Einztein, a non-profit online education search guide, launches the public beta of its service today, with a curated collection of more than 2,000 complete online courses across 35 subject areas.
Einztein’s catalogue includes both paid and free courses from over 100 providers and is not restricted to university course offerings. However, all of the courses searchable via Einztein’s site have been reviewed by its team of scholars, who have assessed the quality and relevancy of courses in terms of subject area, language, materials, completeness, and accessibility.
“Search engines have inherent limitations when it comes to filtering content and discovering useful academic courses, and these shortcomings aren’t being adequately addressed elsewhere,” says Marco Masoni, CEO of Einztein. “This is why we’ve taken up the task of applying our team’s academic expertise to exclusively selecting courses that meet a quality threshold based on what learners are looking for when they initiate an online search.”??
Online education has become increasingly popular in recently years, in part because the economic downturn has driven people back to school, but also in part because technological innovations have made online courses more palatable for teachers and students alike. As we’ve written before, enrollment in distance education courses increased by over 20% for the 2008-2009 academic year, while overall community college enrollment increased by less than 2%.
Many traditional higher ed institutions are scrambling to meet the needs of students who are interested in taking classes online. To that end, Einztein plans to partner with schools to help them promote their online course catalogues.
Einztein also plans to launch its own social knowledge network, BrainWave, later this year. This will include a premium subscription service that will include a suite of online social tools to allow students and teachers to communicate and share their online publications, research and discussions.
According to Masoni, “We see the trend toward offering free online courses as an opportunity to create an online knowledge network where online learners and providers (including academics) can connect their favorite courses to relevant knowledge and information, exchange resources with other members sharing their academic interests, and join like-minded learners to explore their academic concentration.”
The move to online education has given rise to several related services lately, including OCWSearch.com, a search engine for open courseware offerings and Udemy, a site where anyone can conduct their own online classes. There are still many questions that these and other sites – along with the academic institutions themselves – must resolve – at the very least how to handle the question of accreditation. But it does seem as though there is a lot of potential for innovation and growth in online education technologies.
