A few months ago (Sept 09, “All you can learn for 99 bucks a month”) I wrote about Straighterline.com after reading about them in the Washington Monthly. I was floored by the concept (floored=positive). It was everything I thought about higher education rolled up into a company. A working, growing business. On a whim, I wrote the CEO and basically said,
Hi, I really love your company and believe that you’re what’s next in higher education. I don’t care if it’s mopping or sweeping, I think that I should be working for/with you. Let me know if we can work something out.
Cheers,
Joe
And that’s the short version of how I found myself newly employed at Straighterline.com as course manager. Am I stoked? You have no idea.
To borrow from my previous post, the win here is “efficiency + quality + freedom = a better way for motivated learners to get degrees“. Having looked through the courses already I can attest to the quality (and guarantee that the quality is going to improve based on student feedback and will be updated as we grow as a company). Additionally the LMS integration with tutoring and a real course advisor leaves very small chance that a learner will feel isolated online. Paired with real feedback on assignments submission (writing) and instant feedback from tests it creates a very efficient learning environment for the student.
Here’s some recent coverage we got by a local DC news outlet:
