So we all know colleges are expensive, even community colleges for
some people. As such, why don't we use the library to provide free education?
Here is the idea.
Library College: At a library you can educate
yourself for free. The only thing you cannot get is the certification for
a degree. Yes there are certification tests to demonstrate your
knowledge, but people still favor the college degrees in business due to
colleges being promoted as the place to learn and advance in the business
world. As such, let us change that. Libraries offer an array of
books which can be used as course material to educate a person on a subject, so
why not make those books into a curriculum. Select a subject, then have a
student read from a list of books on that particular subject. If the
material has to be separated because you need prerequisite knowledge, then give
a list of books per prerequisites that must be read. Have this core set
of books and material be read and then test them via a free electronic test.
Then after the test, the next set of books are read, and then another test is
able to be taken which will also build upon the knowledge of the previous test
and reading material. If the material crosses subjects or professional
types like European government, European history, European culture, European
art etc., then the books can be read and those questions for those subjects can
be integrated into the tests.
How the testing would work is that you
would log onto an online free account where you will click off each book in the
curriculum you have read. Mind you, there are numerous books on the same
subject and thus the list of books does not have to be completed, and the
system will say when you have read the minimum number of books needed to take
each test. If you have yet to read the full course load, you will be taking a
mini-quiz that tests you on only what you have learned thus far (this serves to
show that you are reading the material). If you fail a quiz or a test,
you can re-take them as many times as it takes. Also, each test will
always build upon the previous ones so that you are constantly being tested on
the knowledge you have acquired. This can take the form of repeating
questions from a previous quiz/test or integrating that knowledge into
questions based on the new material. At the end of each test or specified
number of tests you will receive free certification that you are qualified for
a degree of equivalent value. This means that if you qualify for an associate’s
degree based on what you have learned, the system will award that to you.
You can achieve multiple associates, bachelors or potentially masters
degrees. Tests themselves will be multiple choice, fill in the blank,
matching and other questions that do not require a non-computer to grade.
So no essays. As such, your writing skills will not be
tested.
To fund this, publishers can add books
into the appropriate reading curriculum via a small fee. This also allows
electronic books to be used as well, with publishers or even the authors
providing the electronic copy for use, with ads to pay the authors or
publishers for providing them based on the books popularity with regard to it being
used as part of the material. Advertisers can buy ads in the margins to
pay for the site as well. If a particular ad caters to what is being
studied, then ads for that will be cheaper, and thus ads that do not relate to
that subject will pay more (though all will be priced on web popularity of each
electronic page). Donations are also an acceptable form of money to keep
the site running as well, but most of the courses will use books and other
reading material that is either donated or where the copyrights have expired to
ensure this program never becomes a fee for service site.
There will be a social network portion of
the site where people can pose questions on the material they are reading.
People can then answer each other and grade each other on how useful
their answers to each other were. Users can also post tips to each other on
which books are easier to understand or ways to approach the material (the
students can review the books or the other material in the comments section in
a similar fashion to amazon's buyer review section). It will also be set
up so that discussions of the subject matter can occur to further stimulate
learning. Also, people can use show their progress publically if they so
choose, where people can see their tests and their answers. This also
serves as a form of learning and does not become counterproductive for you can
only take each test after you certify you have read the books via the quizzes (if
it is an electronic copy of a book, the course will also log how long it takes
for you to read each page and give tips on how to improve reading time or get
more time out of the reading based on how well you did on the quizzes).
All of this creates a digital learning environment for students who
cannot afford or do not have time to go to a traditional brick and mortar
school (though hopefully this will sponsor meet ups at the libraries for likeminded
students).
Conclusion: This is a way to provide an
alternative to colleges while propping up libraries. It also gets people
the education they desire at their own pace and in their own timing which
benefits them. The only reason why a writing element is not added is due
to that costing money for people to grade the essays. So if you are not
good with multiple choice, word choice or fill in the blank type exams, you may
struggle. Also, multiple questions will be used to test the same
knowledge and will be randomized to make sure that no two tests are the same.
This ensures that people taking a test multiple times are suitably
challenged on the subject matter. Obviously, this system caters toward
history based lessons, people who study folklore, some math type courses that
require reading and logic and anything that does not require writing or lab
work. Though it is possible that digital lab work can be done via
interactive programming which will also grade on safety and procedure. Of
course such systems will be developed over time as the curriculums are
developed expanded and more subjects added. The idea is simple, create a
free learning environment for students or people who want to learn. What
can be wrong with that?
No comments:
Post a Comment