Two College Students Tried to Teach Using Text - Here’s What Happened
Can a course be taught via text-message? A team of college students are exploring texts as the future of learning.
One year ago, a student at Babson College named Michael Ioffe was running a nonprofit that runs conversations with business leaders, called TILE. He was speaking to a chapter leader in war-torn Yemen about educational materials when he realized that it was impossible to send books, notebooks, pencils, etc. to a war-torn area.
What's worse? He couldn't send students in Yemen online curriculum because they had no access to the internet. Even worse, the students in Yemen weren't alone - nearly half of the world's population still has no access to the internet.
While few students had internet, many did have access to SMS. Michael's solution? Try texting the students the educational content he hoped to bring them. This solution later became known as Arist, the world's first text message university.
With the help of a few fellow students, Michael began to create the first text message courses.
Each Arist 'course' lasts for 30 - 60 days and involves users receiving a 918 character text at the time they wake up, written by professors and industry experts in subjects ranging from public speaking to digital politics.
Now, I know what you're probably thinking - are some text messages really enough to teach someone a substantial amount of info? We asked the same thing and looked into it. Turns out, studies by Stanford and Penn State prove texting is an incredibly effective way of teaching.
According to Arist, many of the texts involve exercises to try, links and blogs to follow, etc. Some courses even allow you to text answers back to the professor who wrote it.
So what's Arist up to now? They've just launched a beta that's open to the public and anyone can try it for free. The team is testing its application for corporate training and is looking for experts to write courses.
Michael and the team didn't forget their inspiration for founding - users can buy a full course for $9, which provides a course for a student without internet access.
Will text messages be the future of education? The startup hopes "to make education more affordable, accessible, and personal", and in 918 characters per day, they just might.
#learning #entrepreneurship #education #leadership #studentvoices
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2 年Ryan, thanks for sharing!
International Curriculum Consultant & Author of 12 Books | Co-Founder of Curriculum Storyboards | Co-Director of Habits of Mind | Helping Schools Create Challenging, Joyful, and Aspirational Learning Experiences
6 年Interesting concept that can be part of the solution. What are your thoughts Will Richardson?Heidi Hayes Jacobs? Seen this before?
Decentralising the world
6 年It may play a vital role in regions where there's limited or no access to Internet. But the question is, how effective will it be given people don't usually like long messages sent to their cellphones. And, also it could also be a challenge to add graphics, charts, diagrams etc in messaging platform when necessary to explain some concepts, but who knows, it could be the future of affordable education!