A new educational platform allows professors
to set the price charged for their course. Professor Direct establishes a base
price of $49, with all additional revenue going to the instructor.
While Professor Direct prepares the core set of
materials for the class, the instructor can decide on any extra services
students are offered. Dan Gryboski, who has taken a year off from teaching at
the University of Colorado to stay at home with his kids, is promising quick
e-mail responses to all student questions, two hours of online office hours
each week, and additional tutorial videos to supplement the materials for his
two math courses.
“Students pay a premium to have professor
contact,” Gryboski told The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Professor Direct is part of the service from
StraighterLine, which provides paid, online, self-paced introductory courses
that some colleges will accept for transfer credit. Udemy also allows
instructors to teach courses for profit, but none of the company’s classes are
approved for credit and most people teaching on the site are connected to a
college or university.
David Janzen, associate professor of computer
science at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, is one of
the traditional instructors to use the Udemy service, charging $89 per student
for his courses. His class is based on free videos available on his own web
site, but he created additional instructional videos to help Udemy students
work through the online labs.
“I’m charging them for the videos I’ve created,”
he said, adding that he also gives free passes to the course to anyone he
thinks can’t afford the tuition.