Online School: From Idea to Start a Project

Background. Educational technologies or EdTech market is the brand new business area – people all around the world want to learn new skills. Massive open online courses appeared in 2008; however, it was only the part of distance learning. Coursera project was the first one that successfully entered global EdTech market and then it explodes – new global and niche market players start the game. Netology Group with partners did the research “The Russian E-learning and EdTech Market” in 2017. According the research Russian educational market volume was 1.8 trillion rubles at the end of 2016. Moreover, they predict the growth to 2 trillion rubles in 5 years. Problem Statement. The general purpose of the project is to successfully launch online course using expert knowledge and professional methods of launching new products. There are several objectives to reach the goal: • Assess the market demand of the selected sphere according methods that was learned at Business Informatics courses; • Hypothesize the assessment results and define the key indicators to verify; • Study approaches to test chosen hypothesis; • Study the best cases on the market to launch online courses; • Consolidate approaches and create the framework to effectively start educational online course; • Choose the platform and informational technologies to use; • Validate hypothesis and build the service; • Launch the course; • Make analytical research of clients and students activity; • Formalize the results. Professional Significance. University education is money and time expensive – there are also limited amount of government educational grants for students. However, young specialists and even experienced professionals need the resources of qualified and faster education. The success of our project will allow to create the system of rapid, remote and affordable knowledge and skills delivery for those professors who have the unique expertise.