Hello Campus EDU!

This is my first day working for Campus EDU! 

Before I tell you about Campus, I'll get some quick questions out of the way:

• But Ken, what about the academy? Campus EDU represents much of the future of the academy, as you'll see below. If anything, my engagement with the academy is about to spike. I'm now working for many Christian colleges instead of just one.
• But Ken, what about the church? Campus EDU is about bringing Christian education to the whole world, and it is almost certainly going to do it more quickly and extensively than any individual college could or will. In some places, it may even surpass the church in mission. 
• But Ken, what about teaching? I expect to continue teaching, perhaps now for more than one school. I'm scheduled to teach online for Houghton in the late fall. The philosophy course I authored with Campus EDU and Houghton is offered every term. Want me to write and teach a course for your college or university on the Campus platform? 
• Ken, are you moving back to Indiana? Not immediately, but we'll see. My wife is teaching at Houghton Academy right now, so we aren't rushing to move.
• What about your chickens? They're coming with us, wherever.

First, I should say that my sense of Campus EDU is exactly that. It's my sense. If I get something wrong, I'll come back and correct it. In my mind, Campus is something like a cross between Amazon and Elon Musk in relation to Christian colleges:

Amazon
So Amazon is not really a publisher. It is a marketplace for publishers. So Campus EDU doesn't actually grant college credit itself. What it does is broker courses for a wide variety of Christian colleges (e.g., Gordon, IWU, Lipscomb, Abilene Christian, Houghton...). And it does it at a much more reasonable price. Anything that higher education has to offer--certificates, self-directed learning, etc--Campus is poised to do as a broker for students between many different Christian colleges. 

The credit comes from the Christian colleges in the space. It will transfer anywhere that the credit of those colleges will transfer. The student doesn't have to already be a student somewhere. They can sample several Christian colleges and pick the one they find most attractive to finish up. This also gives Christian colleges access to markets they are not a part of, including the vast Christian high school market.

There are great possibilities for collaboration here. Instead of College X getting rid of that Spanish major, why not have several colleges share the curriculum between them in the Campus space? Why do all the Wesleyan colleges have to field an entire team of Bible, theology, and ministry professors when Wesleyans students training for ministry could sample the best of all of them? 

All those degrees the budget hawks were going to get rid of? Share them. In fact, a college could save on its entire gen ed curriculum by outsourcing it to the Campus space and instead focus on specialized majors. A college without any online program in some area could use Campus to instantly create one--and it would be much better than what they could have created on their own!

Elon Musk
Campus is different from Acadeum in that Acadeum only provides a marketplace for a college's existing courses as they are. Campus actually helps each partner college take their courses to the next level. The videography is top quality. (What? Videography? You thought you were just going to make a Zoom video, right?) The instructional design is the latest. (Is your college still doing the purely "read, read, read, write, write, write" model of the 2000s?) The campus team is a wildly creative team. We know engaging courses. 

When Houghton was working on a New Testament Greek course with Campus and Biblingo, it was hard at first to convey to the writer how this course could be "next level." No Zoom recording of lectures. We're going outside. No need for a whiteboard--Campus will make the Greek appear in mid-air. There is usually a storyline that runs alongside the course (in this case we used the motif of uncovering vistas you didn't know were there). In short, it is a holistic experience that goes well beyond mere knowledge transfer. And the integration of faith into learning is a must. The latest in interactive "textbooks" for language and coding learning is used.

Many online programs say you need something more than a smartphone to take the classes. I don't think that's Campus' philosophy. I believe Campus will be bringing Christian education to remote parts of the world on cell phones. We'll let Elon Musk put up the satellites. But when they log on, Campus will be there.

If you want to talk, my new email is ken.schenck@campusedu.com