There’s a problem in the textbook market – it’s a broken market. The consumers (students) are forced to buy the text for the classes they take as recommended by the professor. This system is problematic because students cannot choose substitutes and hence there is no real competition. This causes textbooks to be expensive and lower quality than they should be. Perversely, professors, by making strong recommendations for textbooks, all act individually for their own benefit to the detriment of the whole group because of these dynamics.
The project I’m working on now, has the potential to solve this problem for courses here at Stanford. The main tool for solving this problem is creating a proper feedback loop between teachers and students that doesn’t currently exist. The interactivity and duplex nature of the web is what’s going to make this happen. Professors, in general, are good people and want to do right by their students, but the problem is they don’t have any real idea of how students are doing or what they think about the course. My personal vision for CourseWare is the realization of this proper feedback loop which can fundamentally change the “broken market” element of education.
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