Hi steemians,
In this article I want to talk about our broken education system and how increasingly popular blockchain technology might be able to tackle this crucial world wide problem. Traditional schooling techniques are outdated and does not work in this day and age. I will then introduce you to BitDegree - a platform with blockchain based reward system that is attached to gamified online courses. Games are fun.
Token info: BitDegree
Key problems with our education
Price: We force young people to take loans to enroll in colleges and universities where they then give four years of their lives for a degree that does not guarantee a job to them. The job market is constantly changing so a degree of topic that has a huge demand now might not be so relevant in four years time.
Grades: Giving grades from A's to D's, from 1's to 10's is just unnecessary placing a value of judgement on you: you're smart, you're not, you're hardworking, you're not etc. Instead, we should search for the best in people and cheer individualities.
Value: "Most universities, surprisingly, have no way to measure their effectiveness, and most don’t try. If you can’t measure effectiveness you can’t fail." - Austen Allred
What about online courses?
The current model of online course business is depressing. The completion rate of courses is anywhere from a whopping (#sarcasm) 2% and 10% at best. There is a lack of really good courses because leading companies like Udemy, Udacity or Coursera are forced to put their focus on stamping out basics in any topic as they are the most profitable. Most people don't go through the first step so the market for more advanced courses compared to basic courses is tiny.
Gamified blockchain courses with real value token incentives
BitDegree aims to provide learning incentives - pay you to learn. This new type of learning economy is achievable with BDG tokens. The beta of the platform is available now at BitDegree.
General rules on BitDegree platform:
Everybody pays in BDG token - learners, mentors, companies, sponsors, etc.
BitDegree itself will not sell any tokens directly. Tokens for various needs will have to be bought via exchanges from token holders which will be a boost to BDG token demand and overall utility.
How it all works?
Earning while learning sounds too good to be true, but by attaching their BDG token to gamified courses it becomes possible. BitDegree is trying to bridge the gap between employer needs and the current offerings of universities and higher education institutions. To increase employing efficiency companies would spend money on the creation of specific courses that would satisfy their job positions or pay mentors on the BitDegree platform to do that and then would allocate part of that money to those who enroll. Learners would have a joyful experience of gamified courses where they would take quests, gain points, socialize reach achievements and get BDG tokens throughout the courses. Those who performed well could then, via the same platform, be offered a job. See the prototype token economy below:
First gamified courses from BitDegree
The first gamified courses from BitDegree are available now.
"Space Doggos" - where you can learn solidity programming language by creating your own game on ethereum blockchain.
"Space Doggos 2" - basic in HTML & CSS for website coding.
BitDegree recently launched over 100 new courses on their beta platform. All of those courses are free for now, so try them out.
Attention grabber
For the project of this type traffic is essential and BitDegree has a trick up their sleeve. Because of their partners Hostinger & 000webhost, where the founders worked on before BitDegree, they have ~29 million people user base that I am sure they are going to draw on when the platform matures.
!
For a push to acquire even more valuable traffic BitDgree recently introduced dozens of tutorials for the masses that cover everything you need to know about crypto. As more and more people keep flowing into the market, being a hub for all the basic and advanced answers on crypto is a valuable source of traffic. You can check them out here: https://www.bitdegree.org/tutorials/
Team & advisors
The big name on the advisor board is Jeff Burton a co-founder of EA (Electronic Arts). He is a major advisor and you can see him in a lot of BitDegree videos, he is a great speaker. His experience in leading international expansion and worldwide marketing for EA is a perfect fit for a startup with gamified online courses. Prior to EA, Jeff was also an international marketing manager at Atari.
Some other great advisors are: Roberto Santana a former senior manager at Coursera, BitDegree direct competitor, Maurice de Hond founder of Steve JobsSchool, Thomas Frey architect of the future.
You can check the rest of the team here.
Conclusion
It was a painful experience getting deeper into education problems as all of the bad things I wrote above applied to me personally. Online courses market is really tough with so many big players sharing this pie and to get a piece of it BitDegree needs to do everything they do, just better plus add their new token economy which is yet to be proved successful. I feel confidence in BitDegree team to do their best and deliver changes needed to bring more success into online education and to bring more fun into learning. Getting payed to learn is something that seems unreal and if they can achieve such incentive model that will definitely shake up this market.
Disclaimer
I admire what this project is aiming to achieve so I obviously have a position in it, but by no means take this article as a financial advice. Every investment is a risk and you should do your own research before taking any definite decisions.
You can also find this article on my page:
http://thecryptofanatic.info/index.php/2018/04/20/problems-with-education-and-gamified-courses-with-cryptocurrency-rewards/