How to improve face-to-face teaching with a Sclipo Online Campus

Sclipo Online Campuses, just like online campuses of Universities, are mostly used to support face-to-face teaching. In fact, we built Sclipo with face-to-face in mind. We saw the success of University online campuses (every University has one), and aimed to provide a solution for teachers in face-to-face continuing education, yet more simple and with specific features adapted to their needs.

If you are a face-to-face teacher, and wonder how a Sclipo Online Campus can enhance your teaching activities, here are 5 ways to do so.

1. Share content: Add the presentation, document, video or any other type of content of your face2face class to the Library of your Sclipo Campus. Now your students can easily find and review content after the class, and they can also post questions about and comment it. This is more efficient than printing or sending content by email, and the comments allow you to follow up with students and improve your content. And, don’t forget: content is King – a Library full of good content is your best promotion. (more info about the Library app → )
2. Manage your face-to-face courses: For each face-to-face course you can set up a Course in your Online Campus. Only your face-to-face students have access to it. After the class, you and students can log into the course and share updates, add content, post questions, conduct knowledge checks, check assignments and more. You can also send private messages to and administer your face-to-face students. (more info about the Courses app →)
3. Connect with your face-to-face students: Your Sclipo Online Campus comes with its own Social Network. It provides great tools to foster and build a long term relationship with your face-to-face students, such as Online Groups, Friendships, Events and more. (more info about the Social Network apps →)
4. Offer live tutoring sessions through your web conferencing system: Every Sclipo Campus integrates a virtual classroom web conferencing system with live video, audio, whiteboard, desktop-sharing and more. Use it to complement face-to-face classes. For example, you can offer additional tutoring and special Q&A sessions from the comfort of your home. (more info about the Virtual Classroom app →)
5. Promote and sell your face-to-face courses: Are you looking for more face-to-face students? You can post your Courses in the Classifieds of your Sclipo Campus just like you can post them in a generic, stand-alone classifieds. The advantage of your Sclipo Campus Classifieds is that prospective students can find much more than just course descriptions. They can explore your whole Campus, its services, content, teachers and students. This is much richer information than that of a stand-alone classifieds and helps to convince people to become a student. And they can also buy your courses directly from your Campus. (more info about the Promotion and eCommerce apps →)

This said, a Sclipo Campus is extremely flexible, and adapts to any kind of teaching method: face-to-face, online and blended. So, once you have boosted your face-to-face teaching with your Sclipo Online Campus, you can easily expand your offering with online-only educational services.

I hope these recommendations were helpful. We are looking forward to your comments and feedback, here and at our Online Campus on Sclipo.

Learn how to enhance face-to-face teaching with a Sclipo Online Campus.

Sclipo provides the most SEO-friendly Online Campus

Teachers who use a Sclipo Online Campus will attract more new students than those with a traditional LMS (Learning Management System). Firstly, the Sclipo platform has a better page rank and more traffic than most LMS installations. Second, and more importantly, search engines can find the content of a Sclipo Campus easier than that of an LMS. Easier, or in fact, they can find it at all.

LMS are closed systems for current students
LMS were created to help Universities and large institutions teach their current students. Only after a person becomes a student, s/he gets access to the online campus. To attract new students is not the objective. This is the job of the marketing department, who may use other online tools such as a promotional web site, SEO, SEM and classifieds. People who are not students can not go beyond the log in page of the online campus. Neither can Google. This may be ok for a large institution, but what about an independent teacher or a continuing education firm without a large marketing budget?

A Sclipo Campus is open to any visitor (and search engine), helping to attract new students
Anybody can find and explore a Sclipo Campus – people and search engines – which makes it SEO-friendly (Search-Engine-Optimized). This means, all content (courses, documents, videos, members, etc.) on a Sclipo Campus is indexed by search engines. So, Google et. al. can store hundreds of links pointing to the Sclipo Online Campus, one for each content item. The more content, the more links and the easier the Campus will be found by people looking for education. Hence, the probability that prospective new students will find your courses increases with every content you add to your Sclipo Online Campus. (Access to view content can, of course, be restricted.) In addition to being SEO-friendly, a Sclipo Online Campus provides features to help you promote your school, such as a Campus classifieds. In a traditional LMS, content inside the Online Campus is not stored by search engines. Potential students will have a harder time to find your school.

Example of the SEO-friendliness of a Sclipo Online Campus
Say you are a school offering language courses for adults. You may have a website in which you present your school. If you get a traditional LMS, such as Moodle, you may add a link from your web to your online campus. Visitors can only view its front page. Entering requires a login. Only students can access your Campus. Search engines do not know what is behind the front page. People searching for say “TOEFL” or “Italian course” will probably not find you on a search engine.

If however you use Sclipo, visitors can explore your Online Campus beyond its home page: they can browse the courses you offer, the videos and documents of your library as well as your live sessions. They can see which events and groups you have organized. They can even see teachers and students. All this generates trust about your school. Visitors can participate in courses and view content you have set as “free” and “open”, but not those set as “restricted”. Search engines know what is offered in your Campus, so prospective students can find it easily. For example, if you added 20 tutorials related to the TOEFL test, search engines will have 20 high value links pointing to your school. This means, people searching for “TOEFL” can find you easier. Announcing your TOEFL courses only on your Campus front page just generates one link. And this one will not be ranked as high as the ones to TOELF tutorials. Search engines rank educational content better than promotional text. And every time you add a new content, its description and link is stored. So, every new content becomes automatically advertising for your school. The more content, the more visitors you will get from search engines; the more visitors, the more new students. To further boost the potential to convert visitors to students, you can leave some content open. Now people can view a free sample to better appreciate the quality of your school. And, visitors and students can link to that video or document, embed it, post it on Facebook, tweet about it, etc.. Now, both your visitors and students become your promoters. This is called viral marketing – which will be the topic of a future post.

Online Campus built with Moodle. Clicking on a course listed on the front page leads to a login page. Non-students cannot enter it to find out more about your services. Search engines can not link to campus content, prospective students will not be able to find it.

The Sclipo Campus of Vocatic. Any visitor - student or not - can openly explore its language courses and content, as well as see its teachers. Search engines store links to each course and content, making the Campus easy to find for prospective students.

Sclipo – the only 100% free Online Campus for University and K-12 teachers

Sclipo provides – to the best of our knowledge – the world’s only 100% free Online Campus for University and K-12 teachers. With our 100% free Academic Plan, teachers get an Online Campus with:

• E-Learning apps: Course manager, tests, learning path, library, discussion forum, and more…
• Virtual classroom web conferencing: live audio and video, multiple webcams, chat, whiteboard, desk-top sharing, multi-language interface, and more…
• Social network: events, grous, wall, friendships, profile, and more…

See all Sclipo Online Campus feature here.

What about open source LMS (Learning Management Systems)?
The cost of an open source solution with the same Sclipo Campus features is not zero. Only the license to use an open source LMS is free. Firstly, to run an open source LMS requires payment for hosting. In addition, most teachers and schools need to pay IT personnel or consultants to install, configure and maintain the open source LMS. Open source LMS provider Moodle actually makes money by charging royalties to Moodle consultants for any service they sell related to Moodle. Finally, open source LMS do not include a Virtual Classroom web conferencing system by default like Sclipo’s Online Campus. Web conferencing needs to be integrated via a paid plugin / API. To integrate an open source web conferencing system requires additional hosting as well as IT personnel or consultants.

In our experience, the costs of an open source LMS* include:

• IT personnel: up from $30 per hour
• Hosting of open source LMS: up from $5 per month (shared hosting) to plus $100 (dedicated server)
• Hosting of open source web conferencing: up from $60 per month (dedicated server)
• Web conferencing plugin: up from $10 per month per room

(* approximate cost examples)

Our calculations show that even our paid Online Campus plans are about 10 times less expensive than the total cost of an open source LMS. And, of course, paid Campus plans also include a bunch of promotion and e-Commerce features to help attract new students and to facilitate selling of services and content.

Sclipo Online Campus with Course Manager, Library, Virtual Classroom and Social Network

Online Campus for Tutoring Agencies: Teach more students & better

The Sclipo Online Campus is a great solution for tutoring agencies! It allows them to attract more students and to boost their learning experience. And, best of all, we offer a special program to agencies through which they can make money by using the Sclipo Online Campus, instead of paying for it. Intrigued? Keep on reading!

How to attract more students?
With the Sclipo Online Campus solution, the agency can attract more students and strongly differentiate itself.

• Students find the agency faster on the web! The Campus is SEO friendly, meaning, it is Search-Engine-Optimized! All tutors and each content item (courses, documents, videos, etc.) on the Campus is indexed by search engines. So, instead of storing only links to the agency’s promotional web pages, Google and other search engines now have hundreds of links pointing to the agency and its Campus. The more links, the easier the agency will be found.
• Content sells better than promotion! Every agency has the best tutors. Yet, as a student, how can I check who is really better for me? With an Online Campus, potential students can actually see what the agency offers. (They will also be impressed that it has such a cool Campus!) They can browse it without being registered, and preview content and courses. This increases the agency’s credibility and thus, sign up rates. Of course, access to content can be restricted.
• Turn students into promoters! With an Online Campus, students can easily send links to the tutor and her/his content to other students. They can also tweet it, and share it on Facebook and many other social networks. And, they can post content from tutors on their blogs. All this is free and highly valuable advertising for the agency.
• Offer new services! An Online Campus allows to offer new online services. For example, the agency can offer self-paced online courses as well as live tutoring sessions with the web conferencing system built right into the Campus.
• Offer services globally! Online services can be offered world-wide! The English tutor, for example, can not only teach in the agency’s neighborhood, but also students anywhere in the world!
• Attract the best tutors from anywhere! An agency is as good as its tutors. With an Online Campus, the agency can recruit the best teachers from anywhere. It is no longer restricted to find great teacher in its city.

How to boost the learning experience of my students?
The Online Campus is a great tool for tutors to teach better. In addition, students love the web. So, a tutor with an Online Campus will be more appreciated than the tutor equipped with just a pen & paper notepad.

• Share more content easier! The days of handing out photocopies are coming to an end. With an Online Campus, the tutor can easily share links to documents, videos, books…!
• Be available 24×7! Students most certainly have questions when the tutor is not there. If their tutors have an Online Campus, they can easily message them without clogging their emails. And, they can post questions on the Campus forum or wall. And yes, the agency can charge extra for this service.
• Offer live sessions! Maybe students want to connect spontaneously for questions. Or, they are sick. Or, the tutor does not have time to travel to the student for that emergency class right before the exam. So, just offer live tutoring sessions using the web conferencing system built into the Campus. And yes, the agency can charge extra for this too.
• Offer online tests! With an Online Campus, the tutor can create tests to further help students.
• Allow students to make new friends! The Sclipo Online Campus has its own Social Network. So, your students can connect and share among themselves. And, the tutor can set up online groups, where students can join, make new friends and learn from each other.

Ready for an Online Campus?

How to make money with the Sclipo Online Campus solution?
The agency can just open an Online Campus and pay a subscription fee. Yet, why pay if the agency can actually earn money!

Here is how our tutoring agency partnership program works:
• One Campus per tutor! The agency provides each teacher with her/his Online Campus. Each Campus can be branded with the agencies logo, and customized to its look & feel without programming knowledge.
• Integrate the Online Campus into the agency’s web! The agency can embed one or more Campuses into its web. This is as easy as embedding a YouTube video. This way, students and visitors can log into the Campus right on their webs and browse it without Sclipo logo. At the same time, the agency’s Campuses will be on Sclipo, helping to attract more students. As shown in this demo, the agency can easily create a tutor directory on its web and link to each tutor and her/his Campus.
• The tutor pays! The teacher pays for her/his Campus, just like s/he pays for other tools. The agency deducts payment from her/his commissions. Sclipo provides special pricing. For tutors who stop working for an agency, her/his Campus is deactivated. This gives the tutor an additional incentive to stay!
• Receive a commission for each Campus! The agency receives a commission from Sclipo for each active Campus.

Why will my tutors pay for their Campus?

• Tutors make more money! Without an Online Campus, tutors will not be able to offer all the extra services described here. The additional revenue easily surpasses the monthly fee.
• Tutors will be more demanded! Students prefer tutors with Campus.
• More credibility! Having a Campus with the agency makes the tutor more credible. Students know that agencies select their tutors.
• The Online Campus is a tool! The Online Campus forms part of the tool set of the tutor similar to other tools such as office material or books. Generally, tutors pay for their tools.

What do you think? For feedback and questions about the Sclipo Campus solution and partnership program for tutoring agencies, please contact us.

Here a demo that shows how an agency can easily set up its directory of tutors and an Online Campus for each.

How to monetize open content?

We are getting this question from many teachers.

This is the scenario: A teacher creates a paid Course in her Web Academy. She then assigns content to that course: videos, documents, etc. The question now is: should that content be restricted to students who paid for the course or should it be accessible for free to any visitor to the Library of her Web Academy?

The spontaneous (and traditional) answer is, no! Content of a paid course should not be open to any visitor of my web academy! But, wait a minute! There certainly are advantages of leaving content open.

See Universities. They create the bulk of educational content and have traditionally shielded access to students only. Yet, in recent years a growing number of Universities started opening up its content. For example, you can access all content from MIT for free through Open Courseware. Why? Because a core value of an educator is in selecting content and defining tasks that help to learn it. So, you can access any MIT content for free, but an MIT professor will not help you decide which of the 3440 content items related to Algebra is relevant for you.

Back to Sclipo… Hence, even though content is accessible for free through a teacher’s Web Academy, only students of a course get:
* a recommendation & selection of content relevant to a specific learning objective
* personal attention from the teacher to answer questions, conduct tasks related to the content, etc.
* interaction with other students through discussions, groups, etc.

Another way of thinking about open content is that is great advertising. The more content potential students can check out in a Library, the more will sign up for its courses. MIT is still in business, isn’t it?

Happy 4th launch-day!

On October 20th, 2006, exactly 4 years ago, the very first version of Sclipo (then called Visuarios) was launched. The home page, as stored by archive.org, looked like this (well, almost, just imagine the thumbs :):

4 years ago, there was no company … just the idea to freshen up learning-through-text with learning-through-video. In addition, anybody should be able to share her/his knowledge audio-visually, not just professionals with large video production budgets. The idea evolved into today’s vision: to make teaching & learning through web apps possible for anybody, including those who cannot afford an LMS like Blackboard and Moodle. (Yes, Moodle is not free! Someone has to pay for hosting, installation, configuration, maintenance, etc., correct?)

So, we went from pioneering user-generated educational videos to become the first and leading platform (and inventor) of Web Academies – the space of people and organizations to instruct courses, live sessions & content, and to manage students & activities.

I believe we achieved our goal of making web learning possible for the rest-of-us. Anybody can open her/his own Web Academy in just a few clicks – no installation, hosting or maintenance needed. One can even customize its look & feel in seconds with no IT knowledge. And all this for as little as $9,95 a month! Academics and K-12 teachers don’t have to pay at all (not even the IT department of their Universities / Schools!). Yet, what I am most proud of is that Sclipo enables social learning like no other LMS: Any student can learn from any Academy anywhere, and learn with any student anywhere. Some (well, many) teachers don’t like this. But hey, no revolution comes easy.

Thanks to all who make Sclipo possible! I won’t mention names. The list of people, including and above all our cherished users from over 100 countries, is way too long.

Happy launch-day!

¡Ha muerto el EVA; larga vida al EDA!

“Virtual”, definido por la Real Academia, significa: Que tiene existencia aparente y no real.

Por esto consideramos Sclipo un EDA – Entorno Digital de Aprendizaje, y no un EVA. Nuestras aplicaciones apoyan la educación presencial, a distancia y mixta con herramientas digitales. Éstas no son menos reales que un aula físico o una pizarra. También, y sobre todo, ¿qué preferimos? ¿Aprender “real-” y “virtualmente”?

Hace tiempo, se hablaba de (algunas) webs como entornos virtuales. Pero actualmente, ¿quién llamaría Facebook un entorno virtual para conectar?; o Skype un entorno virtual de comunicación? Las herramientas web complementan nuestras actividades “presenciales” y “físicas”. Son herramientas igual que el lápiz o el papel. Solo que están hechas de “ceros” y “unos”, en vez de materiales tangibles. Siendo digitales, son increíblemente eficientes y permiten hacer nuevas cosas que antes eran imposibles.

Aumentar la eficiencia de y hacer posible nuevas formas de aprender con la ayuda de EDAs tendrá un impacto fundamental sobre nuestras vidas y la sociedad. Por ejemplo, un EDA permite a José, un profesor “real” de guitarra flamenca en Sevilla, enseñar a Sara, que vive Nueva York, de forma “real”. Sin EDAs, Sara estaría limitada a profes residentes en su ciudad. EDAs permiten, ¡por fin!, Global Sourcing de recursos educativos.

Entonces: lanzamos, desde Sclipo, el desafío de sustituir EVA por EDA :)

Does Sclipo help me find new students & make money?

No!… and yes!

Sclipo is not a market place, it is a web learning application. Our value proposition is to provide tools that are easy and affordable compared to a traditional Learning Management System (LMS) that requires teachers to pay for hosting, IT professionals, extensive training, etc..

Sclipo offers primarily instructional tools and also those that help promote teaching activities (see info on tools & tutorials below). As a consequence, we do not take commissions. We charge a flat fee. Think of Sclipo like it was a building that provides you a space and tools to teach. If you make lots of money, great! We won’t charge you more rent.

That said, there are Academies on Sclipo who get tens of thousands of visits (and a manifold return on their subscription payment with just one student). This is because their courses and content are very good (and Sclipo very affordable). To spread the word, successful teachers (and their students!) use the tools provided with the Web Academy: they use the Invitation tool, they embed content on blogs, post it to Facebook, share it on Twitter, etc. As a consequence, Google indexes these Web Academies and their content very well.

If you were to set up your LMS, you would still have to promote it just like your Sclipo Web Academy or your blog. Just because Blogger hosts millions of blogs does not assure you any readers, doesn’t it? Yet, Sclipo offers an important benefit: Web Academies and its content are indexed (unless marked as secret) by search engines. This means, anybody can find your Academy through for example Google. You can, of course, limit access to authorized people – your students and teachers. A LMS, in contrast, is a walled garden! No one without a login has access to its content – including Google.

Related info:
* Tutorial: Tools to promote a Course
* Tutorial: Tools to promote a Live Session
* How does Sclipo help me find new students & make money?

Happy teaching & promoting!