study in liberal arts, business and social services.
They are offered no programs in engineering, in information technology,
computer science, or basic science. In
short, no programs that would provide Saint Lucia with home-grown capability to
build, maintain, and run its own infrastructure and no educational avenues to
integrate with the global economy at a higher level.
The educational disadvantages
that Saint Lucia suffers are common to many other developing countries. There
are also great similarities to many other Caribbean states in its relative
advantages in possessing a reasonably well-functioning primary and secondary education
system that turns out a sizeable number of graduate candidates for
university-level study. It is very much this confluence of educational
advantages and disadvantages that, among the other features of the country and
economy, make Saint Lucia a perfect laboratory for the proposed MOOC-Centers.
Unlike the capital Castries where
the UWIOC is located and Vieux Fort where the international airport and the
island’s secondary location for industry are located, the town of Soufriere is like
much of the rest of the island in its almost exclusive dependence on tourism
and thereby the absence of virtually any other source of training for
employment other than unskilled service positions. This circumstance is
therefore a reflection of those in the vast majority of other towns in the
Caribbean and makes Soufriere thus, at the local level, the perfect location
within Saint Lucia for a prototype MOOC-Center.
For a small island country in the Caribbean, in
all relevant categories (transportation, power, telecommunication) Saint Lucia
has very high quality infrastructure and it is comparatively well maintained.
By far, the most important components of Saint Lucia’s infrastructure for the
purpose of the MOOC-Centers are telecommunication and power.
Saint Lucia’s power system is a well
distributed system of 6 power stations with 3 substations that distribute power
both via overhead lines and underground cables. The commercial cost of power
was approximately USD 1.00 per KwH as of August 2012. The system has a good
reputation for reliability and many measures have been taken to render it less
vulnerable to extended outages.
Telephone, land and mobile, and internet
service is available from three regional providers: LIME, Digicel and Karib
Cable.
[More
info here:
1.
Commercial
rates, speeds, terms
2.
Service
size/speed to island to island
]
There are two airports on the island. The one
main international airport, Hewanorra International Airport, is served by
medium-size jets from North America and Europe.
The road system for a small and hilly island
is well built out. Similar to many Caribbean countries and territories, the
public transportation system is a system of minibuses that have specific routes
and schedules in and between the major towns and additional less regular
service. These are supplemented by a regulated taxi system along with
enterprising single owners who offer rides.
The MOOC-Center prototype has to have
available to it minimum infrastructure requirements to operate to test its
basic prospects for success as model. Saint Lucia and, in particular Soufriere,
meet these requirements and possibly exceed them in comparison to other
locations on Saint Lucia or in the general target locations in the developing
world. This may suggest that the transferability of the MOOC-Center model is
limited to locations where these conditions match those in Soufriere, Saint
Lucia. To be able to establish the basic feasibility and success of the model,
the proposal is that all disadvantages to operating a MOOC-Center not be
present. The answer to the presumed non-transferability of the model is, as
with any prototype, that the full resiliency in all conditions is better left
to further evolutions or specific implementations adapted to specific
conditions.
One of the basic ideas of the
MOOC center is that it must be accessible to as large a number of people as
possible in its region. There has to be a reasonable concentration of people
and access to a central location for the surrounding communities via public
transportation.
The location should also be safe
and located where students and participants can shop for food other supplies so
as to be able to ease participation in the MOOC center in a way that permits
them to carry out many of their regular life’s chores.
The location has to have the
required infrastructure in the form of physical plant, power, air conditioning
and required telecom capabilities to support the high-speed access to the
internet.
The MOOC center should provide a
setting of comfort and convenience for all types of learners. Since Soufriere,
St. Lucia is in a tropical setting, air-conditioning when needed should be
provided. As many learners may be engaged in outdoor physical labor, having
access to restrooms, showers and changing facilities should also be provided.
And, lastly, the center should have a “social” area where it is possible to
store, prepare and eat brought-in food and small areas to rest comfortably.
The learning pods will be similar
to those found in most internet cafes. These will be partitioned workspaces set
up on rows of tables, with learners sitting side-by-side. The workspaces will
divided among those that share (eg. via Citrix, KVM, etc.) computing resources
and those with dedicated hardware. All will have headphones and 24” flat panel
monitors to assure the learner experience is not hindered by distraction or low
quality displays.
There will also be a
semi-enclosed lecture space and seats (configuration and size dependent on
overall facility size), in addition to ample whiteboards throughout the
facility.
Finally, the center will need
administrative office space for staff and operations.
The initial startup period will
be overseen and partially run by personnel and staff supplied out of the
central administrative organization (see Section 5). Once up and running, the
MOOC Center should, eventually, be entirely locally staffed, along with
visiting staff from the central administrative organization, volunteer
educators and other experts and lecturers.
During the start-up period,
hiring and training of local personnel for assuming all key functions to run
the center is the first priority. After training and initial trial periods, all
key functions will be handed off from any non-local staff.
Key staffing will include the
following functions. Full job descriptions are supplied in the appendix:
·
Head
administrator/Executive Director to manage finances, operations and oversee all
other staff
·
Other
administrative staff as needed
·
Basic
infrastructure staff to maintain all basic plant from HVAC, plumbing,
electrical, building services (dual function as trainer/educator)
·
Basic and
advanced IT support – desktop, networking, telecom, etc. (dual function as
trainer/educator)
·
MOOC
functional/technical expertise (dual function as trainer/educator)
·
Software and
software support specialist (dual function as trainer/educator)
·
Local and
visiting volunteers and subject matter experts
The hiring and structuring of
MOOC staff will assume and target the intention of dual-purposing the staff.
Part of the means of keeping costs to a minimum and creating a community around
the MOOC-Center is using staff not only in assigned to specific functions, but
also taking advantage of their skills to enhance and extend the learning
mission. This will also be served by constant recruitment of mentors from the
learner population and involving them in maximizing the flow of information and
the benefits of their experience.
Once the MOOC-Center is fully
operational and self-sustaining, forming and using a volunteer corps similar to
Saint Lucia Project at Anse La Raye (http://www.thestluciaproject.org/our-st-lucia-host-community-anse-la-raye/) will
become a priority objective.
The MOOC center will operate on a
selective and semi-open participation model.
The selective participation will
be administered by guidelines for determining the capability of the candidate
participant. The capability will be assessed by looking at the academic
background of the candidate, formal and free-form testing, and interviews. Most
candidates will be selected outright from the results of the assessments and
some will be given a trial period.
The semi-open participation model
will permit candidates with some existing background in the use of technology
and/or education in or knowledge of a specific area of study. The existing
background will have to be proven and demonstrable by the candidate.
An ad hoc committee of staff will
be charged with judging and accepting all types of candidates on a consensus
basis.
The full detail on the
guidelines, methods and mechanisms for candidacy are described in the APPENDIX.
The MOOC center will mix regular
sessions along with free-form access. All first time learners have to go
through an initial training session and these will be run on a scheduled basis.
Learners who commit to regular sessions that conform to time requirements
determined by the MOOC and the course will benefit by having assigned and
reserved workspaces for preset times. The free-form access will be used by
those whose life’s circumstances don’t permit them to access the center on a
fixed schedule or those who are working with online resources that permit them
the freedom to access and complete their course of study more flexibly.
The scheduling and management of
access will try to be flexible from a first principle basis, but this will
nevertheless have to be administered in a way that keeps abuse and complexity
of administration at a minimum.
The MOOC-Centers.org will be a
charitable non-profit based in New York (?). The organization will oversee the
initial design, funding and staffing of the Soufriere, St. Lucia prototype and
the evolution of the prototype and adaptation to and establishment at additional
locations.
The MOOC-Centers.org will seek
out and engage as instructors, advisors and/or board members experts in computer
science, infrastructure engineering disciplines such as electrical, civil,
mechanical and related basic sciences.
In addition, the MOOC-Centers.org
will require advice and board membership from entrepreneurs, economists and
government expertise to provide input on operating within the region and
business context of St. Lucia and assist in the evolution of the
prototype and extension to other locations and regions.
Finally, MOOC-Centers.org will
require legal assistance in designing the initial setup and, later, supporting
the establishment and operation.
Each MOOC-Center in its given
location will aim to be as autonomous as possible. A basic staff will be hired
and trained to run the day-to-day functioning of the Center and an Executive
Director will oversee this staff and be responsible for maintaining and expanding
local funding and support. This responsibility will require getting local business
and government institutions to be involved as much as possible. This
involvement can be through a variety of support avenues: the provision of
funds, land and/or real estate (free or discounted) for the center, assistance
with skilled personnel to build or operate the center or through ancillary
services such as internships and/or apprenticeships.
For the prototype in St. Lucia
and any subsequent location, the MOOC-Center.org executive committee will
oversee the initial selection of the first set of sponsors and service
participants and, with the local Executive Directory, carry out a semi-annual
review in order to assure the MOOC-Center does not become subject to commercial
or political exploitation.
