After four months of private-site testing, the
online education site Sophia went live on March 7.
The response was overwhelming: In the first 48 hours, people logged on from 69 different countries. Not bad, considering Sophia had spent nothing on advertising.
"That was really just based on educational blogs and people spreading the word on Twitter and Facebook," says Sophia founder and CEO Don Smithmier,
whom we recently profiled. "It's just the most incredible example of the power of the social web that I've ever seen."
It's exactly that power Smithmier and his team hope to tap with Sophia--a sort-of social media for academia that crowd-sources educational instruction for free, public dissemination.
While the minimum registration age is 13, Sophia's core audience is grades 11�14, says Smithmier, "the last two years of high school and first two years of college, when people are working on general education curriculum � topics that are a gateways to college where a lot of people struggle."
That said, anyone can view Sophia's "learning packets," which registered users create on any subject, with instruction in text, video, graphics and more. (A quick perusal finds topics ranging from graphing rational functions to Chaucer.)
Packet creators may offer their instruction to the whole World Wide Web or create and manage private groups for work amongst students and peers.
Sophia packets are rated for "trustability" in two ways: through a five-star user rating, and by a more rigorous expert review. Though still crowd-sourced, subject experts need to be a teacher or hold a master's degree or higher in the field. Academically sound packets must be vetted by three such experts.
Sophia is one of four companies under
entrepreneur Smithmier's Matter Worldwide umbrella. Based in the Warehouse District in Downtown Minneapolis, Sophia began last November.
Before the public beta launch in March, 1,600 academics from 200 institutions tested the site. Those educators used it in ways the Sophia team didn't expect. "One high school teacher used it as an assessment tool," says Smithmier. "Instead of creating learning packets, he assigned [his algebra students] to create a learning packet � to demonstrate that they understood the concept."
It's an example of how the crowd-sourced, social education site will grow organically.
"I'm a believer that there are a ton of very creative, very innovative educators out there," says Smithmier. "I think Sophia can give them a tool that's out in the cloud, not a cumbersome software package, but something that's very intuitive, very easy to use and consistent with the web's most popular systems like Facebook, Wikipedia, and YouTube."
Sophia is in no hurry to move out of beta; with tongue in cheek, Smithmier cites Google mail's seven-year test period as a benchmark. The company does intend to roll out licensable versions offering more space, functionality, and administrative control later this year.
Minneapolis-based Capella University is one of the owners of Sophia, along with Matter Worldwide. The Sophia leadership team has a strong local strain, as well--a fact that Smithmier believes reflects the city's strong standing in educational technology.
"I'm personally dedicated to � making people more aware of that fact," he says. "There's tremendous brain power here when it comes to educational technology."
Source: Don Smithmier, Sophia
Writer: Jeremy Stratton