Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Pathwright for online courses


Pathwright looks like a scalable, easy-to-use way to create, sell and teach online courses.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/08/pathwright-launch/

I am seriously thinking of creating a online Digital Video Secrets course just to test it.

This is the first online education package that really excites me.

I've been at least aware of online education since the beginning of the Internet. I still remember the corporate push for online education at one of my big writing clients--12 writers, multiple millions of dollars, awkward Unix based course software... Everyone could see the potential but no one could make it work. Maybe Pathwright will make it work.

5 comments:

Paul Johnson said...

Tony, thanks for posting about Pathwright. We certainly hope to make online education finally just work.

Let me know if I can help with anything as you build out your Digital Video Secrets course.

Paul (paul@pathwright.com)

Tony said...

Thanks Paul.

I will be on airplanes and in meetings for the next few days. I am going to NYC for Seth Godin's all-day conference on May 16. When I return home next week I will think about ways to use Pathwright to create a test course. I like the Pathwright user interface, and the overall concept. The main problem--after getting a quality course running--will be getting attention and building a following. I will give that problem some thought while in New York.

Paul Johnson said...

Sounds great, Tony.

Marketing courses is always a bit of a challenge. I'd be happy to chat about some ideas with you once you have time. Hope you've enjoyed the conference!

Tony said...

Three ideas for publicizing a digital video course from the seminar. They may be useful to others who want to publicize their courses, too.
- Make a powerful 3 min video and post it on YouTube. Hope it goes viral.
- Start writing a daily blog post. I'd go for about 130 words a day, and design the daily posts so they cumulatively teach the reader about a subject (digital cinematography and filmmaking in my case) over a year's time. Figure 6 months to a year before the effects kick in.
- Pitch and write articles on the course for people like Huff post. And of course, all the industry bloggers and magazines in the field.
This is probably how I would go about promoting a course, but these tactics may not work for others.

Tony said...

The other thing I would probably do is what Seth Godin calls "First, ten." He said:

"Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you...

"Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they'll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.

"If they don't love it, you need a new product. Start over."

Link:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.html