News is that Google just announced Course Builder, a suite of tools to run courses, seminars, workshops online. Here is what you need to know.
No secret that Google is trying to make an impact in the event industry. The omnipresent tech giant is developing more products aiming to take events online.
This move signals a clear interest in the online meetings and events space, quite exciting news for event technology enthusiasts.
Let’s Recap
This blog constantly followed the evolution of Google events offering.
Back in the days, I reported the launch of Youtube livestreaming capabilities, a product still reserved for Youtube partners (sigh!).
Then Google launched Hangouts and a great Android App for their I/O event.
I was quite excited about rumours about a potential Google+ Events section. When rumours materialised, I was, well, unhappy.
That did not kill my confidence though.
An here is today’s news…
Google Course Builder: What is it?
Course Builder in Google’s own words is:
[…] our experimental first step in the world of online education. It packages the software and technology we used to build our Power Searching with Google online course. We hope you will use it to create your own online courses, whether they’re for 10 students or 100,000 students. You might want to create anything from an entire high school or university offering to a short how-to course on your favorite topic. […]
Here is a screenshot of the Power Searching with Google course they refer to (click the image to see the live website).
Some Highlights
The simplicity of the interface is what immediately strikes the viewer.
The emphasis on video is prominent as well as clear call to action to register.
Schedule is also very simple yet effective.
Google also put together a great deal of best practices and resources for online meeting design. That is quite helpful whether you’ll use Course Builder or not.
Is it for you?
Not yet. Unless you can count on HTML and Java skills.
This is the first release of the suite and it is made mostly for developers to play with. If you have such skills in house, give it a good go.
Here is a quick video introduction to the service:
Why Is It Relevant?
Whatever Google does is relevant for the rest of us. This platform could make an impact in online education if well supported, thus we need to keep an eye on it. Alas Google is shutting down a lot of ideas and projects lately, therefore just keeping an eye suffices.
Most of Google projects come with great SEO efficiencies, therefore implementing a series of online events with Course Builder may result in better ranking. That sounds juicy.
Let’s see what happens.
