JayneG
1
It seems that this is the week for new and exciting things on wikiHow! The team has another new innovation that is likely to go live this week, so we wanted to introduce it to you!
wikiHow will soon start testing out a few online courses that provide in-depth instructions to popular topics, like doing origami. Our thought is that people who want to take a deeper dive into a subject may find courses to be a more engaging and helpful way to learn new skills. To experiment with the online course format without needing to build all our own tools, we’re going to put a few courses up on Teachable as a way to iterate and try out different sorts of online courses using wikiHow articles and videos. As a start, we’re planning to experiment with courses in Crafts & DIY, Homework Help, Pets, Career Help, and Health & Fitness. Are there other categories you’d be excited to see us try?
For those of you that haven’t encountered Teachable
before, it’s an online platform that provides the framework to build and host online courses. If you have the chance, feel free to poke around the site and let us know what you find on there that looks interesting to you – this is a new space for wikiHow, and we’d love to know your thoughts.
When visiting Teachable, you’ll notice that unlike our website and apps, the wikiHow courses may have a small cost associated with them. If successful, these courses could help support wikiHow’s offerings in other areas – and of course, all of the guides offered as part of the courses would still be available freely on wikiHow.
I’ll be sure to let you all know in the comments when the first course goes live so you can see how it all connects together on the site.
system
2
Can’t wait to try this out!
Oh, interesting! Can’t wait to see what the courses are like when they go live
system
5
@JayneG
I would also love to see you guy’s try out Sports and Fitness! But sports might already be apart of fitness…IDK
This isn’t really a suggestion, but I’m wondering now - if these are going to cost money, are there going to be some that are free to access on Teachable, or are they all going to have a fee? I’m just thinking because kids aren’t likely to have the money to pay for courses on homework help, and if this expands to other topics (for instance, guides for college students), some of the people might be on really tight budgets and not be able to afford paying for it. I know that the wikiHow guides themselves are staying up, but everyone does learn differently, and it’d be really uncool to essentially block access to the courses to people who are more likely to be in tight spots financially.
system
7
^I was also wondering about this…
JayneG
8
@Galactic-Radiance
that’s an interesting point to ponder, for sure, because we definitely wouldn’t want to block access to important educational tools because of a prohibitive cost. As I understand it, the first courses are likely to start out free, but there might be small costs for others. Your point is especially well taken with regard to school-related materials. If we do end up charging for courses on teachable, homework help might be an area to keep free, or find a way to make that content available to students in other ways.
@Ruah
thanks for the feedback, sports could be a good additional area to look into!
It looks like that 2020 is a year full of adapting to new changes.By the way, around how much does each course cost?
Sounds like a fabulous next step to wikiHow. Will there be any way wiki volunteers can contribute down the line?
Hi Jayne, I think it is great. I would like Life coach category there, where holistic living is taken into consideration.I checked the website, teachable and the pages look nice and colorful. I just realised when I perused the pricing of courses, that wikiHow offers so much information to readers for free. There’s even the quiz and wikiHow videos now.I know this will work just right and even build readership on wikiHow itself. Hip hip hurray.
Interesting. I love seeing wikiHow improve over time.
JayneG
14
@StrayCatz
That’s a great question, I’ll put the feelers out about the possibility of volunteer contributions.
@Emily-Pole
Although it hasn’t been confirmed, I believe they’re planning to start out low; from free to around $2-$3 for the introductory courses. But don’t quote me on that :)
@VY
You’re so right, wikiHow does already offer a lot! Life coaching is another great category to explore, I will pass that on. Thank you!
What an interesting idea. I think that this would be really helpful for some of the more advanced categories. Also, I was wondering, if this idea goes well, would it be possible that an on site platform will be created, or will the courses stay on Teachable?
What I don’t understand is the fact that we can use YouTube, for free, and still make money off of our videos through ad revenue. Why pay and probably not make money off of a site that is not very well known compared to YouTube?
JayneG
17
@MattheusG
Teachable allows us to combine all of the different materials for a course in the once place and create distinct lessons in an easy-to-follow format. It allows for a cohesive experience, whereas YouTube is just for videos.
@JayneG
Well, I’m glad about that. At least, it’s not sky-high as the other courses.
Batreeq
20
@JayneG
wikiHow should also consider creating YouTube Learning Playlists, like CrashCourse’s Anatomy & Physiology one
.
