Interview with Prometheus Online Course Founder

The Ukrainian nonprofit project “Prometheus” appeared relatively recently. These are open free online courses, the authors of which are teachers of the best universities in the country, such as the Kiev-Mohyla Academy or the Kiev Polytechnic. The list of courses itself is quite multifaceted: it includes the humanities and computer disciplines. Three weeks ago, Prometheus launched a crowdfunding campaign and has already managed to collect more than planned . Project co-founder Ivan Primachenko agreed to answer questions from Geektimes.


On the Internet you can find quite a lot of online courses on various topics, including in Russian. Do you have a certain “killer feature” that allows you to choose among other similar resources?

From the moment the project was launched, we immediately focused not on individual courses, but on whole cycle of courses. The first of these in the fall of 2015, we launched a series of courses on entrepreneurship and civic education. A series of entrepreneurship courses will provide enough knowledge and skills (from management and marketing to taxation and legal aspects of doing business) to open your own business or technology startup. A series of civic education courses gives an idea of ​​how to make a country better and includes courses from anti-corruption to urban studies. Already in the fall of 2016, cycles of programming and data analysis courses will be launched, which should give students enough knowledge and skills to get a Junior level position.

Well, the “killer features”, with a view to which the project was originally created, should be the integration of our courses in university education in the format of blended learning. Already this fall, Prometheus will launch a pilot project of blended learning at several universities in the country, including the Kiev Polytechnic Institute and the Ukrainian Catholic University. Instead of traditional lectures, students across the country will be able to listen to online lectures by teachers at Harvard, Stanford or the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, do assignments online and receive answers on course forums. Offline will remain seminars and physical laboratory, which are irrational to transfer online, teacher advice, which will now be able to devote much more time to individual work with students, and, of course, the final control. The results of such a course will, as in the case of regular university courses, be entered into the diploma. The first mixed-learning MIT experiments showed fantastic results (an increase in academic performance by more than 35%), so we have high expectations for this experiment. In the case of a successful pilot, we will initiate a technological education reform based on blended learning.


Ivan Primachenko, co-founder of Prometheus

What is the status of the document on the completion of your courses? If I mention it in the resume, how significant will it be for the employer?

We deliberately refused state certification of our courses. Today, when traditional higher education in the post-Soviet space has depreciated to a large extent, the best national university and the nobody-known private “university for the issuance of crusts” have the same state diploma. What distinguishes them is the real quality of education and the reputation that has arisen on this basis. Therefore, we do not pursue accreditation, but strive to create the highest quality educational product and honestly earn a reputation.

On the other hand, according to our observations, certificates of completion of massive online courses are gradually beginning to be appreciated by employers. Of course, several such certificates will not give you work (however, like a diploma), but they can give an interview and, in any case, will become an additional advantage when applying for a job. In addition, many progressive employers consider such certificates as proof of the desire of the applicant to develop and the presence of sufficient self-discipline for this. The main thing in mass online courses is the quality knowledge that you can get for free on them.

Your courses are free. What are the means of the project?

When we are asked about the budget of the project, we like to joke that Prometheus at the beginning of its journey was funded from a post-graduate scholarship and the teaching salary of the co-founders. We are a non-profitable public project, but, of course, we need funds to create new courses and support old ones. In this, we rely on donations from our users, grants and the sale of verified certificates, which certify that the certificate is issued in the name of the student who really took the course. Right now we have organized a crowdfunding campaign, in the framework of which we are raising money for new courses and a pilot project of blended learning at universities.

How do courses correspond to real university programs? Let’s say that I want to prepare myself for the exams at the summer session.

Depends on the specific course. Most of our courses are abridged versions of university courses. Although, for example, “Development and analysis of algorithms. Part 1 ”is an analogue of the first semester of the course, which is taught at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. In 2016, we have already created and plan to create several more courses that will correspond in volume to standard university courses, in particular, in subjects that are taught simultaneously at many faculties. For example, we have already launched courses in economics and entrepreneurship for non-core departments, as well as translated the legendary Harvard CS50 programming fundamentals course.

Since April, when you started this course, quite a bit of time has passed, but maybe there are any results? Listening statistics, success, anything else?

We completely duplicated this famous Harvard course and launched it both online and on the basis of free offline training groups in a dozen cities. The course has not yet ended, so it’s too early to sum up, but the number of registered users has already exceeded all our expectations and exceeded 60,000 people!

In general, is there any statistical section on the popularity of courses with you? Let's say the most popular are IT courses, followed by business courses, then purely humanitarian ones.

As in the West, our most popular courses are IT (programming, algorithms, software testing) and business courses (entrepreneurship, start-ups, financial management, communication tools for building reputation). Naturally, a business English course is in demand. Humanitarian courses close the popularity rating, although many times more users are registered for them than we could have expected at the beginning of the project.

Let's say I'm a university professor. Can I post my course with you? Are there any restrictions on topics (if the course is too specific, for example, the general electrical engineering of specific units).

We provide our methodological consultations and website for free as a platform for all courses that correspond to the format of a massive open online course, as well as the concept of Prometheus. If a teacher, company or university is ready to make a truly high-quality course on an academic topic, we will be happy to place it with us. What does “academic topic” mean? Let’s say this: courses in astrology and traditional medicine will not be available on the site, although they have already offered them to us.

If I am from a rural area with poor internet where there is no way to watch videos online. Is it possible to download video? What about the mobile app? Do you plan to introduce gamification or any rating of participants? Say the top 10 best students of the course?

In fact, the popularity of our small unprofitable project took all the team members by surprise. No one expected that without any advertising budget, for a year and a half after the start, we will receive more than 230 thousand registered users. In recent months, we have been too busy to cope with the need to scale the project and quickly create new courses, so there was no discussion of large-scale technical improvements to the site. In the next six months, we plan to launch applications on Android and iOS, make it possible to upload videos as standard functionality of our courses, and begin the first experiments with gamification.

Is there any thought of combining with courses like EdX or Coursera? For example, place your courses on their site?

It is physically impossible. EdX and Coursera work only with universities that are in leading positions in world rankings, and international organizations at the IMF level. Even if they had made an exception for 1-2 Ukrainian universities, this would have become a regular PR campaign, because in order to achieve our goal - to create 150 mass free online courses combined into cycles, all the leading teachers of the country from different universities must participate. The experience of other countries (from the UK and France to China) confirms that, having gained experience on international platforms, universities still go to national sites.

What engine was used to create the courses? Open EdX? If not, then maybe this is a self-made solution? How many programmers and system administrators are involved in the project?

We use the usual WordPress for the main page and open edX open source engine with a number of our own improvements to ensure the work of the courses themselves. This is by far the best technical solution for mass online courses at the moment - although working with it is not easy. But this is in any case better than investing an insane amount of time and money in writing your own analogue, which, at best, will repeat the functionality of Open edX. Moreover, Prometheus is being made by a tiny team of volunteers - the technical co-founder of the project Alexey Molchanovsky is responsible for the entire technical part.

There is a serious problem of self-discipline in online learning: a lot of people enroll at the beginning of the course, and only highly motivated people remain at the end. Do you solve this problem somehow? Can you give numbers for any of the courses: how many people signed up, and how many finished?

We did infographics based on the results of our first courses: “Financial Management” and “History of Ukraine”. In the world, about 7% of registered students successfully complete massive online courses. The results of most of our courses show slightly higher results: 10%, but we believe that much more can be achieved. To do this, we strive to break the video into small fragments up to 7 minutes, try to diversify standard tests and other “closed” tasks with interesting “open” questions and attract listeners to active communication on the forums.

In addition, you must understand that the problem with the low percentage of successful completion of massive online courses is largely contrived. When, for example, the course “Financial Management” of a teacher from the Kiev-Mohyla Business School successfully completes 10% of students, it must be remembered that in absolute numbers it is more than 4,000 people (more than 40,000 students are already registered on the course) - more than the number of students, who annually listen to this subject in all Ukrainian universities combined.

How long does one course take? Does the video fit into lecture notes or does it exist as a separate product? Only one person is involved in the preparation - the author of the course? How is the issue solved by the fact that not all people have oratorical abilities or, let’s say, not very expressive manner of speaking?

It directly depends on the duration and complexity of the course. Simple short courses can be done in 3 months, while work on long complex courses can take six months or more. Creating a course begins with the selection of a lecturer: we are looking for people who are not just cool experts in their field, but also excellent lecturers. We collect feedback from their colleagues and students, talk with the candidates themselves for teachers. Then our course developer, together with the lecturer, create a detailed course plan. After a trial recording, full-fledged shooting begins, where the director helps the teacher. In general, we are constantly improving the process of preparing courses, analyzing our mistakes, fixing successful finds - this is a dynamic process.

Is there a focus group for the course? Can I send my feedback? Can the course be adjusted?

The ability to analyze students' perceptions of learning materials on the fly and change the course in accordance with statistical indicators is one of the main advantages of mass online courses. For example, a teacher can look at the percentage of successful answers to test tasks and see that if this indicator for most tests is in the range of 50-70%, then for one of the tasks it is only 30%. It immediately becomes obvious that either the questions of this test are not clearly formulated, or this topic was poorly explained in the corresponding lecture. We are also now beginning to actively use small focus groups to prevent such problems in principle.

Were there students of courses that fraudulently submit test results submission forms?

So far, we have not noticed such cases, although, almost certainly, some users are writing off. In general, this is a rather pointless exercise. Any, even the most prestigious certificate in itself gives people only an invitation to an interview. If this certificate is not based on real knowledge gained during the course, it will immediately become apparent in a personal conversation.

How relevant are business courses in Ukraine? It is believed that the management culture in our country has not yet reached the level where global practices can be applied (this does not mean that they cannot be studied, there simply will be nowhere to apply them physically)

Many of our students are business owners or people who want to create one. So, learning from global practices and innovations in doing business, they can immediately put them into practice and contribute to the practice of doing business in the country. A drop is sharpening a stone.

Do you personally see any problems for online education in Ukraine? Or, perhaps, you know some specific aspects of organizing such a business with us?

Massive open online courses are a very young format and therefore competent specialists in this field can still be counted on the fingers. And also, of course, this is not a startup that will allow you to quickly recapture money and start making a profit, so it is always difficult to find financing. But, on the other hand, as in most post-Soviet countries, Ukraine has ideal conditions for introducing online courses from the best teachers of the country: a huge gap between a handful of normal universities and most pseudo-higher educational institutions, as well as traditional respect and the pursuit of knowledge. And many more highly educated people who today are the main target audience of massive online courses around the world.