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Hello World

By The Hyperlink Team | 2020-07-10

We're a new school and learning community, working to build effective and scalable infrastructure for powering great learning on the internet.

Hyperlink is all about hyper-effective learning experiences. Our mission is not just "pretty good" learning or "bit better than a video" learning. It is: "wow they sweated the details" learning. "I wish all learning was like that" learning. "This is what the internet was made for" learning.

These are the core things that make Hyperlink Hyperlink — guiding principles that we think should drive meaningful learning:

  • Community-driven: building space for small, focused groups, learning together
  • Ambitious learning: going way beyond reading lists and video lectures to learn challenging ideas
  • Experimentation: courses with innovative structures, that adapt and improve over time
  • Peer to peer: instead of "teachers" and "students", facilitators and learners co-create the learning experience
  • Positive: curious, open-minded, encouraging, helpful, generous, kind
  • Inclusive: actively seeking diverse participants and courses, committed to being anti-exclusionary

We believe learning can be radically better. Creating new learning environments can be more accessible than ever.

We're building hyperlink to power these learning environments, and empower learners to shape and extend them.

If you care deeply about learning and community, we'd love for you to join us.

Origin Story

There's a long history of experiments with learning technology, from peer to peer learning networks, to MOOCs, to course platforms based on sequenced video lessons, to fascinating experiments in formal academic environments. (Stay tuned, we'll be writing more about this very soon!)

There's much that's been tried — but looking at the landscape as it exists today, there's a surprising amount still missing. We can point to a dozen ways to sell files and stream videos, but there are scant options for people who prioritize teaching and learning together with other people!

We set out to make something new, guided by what we most want to see and use ourselves. We're starting with some experiments, working together with great people who may not have a professional education background, but have deeps interests and strong desire to learn with others.

Who are we? A tenacious triumvirate! Jared is a learning technologist, exploring everything from peer-to-peer systems to custom-built text editors. Celine is a product designer, erstwhile architect, solver of complex problems. Brendan is a multimedia maker, wrangling words and websites (also untold books). We're all excited by the challenge of designing great spaces and experiences for learning.

How it Works

Hyperlink is a place to explore fascinating topics within a small but inspired community. Courses here are designed to be rigorous, but also highly participatory and — dare we say it — fun!

Hyperlink is a place to experiment with subject matter and learning structures. We provide the technical scaffolding, from payments to discussion space, freeing you to create powerful learning experiences.

Each course on Hyperlink is a structured curriculum for a learning experience. Courses are run in independent cohorts — groups following the curriculum on a set schedule, led by a facilitator, learning together. With each cohort, the course itself learns and improves.

Read all the nitty-gritty detail in the Hyperlink Manual.

Let's Get Started!

Create a Course

Interested in exploring unconventional learning? Have a niche to scratch? Create a course on Hyperlink, and we'll help you experiment with building an amazing learning experience!

We'll be upfront: this is challenging — meaningful teaching and learning always is. Creating a good course takes considerable time and energy.

It's also rewarding. You may well make some good money, not to mention new friends. If you care about serious learning, we'll help you bring an amazing learning experience to life.

Finally, although it's a commitment, it may be easier than you think to get started. Creating a course that's people-focused allows for more lightweight experiments compared to, say, filming and editing an entire lecture series. And we think it's considerably more fun.

Right now, Hyperlink provides the following:

  • Course details: a home for your curriculum
  • Payments: an easy way to set a price and accept payments
  • Discussion space: both for the course and for each cohort
  • Community support: a network of peers, building great courses together

We also run the Meta Course, a free collaborative workshop for course creation. In three meetings over three weeks, we lead a small group through the process of designing and experimenting with a particular course idea.

We're still a small community, and we're glad to give you as much support as we can in bringing a great course to life.

Interested in creating a course? Please reach out!

We're bootstrapping a community of intrepid internet learners, and we want you to be a part of it. As we build Hyperlink, it's important to us that we not only work behind the scenes on technical infrastructure, but walk the talk by using it to develop great learning experiences.

Right now we've got a number of exciting courses in the pipeline, and expect a few of them to go live with cohorts on the calendar within the next several weeks. If you're looking for a fun, active, rewarding way to learn something new, stay tuned, we're excited to announce these courses soon.

For an early look at Hyperlink, join the community and say hello on the forum!

Or, drop your email here for updates, and we'll keep you posted: