Cardano School: Education Platform

GENERAL PROBLEM STATEMENT

As a developer interested in getting in touch with Cardano, I want to have a central entry point to the learning materials the Cardano community creates. Instead, today, the content is scattered across several websites and YouTube channels. When searching for "Learn Cardano" on Google, the first result is the "dry" Cardano Documentation, followed by the question "I want to learn Cardano, where to start?" on Reddit and content on YouTube, Udemy, and general blockchain sites. [1]

I want to create a dedicated online hub / platform that allows devs to learn Cardano. That site enabled devs to find content they need to gain a deeper understanding about Cardano in an easy way. As a platform always is two-sided, the other target group consists of educators who want to present their content to a new audience and be part of concrete learning paths.
To conclude: I want to bridge the gap between developers and learning materials created by Cardano educators.

TARGET GROUPS

• Developers not yet in touch with Cardano.
• Cardano community members that create high quality learning materials.

VALUE PROPOSITION

• Enabling devs to build on Cardano by making high quality learning materials better accessible. Draw a learning path trough materials so that devs always know what's next.
• Allowing new Cardano educators with high quality contents to reach a new audience. Become better known as an expert.

CHANNELS TO TARGET GROU****PS

• Devs: Search engines; forums related to programming.
• Educators: Direct contact.

CUSTOMER RETENTION

• Devs: Building related content / learning paths keeps devs engaged.
• Educators: Build a brand. Potential source for P2P-Coaching, selling courses later on.

KEY ACTIVITIES

• Build the website / platform (see https://cardano.school for the current minimal viable website)
• Sourcing (or creating) (video-) courses tailored to dev interests
• Bundling contents into courses and, later on, learning paths
• Search engine marketing

KEY RESOURCES

• Educators / content creators
• Globally highly performant website / platform to rank high in search results (current PageSpeed Score is >90)

PARTNERS (concept, not yet established)

• Educators / content creators: Content.
• Translators: Translate content to other languages.
• Community leaders / Cardano OGs: Marketing.
• Cardano Catalyst Community: Feedback, marketing, funds.
• IOHK: Marketing, content?
• Cardano.org: Marketing, content?

REVENUE

• Catalyst funds for getting started
• Later
• portion of course fees (like Udemy)
• portion of P2P coaching referrals
• Sponsors
• Stake Pool

COSTS

• Tech. infrastructure: depends on traffic, ~$10/month (without own video hosting / streaming).
• Develop learning platform / hub: up to now ~$1700 (2 days @ EU freelancer rate) + $1700 (2 days) per month
• Content creators: Currently betting on community engagement. I will create 2 self-recorded courses on my own & for free in March / April 2021 to get us started. High-Quality / Professional eLearning creation usually costs ~$10000+ per video-hour [1]
• Marketing (Google ADs, FB): $600 per month

=> $2310 per month
+ $1700 initial costs
= $4010 project initiation costs

If the community funds this project, I will sponsor 12 days of platform development 6 months ($10200).
Required budget is (planned for 6 months):

6 * monthly costs + initial costs
6 * ( $10 + $600 ) + $4010
= $7670

RISKS

• If Cardano learning material creators don't support the project, we'll have to finance content creation with future funds.
• If IOHK or Cardano.org launched an eLearning platform on their own, it was likely to take traffic from cardano.school.
• If developers interested in Cardano are to small a niche, future returns possibly are too low to financially support new learning material creation by educators.

KEY METRICS

• No. of visits to website -> interest.
• No. of visits to specific course and lesson sites -> interest and possible ROI for content creators.
• Google Ranking.

REALIZATION APPROACH / PLAN

Iterative approach. This is the first stage of the project where we're setting things up together. I've already bought the domain cardano.school and created an early version of the website with some placeholder content. The next step will be to place actual courses on cardano.school and optimize contents to match dev's interests.

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[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=learn+cardano
[2] https://raccoongang.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-create-online-course/