No matter what we do, we are going to need to provide a way for people to put some interactive content into these websites. If it turns out that no one has an interest in doing this, then we've got no concept at all, so I'm going to take it as a given that there is some level of market for this. We actually have a fair amount of competition for this type of service. The best one I know of is webassign.com. They do some really nice, but very expensive stuff by way of providing interactive content that supports textbooks and/or courses. Students carry the burden of paying for this content on a per course, per semester basis. WebAssign has been around long enough to prove that their business model works.
Aside from interactive content which we would build for people, there may also be a small number of content types people would build for themselves. Not all types of interaction can easily be made customizable, but there are quite a few that can, and commonly are, including all sorts of quiz questions and mini-games. Below are some types of content I know I want to be able to support.
Bookmarked video
Conversations, either as the main content of a page, or in a side panel
Math problems with calculated answers and hinting.
Lab data collection - this can be done with webform in most cases.
Dynamic Graphing - student can tweak values and line redraws. Teacher would enter a function using f(x) notation, and provide min and max values for x,y, and all parameters they wish to allow students to play with.
Exercises
No matter what we do, we are going to need to provide a way for people to put some interactive content into these websites. If it turns out that no one has an interest in doing this, then we've got no concept at all, so I'm going to take it as a given that there is some level of market for this. We actually have a fair amount of competition for this type of service. The best one I know of is webassign.com. They do some really nice, but very expensive stuff by way of providing interactive content that supports textbooks and/or courses. Students carry the burden of paying for this content on a per course, per semester basis. WebAssign has been around long enough to prove that their business model works.
Aside from interactive content which we would build for people, there may also be a small number of content types people would build for themselves. Not all types of interaction can easily be made customizable, but there are quite a few that can, and commonly are, including all sorts of quiz questions and mini-games. Below are some types of content I know I want to be able to support.
Becky Kinney