Table of Contents

Executive summary 3
Problem of exclusion from educational opportunity 3
PEOI solution 5
Virtual partnership solution 5
Goal of virtual partnership 6
Professional courses to be offered 6
Copyrights considerations 7
Beneficiaries from virtual partnership 7
Specific objectives 8
Activities of project 10
PEOI, the organization 12
Staffing 13
Deliverables 13
Evaluation 14
Timing 15
Budget 15
Administration 16
Sustainability 16
Funding effort 16
Limitations 16
Conclusions 17

Appendix Budget
Task Workload
Personnel Expense
CV of John Petroff

Executive summary

A virtual partnership is a collaboration of faculty to write courses, corporate employers to fund course development, universities to assist in curriculum design and international agencies to diffuse course offering, with PEOI as free course content provider. The goal of the virtual partnership is to make all professional courses that can be developed, accessible and affordable to everyone in the world. In other words, this virtual partnership would provide free universal professional education. The project addresses the issue of exclusion of millions of individuals from traditional education because of time constraints and location, and from on line education because of high cost. While corporations would save on training cost, and while universities would retain students by offering courses for which they may not have enough students, a much bigger spillover benefit would accrue to those who could study PEOI courses for free all over the world. Professional courses are especially difficult to deliver in developing countries, and their free access on line would help employees, businesses, universities and governments in upgrading professional skills, increasing productivity, attracting foreign investors and reducing poverty.

PEOI has a multilingual platform that is fully tested and has been operational for almost a year. Over one hundred students already study and take tests in five courses. To serve millions more students, PEOI must expand its offering to over hundred professional courses. This will require collaboration with authors, corporations and universities in the virtual partnership, and close to $14 million of mostly corporate funding over seven years (described in Strategy found at "About us" on peoi.org). The main objectives are 1) to identify desirable course subjects, 2) to determine courses available from authors, public domain and materials on the internet, 3) to secure pledges from corporations; 4) to build relationships with universities; and 5) to conduct surveys of students, instructors, employers and administrators. In addition, a report will disseminate lessons learned from the project. A staff of nine will carry out the required tasks over a period of 16 months and be completed by May 2004 if started by January 2003. The total funding necessary is slightly less than $1 million and is solicited from infoDev of the World Bank (for $250,000) and several American foundations interested in education, exclusion and digital divide.

Problem of exclusion from educational opportunity

All over the world, young people are deprived of professional training opportunities because of where they live, time constraints or insufficient income. Among the students the virtual partnership will help, are those unemployed seeking retraining, migrants, mothers at home with children, disabled individuals, workers with families, persons from minorities who can't keep up with the pace of college semesters, rural poor people who can't afford traveling to college or paying for costly on line courses, and poor students all over the world for whom just a little training would open the door to employment, self-respect and a better life. The exclusion is the most serious in developing countries where professional training may not be offered anywhere or only at the university of the capital. The exclusion of individuals from professional education opportunities naturally hurts them directly by depriving them of employment and improvement in their social and economic condition. But it also hurts their country by preventing utilization of productive capacity, improvement in productivity, and foreign investment because of lack of local skills.

The advent of computers, the internet and the large volume of newly emerging distance education promised learning anytime anywhere that could overcome these problems. But that did not happen. There are many degree programs offered on the internet, but the cost of most on line courses is as great as those in class. Moreover, rigid schedules are common, periodic presence on campus is occasionally required, and buying at least one textbook raises costs further.

There are three reasons why most on line courses cost so much. First, putting any new technology into use is expensive. To justify their on line offerings, universities seek to make them self-sustainable rapidly, and use short amortization periods. Second, in order to meet accreditation standards, on line course delivery turns out to require as much faculty involvement as courses in class. Third, joint costs for auxiliary services such as library, advisement, placement, gym and cafeteria are allocated to on line courses because on line students should not be, in principle, excluded from these services also because of accreditation requirements. Thus, whether on line students need faculty supervision and auxiliary services or not, they have to pay for the entire bundle. Since demand for on line education is strong, universities do not perceive price as a problem. Indeed, on line education is predicted to be a major growth market for the next ten or twenty years, and e-learning providers keep their proprietary materials from the eyes of all but those who pay their high fees.

Yet, the marginal cost of one more student reading a course on line is negligible. This justifies a large volume of free educational opportunities on the internet. But the free material is very dispersed and not organized in a manner that permits control of knowledge. It is impossible to use it as such for professional advancement. The result is that those who can afford to pay for well organized on line education can take advantage of it, and those who can't are excluded. This is one of the facets of the digital divide, but the problem discussed here is much bigger

On line professional education can be the , and sometimes the only, educational opportunity. The student population for professional courses is thinner and more dispersed than for fundamental courses. Consequently, most universities do not have sufficient students to offer professional courses. In some regions, as well as entire countries, professional courses may not be offered anywhere. Virtual universities, such as AVU, that have recently opened, offer a partial answer, but their offering is not really anytime anywhere. AVU would indeed benefit from course content that a virtual partnership could provide.

Professional course students tend to be adults with family and job constraints. This limits mobility, and creates conflicts with rigid time schedules. In particular, students from minorities or those with language imperfection may not keep up with the pace of university semesters. For graduates who can't find work in their field and seek retraining, complete university degree programs are superfluous and out of proportion with their needs. Accreditation requirements are desirable but prevent universities from meeting some students' immediate needs. Moreover, they diverge across countries.

PEOI solution

POEI's model has no constraints, no schedule, no attendance, and no mandated instructor. Since PEOI is not an accredited institution, students seeking a degree would normally take PEOI courses at a university (at no charge to the university). For professional advancement, students can enroll with PEOI and earn a course completion certificate for which PEOI charges modest fees (see below). PEOI courses can also be administered by corporate employers at no charge. And students can study all PEOI courses for self-improvement without enrolling and with no charge.

How can PEOI not charge anything to universities, employers and students for using its courses? The key idea of PEOI's model is to unbundle the cost of on line education. Unbundling means that curriculum design, course development, faculty supervision, auxiliary services, course delivery, grading and attestation are all looked upon and accounted for separately. The purpose of unbundling is to let students pay only for what they need. Faculty supervision is optional and contracted separately. As noted above, students can choose to go through a PEOI course at a university for full price, as an enrolled PEOI student for nominal fees, or on their own at no charge.

The out-of-pocket costs that PEOI incurs, are for maintaining the web site and providing grading, grade maintenance, certification and attestation to enrolled students is $100. This is less than the price of a textbook, and scholarships are available. There must also be an in-person examination (which is indispensable because the identity of each student must be verified) which can run from $20 to $100, and scholarships are also anticipated for it.

PEOI is not accredited, yet PEOI emphasizes e-learning quality and test results. As can be verified at www.peoi.org, professional courses (i.e. not review courses) include not just reading the text, but also taking graded quizzes and comprehensive examinations to verify understanding of material, going through assignments and cases, using links to source materials and references, and leaving feedback evaluation, comment or inquiry. All that a graduate university course requires is there. PEOI's focus is on e-learning quality achieved with flexibility of giving a choice of using cases, doing assignments, answering questions, and not just memorizing text. At the conclusion of each chapter a multiple choice test helps verify acquired knowledge. In addition, when prerequisites of fundamental knowledge are mandated, they are included in the form of review courses (such as four review courses now present on PEOI).

Virtual partnership solution

As described in the organization section below, POEI's model is fully functioning: students from 31 countries are studying for free. To serve all the potential beneficiaries PEOI must expand its course offering. The virtual partnership is the most potent expansion method by leveraging western professional learning for free delivery worldwide. In the virtual partnership the idea of unbundling is taken to its logical next step of collaboration with a number of virtual partners that have a common interest. The virtual partnership is not meant to be a formal and binding contract, but a set of loose agreements of collaboration with a number of organizations. Collaboration with faculty members that are contracted to write or edit courses, and to act as independent instructors for PEOI. Collaboration with corporate employers to provide training for their professionals, and to raise funds for course development. Collaboration with universities to provide courses for which the universities do not have enough students for a regular class, to recruit students and faculty for PEOI, and to identify new subjects for PEOI courses. Collaboration with national and international agencies to develop civil service training programs, and to fund translation and adaption of courses for individual country context.

There are clearly many different approaches dealing with the exclusion problem such as funding local education, sending trainers for short term training programs, establishing new educational facilities in physical or virtual location, organizing periodic delivery of on line courses (e.g. AVU), and awarding scholarships to specific individuals for studying on line or abroad. Contrary to these approaches, the virtual partnership solution is long lasting (as courses are updated continuously), far reaching (offered worldwide) and much more economical (free to all). Moreover, the virtual partnership includes partners in the form of universities and professors who have an interest in maintaining current PEOI course content. This assures that the courses can be used for life long learning and continuous professional development.

Goal of a virtual partnership

The goal of a virtual partnership for universal professional education is to make all the professional education that can be delivered over the internet, accessible and affordable to everyone in the world.

Professional courses to be offered

As stated in the goal, the intent is to offer all professional courses that can be delivered on line. This excludes courses involving general education, which do not prepare an individual for a specific employment, and which are widely available already, as well as courses involving a physical activity that cannot be carried out without a physical presence. But it includes a wide range of subjects and types of courses. It is desirable for most courses to be structured to fit into standard academic degree programs, and to meet accreditation standards. There are also many professional qualifications that are based on examinations rather than academic degrees, such as civil service exams, for instance. Training for such exams is clearly part of the scope of PEOI courses. There are also prerequisite courses without which a professional course should not be undertaken. Finally, there are courses that are specific to one activity and location. Thus, PEOI courses offering will include
- university level advanced courses
- exam training courses
- job training courses
- prerequisite courses
Initially, the course selection will be affected by available funding, but if PEOI training is effective, funding will be located. Thus, the emphasis on content quality mentioned previously.
The professions served are initially in management, finance, accounting, insurance, retailing, journalism, computer programming languages, several other computer related fields, and any other profession which is the object to a common body of knowledge that can be incorporated into an advanced university course. Short courses for micro-finance, how to start a business and civil service qualifications are also of interest.

The major reason for the choice of restricting course offering scope to professional courses is that those are the courses that are the most technical, that can be studied without an instructor, that prepare for an exam or employment qualifications (which can be critical to student's improvement in life), and for which students will be most motivated to study (contrary to fundamental courses for which many students require guidance and stimulation from an instructor). Another reason is that professional courses have the chance of being funded by corporate employers. Finally, these are the courses that universities are least likely to offer already, and are least likely to be taught in developing countries.

Copyrights considerations

Ideally, PEOI would like its course content development to be similar to that of open source programs, with free access to all and continuous additions from faculty that use courses. Just as in the case of open source programs, the issue is not just that of ownership of materials, but its continuous maintenance because without it, course content would become rapidly obsolete. This means that PEOI must retain control over the updating process and rely on peer review to make sure that new contributions meet quality standards. Furthermore, PEOI course content is structured to be used with a number of procedures without which learning would be undermined.

For initial acquisitions, a variety of situations may realistically be envisaged from an outright donation (such as the courses donated by John Petroff), to retention of copyright by a funding corporation. Even a need to pay royalties to a given author cannot be excluded. In all cases, PEOI will strictly enforce its conflict of interests policy stated in Article 4, and its prohibition against private inurement stated in Article 9 of its Bylaws (see "About us" on peoi.org web site). Whatever the arrangements for obtaining the material, all PEOI material is accessible on its web site free of charge with no limitation on its use, except for proper citation of source and no resale for profit. The report resulting from this project will be placed in the public domain.

Beneficiaries of virtual partnership and alleviation of poverty

There are several different groups of direct beneficiaries from the virtual partnership. The most significant beneficiaries are poor students in developing and transition countries. They do not have the ability of studying abroad, at paying universities or with expensive distance education providers. Indeed, in PEOI's trial phase, of the first 87 registered students 53, or a majority of 61%, were from developing countries although computer availability is five times less than in industrialized countries. Countries include China (3), Columbia (1), Croatia (1), Egypt (1), Guyana (1), Hungary (1), India (10), Indonesia (1), Lithuania (2), Mexico (1), Morocco (1), Nigeria (1), Pakistan (3), Philippines (6), Poland (2), Moldova (1), Rumania (4), Russia (2), Slovakia (1), South Africa (1), Trinidad (1), Ukraine (3), Viet Nam (3), Zimbabwe (1) and Zambia (1). By region, this represents 7 students from Africa, 26 from Asia, 17 from Former Soviet countries, and 3 from Latin America. (Note that peoi.org is not yet operational in Spanish and courses have not been translated into either French or Russian.) The gender breakdown shows that only 15% of registered students were women. Reaching out to women in developing countries should clearly be a future target for the virtual partnership.

It is difficult to estimate the number of potential beneficiaries from a complete offering of 100 courses by PEOI, but it is likely to be in the millions per year (see calculation in Strategy under "About us" on peoi.org web site). The improvement in professional skills level of the population should have a positive effect on productivity and therefore economic growth, as well as encourage inflow of foreign direct investment. Disadvantaged students in industrialized countries will also benefit, especially those excluded because of cost and constraints.

The gains to employers have been pointed out above as justifying their participation in funding. There will be a substantial spillover effect to a business population (especially in developing countries) that can use PEOI courses for their employee training without contributing to funding. Participating universities will earn additional tuition from students who enroll in their degree programs since PEOI will recommend taking its professional courses for credit at these institutions. Another spillover benefit will accrue to universities in developing countries that do not have on line education programs of their own, and can use PEOI courses in a similar way. For distance education providers, such as AVU, PEOI can offer the course content that they do not have. Finally, PEOI courses can be used by all faculty as an additional resource for teaching professional subjects, and the course content can be modified and expanded at will by instructors themselves directly on PEOI's web site.

Specific objectives of establishing a virtual partnership

The stated goal of the virtual partnership translates in the following objectives.

a)- Identifying desirable professional course subjects:
To fulfill its goal, the first objective of a virtual partnership is to determine the courses to be offered. This is similar conceptually to a needs assessment. This information cannot primarily be based on responses from potential beneficiaries who are too many to poll, but mostly from surveys of universities, employers and international agencies.

b)- Determining available material that can be incorporated into courses:
The second objective of the virtual partnership is to determine all the material available that can be incorporated into professional courses. There are three distinct sources of such material: authors, public domain and existing on line educational material. Being able to attract the authors available (away from publishers and other earning opportunities) is likely to be a critical key factor in the determination of partnership feasibility. The size of corporate funding and the relationship with universities play significant roles in the success of such recruitment. Public domain material is usually text that will require considerable transformation and expansion with assignments, cases and question data banks, to be used for on line teaching. Existing on line educational material also must be reworked.

c)- Securing collaboration of employers:
The proposed virtual partnership would offer courses for professional training of current and potential employees of a company for an infinite number of years in exchange for taking part in the funding of initial course development. Since, employers are expected to provide a substantial portion of the funding for course development, it is very appropriate to identify the reasons why they would do so.

The first reason why corporations should fund courses is that it would save them money: their participation in funding a course (say in the range of $50,000 to $300,000) is less than what they spend on training one group of employees in a year, and is likely to be but a small fraction of the present value of training new employees for, say, ten years. Second, in many professions, employees tend to move to a new employer shortly after receiving their training, and represent a dead loss which would no longer be a burden if the company did not have to spend additional money on training. Third, PEOI courses can be used as objective methods for verifying the knowledge of employment candidates. Fourth, employment candidates that complete PEOI courses will be encouraged to seek employment at corporations that sponsor PEOI courses. Fifth, businesses that operate overseas will find employees with skills acquired from PEOI, and need no training. Finally, corporate support of the virtual partnership can be part of corporate social responsibility, and be used in promotion to attract employees and customers. Initially, only corporate funds from North America are contemplated. Employers in developing countries will only be approached with surveys by mail at this time.

d)- Building relationship with universities:
The proposed virtual partnership will offer professional courses to universities at no cost to be used for courses in class as free textbooks (with all the course work material and testing data banks), as well as for on line courses (when the university does not have enough students to fill a regular class). A university would charge whatever tuition it deems appropriate, provide students with faculty supervision and auxiliary services, and award credits for the course. In the relationship with universities, it is important to demonstrate that the virtual partnership exists to serve them and not to compete with them. PEOI would refer students seeking to take PEOI courses for credits to universities which are members of the virtual partnership. Universities can also function as testing centers where PEOI students would take their in-person final exams.

In return for using PEOI courses free of charge, the virtual partnership would expect that professors that use the courses, provide guidance on what courses are needed, and how to design curricula that meet accreditation requirements. Professors that use PEOI courses would also have a self interest in updating these courses and act as peer reviewers of updates proposed by others. The relationship with the universities should be a method of exposing faculty and students to the virtual partnership and a major avenue for recruiting course authors and instructors. Universities in developing countries will be contacted by mail. Only universities in North America will be approached for visitations at this time.

e)- Other objectives:
-Recruiting editorial staff: The virtual partnership will rely on hired staff editors who would perfect manuscripts and liaise with university professors for peer review of submitted material.
- Identifying instructors as independent contractors: For the students who do not want to take a PEOI course at an affiliated university, but need supervision from an instructor, a number of instructors need to be registered with PEOI.
- Attract new students, and conduct survey of students.
- Gather information from governmental education departments and international agencies on how a virtual partnership could serve them.

Activities of project

To achieve the listed objectives, the following tasks must be carried out. (See also Task Workload in appendix for magnitude of each task.)

1)- Place ads for authors
Placing ads for authors need to be the first task of the project because the other activities depend on what specific subjects authors can write. A tiny test ad placed in the Chronicle of Higher Education a year ago produced a dozen meaningful replies. This suggests that a thorough ad campaign will reveal the full extent of authors' interest. Each reply will be explored by an editor, and arrangements will be negotiated. Authors will also be recruited through university contacts.

2)- Design and print brochures:
There is a need for three brochures: one on virtual partnership in general, one aimed at at corporate employers, and one for universities. The brochures must be of high quality, and be promotional but truthful. For this project, only brochures in English are contemplated in order to save on cost. The brochures will be used in all initial contacts with prospective virtual partners.

3)- Compile lists of universities:
Universities must be classified on the basis of several parameters: size, geographic location, type of degrees, programs offered, extent and type of distance education offered, potential for professional courses need.

4)- Compile lists of corporate employers:
Corporations must be grouped by industrial classification, size, location, professional training fields, use of in-house training, potential need for identified PEOI subjects to be offered.

5)- Design questionnaires:
Surveys of students, instructors, authors, university administrators, corporate training and personnel executives, national and international agencies will be conducted with questionnaires designed specifically for each.

6)- Initial and follow-up contact with universities:
The goal of the contact is to secure the university as a partner to offer PEOI courses, serve as testing center and recruite faculty for writing courses or reviewing course content. For universities outside the United States, in developing countries in particular, survey questionnaires will be sent after the initial contact has received a positive response.

7)- Visit to universities:
To save on cost, only visits to North American universities are contemplated. Visitations lasting up to an entire day will be conducted at most promising universities after receiving an invitation to conduct a major presentation to students, faculty and staff. During presentation questionnaires will be circulated. After the presentation, interviews with deans, provost and VP for academic affairs will be conducted. Visitations of at least 50 universities would be desirable.

8)- Initial and follow-up contacts with corporate employers:
The goal of the contact is to receive a pledge from corporation to fund a professional course in full or in part, in exchange for providing employee training and adapting PEOI course to employer's needs. The contact also serves to determine the type of professional training needed. For employers outside the United States, questionnaires will be used.

9)- Visit to corporate employers:
As with universities, only employers in North America will be considered for visitations. A major presentation is essential because the corporate training market is known to be especially competitive. Interviews of key executives will be used to gather information about specific needs. Visitations of 100 corporate employers would be desirable.

10)- Search for public domain material:
All organizations that fund training programs will be approached to inquire if they would be interested in placing the material developed under such funding on PEOI web site for universal free use by all (thus expanding considerably the reach of such materials), after the materials are refit into PEOI standard format, as mentioned above.

11)- Search for existing educational material on the internet:
The authors of all educational material on the internet will be contacted to see if they would be interested in making their materials available either as a link or be part of course content in PEOI course. The materials would be reviewed by editors. Fees, if any, would be negotiated. Listing of links would be compiled.

12)- Compile questionnaire replies:
All questionnaires will be collected, tabulated, analyzed and summarized.
13)- Writing of project report:
A report will be written discussing the achievements of the project objectives based on information gathered. This project is also a demonstration project that other organizations can duplicate or learn from.

14)- Dissemination of report:
The report will be placed on the web, but it will also be mailed to make sure that interested parties see a copy. One such completed report with extensive supporting material (listed in Deliverables below) will be mailed to all foundations, government departments and international aid agencies that have an interest in this project. The report itself with no appendixes will be mailed to all those who responded to questionnaires, who were interviewed or who attended presentations. A summarized report will be mailed to all prospects who did not participate as respondents, as well as to government education departments and major universities of every country. Finally, articles may be drafted for appropriate journals, and the report will be issued to the press.

15)- Implementation of virtual partnership:
The phase of the project is the start of a next phase of acting upon the identified collaborations.

PEOI, the organization

PEOI is a not-for-profit fund organized in the state of Pennsylvania on March 5, 2001, exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and created to provide free on line professional university level course content at https://www.peoi.org. As described in its history (presented in "About us" at www.peoi.org), the idea of PEOI grew out of the experience of John Petroff as professional in banking, as university professor of economics in the United States for twenty years, and as administrator of professional training programs overseas, such as director of a bank training in Moscow, founder of an adult evening graduate program and executive director of a business school in Almaty Kazakhstan (see CV in appendix).

It took three years to build peoi.org multilingual infrastructure for student testing, faculty grading, and authors course writing, and to complete four review courses and one professional course. In September 2001, PEOI started a six month trial phase that attracted 87 new student registrations from 31 countries and 1400 viewed pages per day, without any promotion or listing on search engines, and which demonstrated the important role that free professional education could play.

PEOI's current server, located in Hong Kong with 0.3 Gigabytes of memory space and 5 Gigabytes of monthly traffic (already paid for), could accommodate more than ten new professional courses and a thousand students. PEOI's automated course writing procedures eliminate the need for web design and development. PEOI also has procedures for instructors to set a grade composition, modify work load and enter grades, for students to take randomized tests and keep track of grades in a grade book, and for all to leave feedback. PEOI functions in English, French and Russian (although translations are not completed and other languages will be added) and testing, grading and feedback CGI is operational. In sum, PEOI as a course content provider is fully ready.

Staffing

The project will be under the direct supervision of PEOI executive director John Petroff who will devote most of his time to the project in 1) the inception phase, 2) interacting with executives of visited corporations and universities during the visitations, and 3) writing the report. He will be assisted by a project coordinator who will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of all activities, and who will alternate with the executive director in taking part in the visitations. The key qualifications of the project coordinator are strong leadership and organizational skills, commitment to virtual education, an advanced degree and experience in teaching and/or administration in higher education.

Two presenters, one for universities and one for corporations, will work as a team in all visitations, develop the brochures, build data banks of contacts, plan all visits and participate in writing the report. Both presenters must be effective speakers, one with experience in corporate personnel training department, and the other in university administration. They will have assistants that remain at head office, and make travel arrangements, process data and provide materials. The visitation team will be accompanied by an independent consultant who will gather replies to avoid potential bias (see Limitations). Thus, the visitation teams will normally include 4 persons.

Also remaining at head office, an assistant to the project coordinator will design questionnaires for authors, instructors and students, process replies collected from university visitations as well as from mail and email replies to classified advertisement. An editor with experience in textbook publishing will handle contacts with authors, searches for public domain or internet materials, and finalizing the project report. Finally, PEOI"s own staff will use a portion of their time for the responsibilities of accountant and project evaluator.

A detailed breakdown of staff duties can be seen in Task Workload tables and Personnel Expense (see appendix). The CV of John Petroff appears in appendix. CV's of other key personnel (project coordinator, editor and presenters) will be added as appendices when they are available. Since no staff is known, except for John Petroff, no breakdown by nationality and gender is possible; it is however likely that most or all staff will be from North America because of the location of major activities.

Deliverables

The project has two deliverables: establishment of the virtual partnership and writing of report. Success of virtual partnership is achieved if more than 10 corporate pledges and 10 university commitments are received. Failure would result if less than 2 corporate pledges and 2 university commitments are obtained. In case of failure, alternative strategies will be sought. If it is the corporate funding that is insufficient, either a method of surcharges or alternative funding sources will be used to pay for course development. If it is that American universities are not interested, relationships will be explored with universities overseas that have no distance education of their own and would be more welcoming to free PEOI courses. If authors cannot be found, it may be necessary to develop alternative methods to find course content, that may include offering higher remunerations, buying copyrights of existing titles, using most materials in the public domain or contracting work with graduating doctoral students. Thus there may be a variety of scenarios that may still produce the overall goal of a virtual partnership even if some parts are more difficult, need more time or require modifications of strategy.

The report in its three versions was mentioned in Activities section above:
- comprehensive for foundations and other stakeholders
- complete for respondents and the media
- summary for contacted prospects and third parties

The comprehensive report will include as appendices thorough analyses of the quantitative and qualitative measures of the inputs:
- authors contacts: ads used, number of replies, outline of negotiations used
- brochures: how designed; how many printed and mailed
- questionnaires: how written; how many printed, administered, collected and tabulated
- list of corporate prospects: grouped by location, source, subject interest, size and type; how many identified, contacted and responding
- list of university prospects: grouped by location, degree, size and type; how many identified, contacted and responding
- corporations visitation reports: how many visited, with/out presentation; length of presentation, number of training personnel present, number of executives present, number of employees present; type of interviews and position of interviewees
- universities visitation reports: how many visited, with/out presentation; length of presentation, number of administrators present, number of faculty present, number of students present; type of interviews and position of interviewees
- authors survey: how many contacted, responded and committed
- faculty survey: how many approached, filled out questionnaires, identified as potential recruits
- students survey: how many approached, filled questionnaires, identified as potential registrants
- government/agency survey: how many contacted and replied, summary of replies

Evaluation

The project will be evaluated throughout its implementation and at its conclusion. At the end of the project, the result of the project can be assessed by the establishment of the virtual partnership with the measures listed in Deliverables section above, and the project report. The report must consist of a clear and substantive analysis of whether and how a virtual partnership can be established and deliver promised benefits. The quality of the report will be evaluated not only on the basis of the narrative, but on the analysis of the inputs above.

During the implementation of the project, progress will be updated weekly on the PEOI web site, and quarterly reassessment reports will reveal if the sequence of tasks will be completed as planned or if some problem will require changes in the project (which will be discussed with funding agencies). Both the final evaluation and the reassessments will also address such issues as bias raised in limitations, and attitudes of students, authors and faculty. To save on expense, the evaluator will preferably be a PEOI staff member not involved in the project (for part of his/her time), or possibly a volunteer. The key findings of the evaluator will appear on the web site for the project. The reassessment and complete evaluation reports will be directed to funding agencies and the executive director.

Timing

The project target completion date is 4/30/2004 if started on or before 1/1/2003 as shown in Timetable below. A detailed sequence of the tasks and the number of persons involved in each appears in the Task Workload table in appendix 1. The following is a summary of the tasks.

	Start date	End date	Duration (months)
Contact authors, develop brochures and questionnaires, compile lists of prospects, and contact prospects	1/1/03	3/31/03	3
Make presentations, conduct interviews, collect answers	4/1/03	2/28/04	9
Tabulate data, draw conclusions, write report	3/1/04	3/31/04	1
Disseminate report, submit article	4/1/04	4/30/04	1

Budget

The budget is presented in the appendix. It shows costs of each project component previously described in Activities, and is based on man/months calculations shown in Task Workload and Personnel Expense also in the appendix. Personnel expense represents the largest expense. Its calculation shows that salaries are augmented by social costs (social security, pension contribution, disability insurance contributions, paid vacation of 10 days per 12 months and other) calculated at a rate of 20% of nominal salary, plus $2000 medical insurance per employee. Travel is the second biggest expense, and is estimated on the basis of an average of $1,400 per visitation. The maximum travel cost would be $2,800 (maximum costs of $400 for airfare, $150 for lodging, $90 for meals, and $60 for tolls and miscellaneous, for a total of $700 per person per day, or $2,800 for four), and the minimum 0.

If the total amount of requested funds is not available, an alternative budget will developed centering around a reduction in the number of corporations and universities to be visited. A reduction of more than 30% would however undermine the project.

This project is the second of several projects planned in the PEOI strategy which appears under "About us" on peoi.org web site where a combined budget is also presented for the next seven years. (PEOI strategy is formulated as a long term business plan covering numerous aspects, such as competition and markets, which are omitted in this writing.) The first project is to start operations with a target to open office in October 2002, for which seed money funding solicitation has started. One of the first tasks will be to recruit directors because PEOI bylaws (also found under "About us" on peoi.org web site) prohibit payment of salaries unless approved by an independent compensation committee.

Administration of project

The executive director of the project, John Petroff, has managed several projects, he is experienced in hiring the most suitable persons for assigned tasks, and is used to delivering planned outcomes. The project includes a part-time accountant and a part-time project evaluator. As required, the project will be audited. The timing of the receipt of funding moneys must be ahead of scheduled tasks because PEOI does not have any funds to advance payments for salaries or materials.

Sustainability

PEOI is self-sustainable now. This project and subsequent funding are only needed to expand the course offering. This project lead to the implementation of the virtual partnership which will require new grant applications and funding. The funding will be of two types: institutional for operations and corporate for course development. In the more distant future, sustainability of the entire concept of virtual partnership should be based on the support of alumni students who improve their salary with the help of courses taken at the virtual partnership, and continue benefitting from life long learning of its continuously updated courses. (See strategy on peoi.org web site.)

Funding efforts

Funding for this project is expected from a number of foundations and organizations that support 1) on line education, 2) innovations in education, 3) methods of reducing digital divide and social exclusion, and 4) innovations that serve the poor. It is hoped that this includes in particular infDev of the World Bank and number of American foundations.

Up to now, PEOI's web development, course writing and out-of-pocket expenses have been handled by John Petroff himself for an estimated amount in excess of $1 million. PEOI has started soliciting for first year of operations seed money to hire for a skeleton staff and set up an office.

Limitations of project

A potential - rather than actual - limitation is the fact that the on line education offered by the virtual partnership will be a free good. There is an intrinsic problem with free goods: they are neglected, abused and undervalued. This is true of basic commodities in communist societies, public goods in market economies, and excessive students in free educational systems. The remedy is often to make people pay which forces them to value the good that is no longer free. Thus, the retention of nominal fees, with availability of scholarships, is seen as a partial solution. Another approach is to institute qualifying examinations for enrollment. It is hoped that on line courses are different from other free goods in that even excessive use by some does not impose costs and limitations on others. It is also hoped that corporate employers and universities will choose to collaborate with PEOI in a more useful manner than any fees PEOI could earn. (The issue could be incorporated in questionnaires to know what different interested parties think.)

A potential limitation of the project (and not of the virtual partnership) is the potential for bias. The bias would come from the staff that designs the information material and questionnaires, and collects replies, being directly interested in a positive outcome because this staff would be retained to implement the virtual partnership if the outcome is indeed positive. Placing the project in truly unbiased hands may make the project excessively expensive because the promotional information would still have to be produced, yet the knowledge acquired by the individuals who administer the project would be lost once they would not be allowed to stay on. The solution adopted is to make sure that the person collecting answers from corporations and universities is either an independent consultant or a staff member who did not take part in development of promotional material and questionnaires, and who will not stay on after the interviews are completed. This should avoid any conflict of interest and potential bias.

Another limitation is the lack of visitations to universities and employers in developing countries to avoid making this project too costly, but that is planned for the future.

Conclusions

The goal of this project is to establish a partnership with collaboration of course authors, universities, employers, faculty, foundations, government educational departments, international agencies and a course content provider to deliver professional course content free of charge to anyone in the world. Partnerships in education are common, such as in distance education within a region or between employers and nearby universities. But they are not open to outsiders, often transitory, and rarely free. Whereas the scope of the proposed virtual partnership is universal, its strategy is flexible and inclusive of a wide range of training materials, its usefulness is long lasting, and its cost is trivial compared to the number of potential beneficiaries. If the virtual partnership is indeed feasible (as it will be one way or another), this represents a major new direction for distance education which so far has been either too expensive for many, or inadequately organized when inexpensive or free. Moreover, if free professional education can be available in developing countries that would constitute a major breakthrough for education and economic development by diffusing cutting edge knowledge in those countries immediately. This is very important application of information technology in education for reduction of poverty and improvement of the lives of millions.

Budget ($1,000 except for man/months)
	months	Personnel	Materials	Travel	Other	Total funding	infoDev funding	Other funding
Recruit authors	4	20			10	30	7.5	22.5
Design & print brochure on line courses	1.7	7	5		1	13	3.25	9.75
Design & print brochure for corporation	1.5	5	5		1	11	2.75	8.25
Design & print brochure for universities	1.5	5	5		1	11	2.75	8.25
Design questionnaires	2.5	9	2		2	13	3.25	9.75
Compile data bank universities	2	3			1	4	1	3
Compile data bank corporations	2	3			1	4	1	3
Contact & follow up universities	12	23	2		6	31	7.75	23.25
Contact & follow up coporations	13	25	2		8	35	8.75	26.25
Visitation of 100 corporations	31.6	170	1	140	40	351	87.75	263.25
Visitations of 50 universities	20	90	1	70	20	181	45.25	135.75
Collect authors/instructors/students replies	12	35	3		10	48	12	36
Search for public domain materials	3.5	18			4	22	5.5	16.5
Search for educational material on internet	3.5	18	1		3	22	5.5	16.5
Tabulation of results, report writing	12	110	2		20	132	33	99
Mailing report, dissemination	4.5	15	8		5	28	7	21
Project evaluation	4	15	1		1	17	4.25	12.75
Accounting	9	27	2		6	35	8.75	26.25
Audit	2	10				10	2.5	7.5
Total	142	608	40	210	140	998	249.5	748.5
Note: This budget is based on man/months calculation in Task Workload and salaries in Personnel Expense in appendix.

Pesronnel Expense, including independent auditor and data consultant (in $ except for man/months)
	Rate	Months																Salary	other	Total
		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16
Executive director	5,000	0.7	0.5	0.5	0.3	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.7	0.5	35000	9000	44000
Project coordinator	5,000	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	80000	18000	98000
Presenter to universities	3,400	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1		51000	12200	63200
Assistant universities	1,600	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	25600	7120	32720
Presenter to corporations	3,400	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1		51000	12200	63200
Assistant corporations	1,600	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	25600	7120	32720
Editor	5,000	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	80000	18000	98000
Data bank/web specialist	3,000	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1		45000	11000	56000
Data collection consultant	5,000				1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1			55000	13000	68000
Accountant	2,400	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	1	1	21600	5320	26920
Project evaluator	3,000		0.1	0.1	0.4	0.1	0.1	0.4	0.1	0.1	0.4	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.8	1	12000	3400	15400
Auditor	5,000															1	1			10000
Total man/months		8.2	8.1	8.1	9.2	9.1	9.1	9.4	9.1	8.9	9.2	8.9	8.9	8.9	8.9	10.5	7.5	142		142 mm
Total (in $1000)		27.7	27	27	31.9	32	32	32.9	32	31	31.9	31	31	31	31	31.3	24	481800	116360	608160

Task Workload (in man/month)
Month	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	Total
Recruit authors:place ads, evaluate, negotiate	1	1	1	1													4
Brochure on line courses, design & printing	1.7																1.7
Brochure for corporations, design and printing	1.5																1.5
Brochure for universities, design and printing	1.5																1.5
Questionnaires design		2.5															2.5
Compile universities data bank	1	1															2
Contact & follow up universities		1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1				12
Compile corporations data bank	1	1															2
Contact & follow up corporations		1	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1				13
Visitations of 100 corporations *			2.5	3.3	3.5	3.5	3.5	4.5	2.3	2.3	1.3	2.3	1.3	1.3			31.6
Visitations of 50 universities *			1	1	1	1	1		2	2	3	2	3	3			20
Collect authors/instructors/students replies				1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1		12
Search for public domain material					0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5						3.5
Search for educational material on internet					0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5						3.5
Tabulation of data, report writing											.	1	1	3	5.7	1	11.7
Mailing report, dissemination															1	3.5	4.5
Project evaluation		0.1	0.1	0.4	0.1	0.1	0.4	0.1	0.1	0.4	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.8	1	4
Audit															1	1	2
Accounting	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.5	1	1	9
Total	8.2	8.1	8.1	9.2	9.1	9.1	9.4	9.1	8.9	9.2	8.9	8.9	8.9	8.9	10.5	7.5	142

 * Visitations to corporations and universities should be looked upon in combination; they are shown separately here only to bring out the overall total workload for each separately.