How Would You Promote an O/S Education System?

mgkimsal2 asks: "We've put together a distance learning system for a college and the system is being released under an open source license. Given the budget we had, it was a decent sized system with enough features to go toe-to-toe with Blackboard in many situations. The biggest problem we're having right now is trying to find the appropriate people at colleges/universities. How do you go about reaching decision makers on something like this when the primary benefits of it is its open source nature? Cost/freedom are great, but many schools wouldn't be getting anything they don't already have, and would also have to go through the pain of migration. In a perfect world this becomes something that other schools could contribute to and build on, but getting that kind of buy-in seems relatively difficult. What types of academic positions would Slashdot readers recommend approaching (Deans? Presidents? Webmasters? Teachers? IT People?) What types of approaches might work best? Better yet, what's worked with -your- school to get them to adopt an Open Source Education System?"

Comments

Physics & CS departments!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go for the physics and CS departments first. They have usually have admins and grad students with the necessary skills to install the system. After they've used it for a few of their own courses, the "new" system will have some credibility with others in the university.

Please help with marketing plan.

[Strange Ranger]

OK, I'll take a stab at it:

1. Give the software itself away. I mean give it away like AOL gives away sign-up CD's. (OK, not nearly so spammy as that but you get the idea.) Only charge by billable credits. In other words, regardless of grade, dropped class, whatever, if the school charges a student for 3 credits of distance learning, you get 3 very small units of payment. This allows the school to bring the system up and use it with less risk. They only pay you after it generates revenue. They only pay for it if they use it. In return, you get paid for a LONG time. Schools have been quite happy with the subscription model for a long time now.

2. Seek out schools that do not currently have a decent solution in place. There are many.

3. Seek out the administration, they're the ones who sign Purchase Orders.

4. Make sure 'Open Source' isn't the only great feature. Or even the only 1 of 3. Toe-to-toe with Blackboard isn't really enough. Also, the primary feature is not "Open Source", it's that "Students and professors can build on it in and out of the classroom. They can add as many features as they can dream of." So it's "Much better than Blackboard."

5. Get buy in, via references at least, partnership at best, with well known, highly respected professors. (timely non-O/S example) Your ultimate marketing goal is to get professors to want it, and ask for it by name. Easier said than done, but there are some O/S enthusiastic professors out there. Find them.

6. Don't preach O/S to anybody who doesn't already get it and love it. You don't see a car salesman explaining torque or automotive industry practices to a soccer mom customer.

7. Write a manual in textbook style. Make it good. Allow the school to copy it and sell it at cost. Now they can make migration to your system a student project. Free labor is a good thing. Having your labor pay you per credit hour is even better! This concept doesn't end with migration. This might be the only time you mention O/S to the administrators who make the final decision and sign the P/O. This is where O/S saves the school the most obvious and significant money.

Good luck.