The long tail - new opportunities for learning

When reading around some articles detailing Web2.0 applications I was intrigued by the 'long-tail' business approach so successfully applied by Amazon and, to a lesser extent by eBay. Using a combination of sophisticated database management with social networking software it has opened up the low volume (specialist) niche market to these companies which traditional retailers are unable to reach through their normal sales outlets. What is even more impressive is the fact that this 'niche' market actually amounts to about 60% of total sales - quite an impressive 'niche' that is. It occured to me that similar nich markets exist in the education sector with the 'long tail' consisting of adults who have some need or requirement of learning (or just a plain interest therein) but for whom there is no provision in the traditional 'brick-and-mortar instructor-based learning process. These potential learners will be more difficult to reach and in any case will require a quite different, possibly personalised mode of teaching, at a competitive price. In it conceivable that the 'Amazon approach' could be applied to the educational system by a mixture of providing recycled and adapted resources comprising for example of high quality open-source learning objects (as currently funded by JISC as part of the JORUM project), by establishing effective peer-group online learning communities using enthusiastic past students or post-graduate students as 'mentors' and finally by 'outsourcing' the online teaching provision to experienced online educationalists and lecturers who have been unable to secure a tenured position at an HE institution or who have retired but still wish to engage in education, retaining some sort of 'associate lecturer status'. Quality assurance will be maintained by HEFCE in the same way as for traditional courses, with appropriate University 'branding'. This may appear to be a low-cost solution leading to an 'inferior product' - but Amazon has shown that an innovative internet-based approach may be exactly what 'long-tail' consumers require.