"Jerry, what has your website cost to implement?   Hiring photographers, bringing in experts to demonstrate skills in online videos, designing the website to be interactive, and then paying the people teaching the program (once it is up and running) is a cost so great that to accuse Cornell of doing this to make money is laughable"

Christina:
 
We're afraid to sum up the cost of development of our course, especially since we did it without extension service funding.  The SELL Dean knows  what he's provided  over three years in terms of salaries, equipment, and supplies for grad student employees, plus release time to two of his online specialists from his School, and the Tech support of for setup and problem solving in terms of building the Moodle web course.  It took us three years ( a Year's time for each Level).  He and we haven't added up the hours of the three instructors (Scott, Phil, and I) - who volunteered our time.
 
The development teams has had weekly meetings for 36 months in order to produce the content, animations, video, etc.  We the instructors got NADA for the R&D  (content) part -  we felt extremely fortunate that the Dean of SELL was paying media students and staff - usually 2-3 students, 1-2 staffers, although all were part-time on the bee project.  Still, each put in several hours per week, so all of this was major expense.  

When our courses are open and fully enrolled, we the instructors finally get paid.  At 70 years of age, I'm not going to live long enough to recoup the hours spent putting these courses together.  And, charge an amount equivalent to other university courses.  This initially resulted in a big knee jerk by prospective students who were used to getting free or  $25 courses from extension services.

As we've matured, our class assessments indicate that most of our students agree that our courses are worth every penny. Some have taken other courses, and we were provided a far different learning environment.   Many get more frustrated when they have to wait a year for the  next level - but these things take time, AND we want the students to practice what they've learned from the preceding course.
 
I am glad to hear that NY, NY beekeepers, and Cornell have been proactive since Nick retired.  Your new extension specialist has already contacted us.  We'd be happy to work with her.  I'm glad to see in apiary testing.  Initially we did the testing in our own apiary, but our state is far bigger than  NY, and distance soon became a factor.  And then we started getting students from other states and countries, so we've gone to a combination of local expertise, short quizzes, written exams, written essays, combined with video to assess ability and technique.  The latter is still a work in progress - first attempts were less than satisfactory to all.

My suggestion to her and to Cornell, build modules that can be used to customize our course for NY - we're both 4 season states.  We have always thought that we've produced a cornerstone course that others could build upon, and that it would be improved by local specialists providing modules specific to their areas.  That would save a major cost to any individual state - although Cornell and UM would have to negotiate an MOU, how to handle credits, fees.  

Understandably, what the UM Dean can not do is to just give our work to Cornell for free.  He's covered all of the costs out of his own internal budgets.  Unfortunately, UM is now in the midst of a severe budget shortfall due to a decline in enrollments - UM support from the state is based on number of students.  In a tight economy, liberal arts colleges and universities tend to lose students to more job related training programs.  So, his budgets have been cut along with those of other UM schools and departments.  Knowing what we charge for each course and the payments made to the instructors and technical support staff, I realize that it's going to be a very long time before he  recoups his up front investment, if ever.  I'm really glad we buttoned up the Masters before the budget crunch.  

Additionally Christina, remind Cornell to factor in the costs of running each course.  It's not just instructor time.  You need a registrar, someone  to manage the program, and lots and lots of technical support.  There are four factors that ensure job security for tech support:  1) the  students are not  on campus, have varying degrees of computer/internet/online experience - from barely able to use email and use Google to full blown computer software experts, 2) their internet access types and bandwidths range from having to drive 60 kilometers to the nearest internet café (Ghana) and then getting a slow connection - to the highest available internet speeds,.  In rural areas of US, access availability and speed is very limited - which presents a real challenge with video; yet many beekeepers live in rural settings.  (3) the students use everything from cell phones and tablets to laptops and desktops of all brands - and we go worldwide which adds to the complexity, (4) the supporting software (Moodle in our case) is being pushed to its limits by our multi-media and interactivity requirements, and it changes every year as new versions are released nationally.  Finally, since we offer our courses for certificate with an option of academic credit, we have to involve the SELL registrar, the Division of Biological Sciences (where the classes appear as UM courses with a B.....   number), and the UM registrar.  
 
Our tech support provides lots of hand holding  - 'I can't log on, I can't find the week's assignment, how do I read and post to the forums, I'm using xxxx as my browser - I know it's not Firefox, but I'm used to it, I can't access the test, I started the test and the system kicked me out before I could finish,  I called on the weekend and no one answered (same for midnight, etc).'    Tech support finds that students and instructors using Moodle on campus are much more knowledgeable about navigating online courses compared to those for a global online course aimed at the general public.  Finally, even if the student has taken other online courses, they often don't have much, if any, experience with a multi-media, interactive, online course.  Like beekeeping, it's a labor of love.  No one's getting rich.

 


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