If businesses can benefit from the help of undergraduate students through UK-based Student Gems, it's a safe bet that MBA students could be even more valuable. 31Projects is a new online platform that helps connect such graduate students with companies and organizations in need of business expertise.

Now in closed beta, North Carolina-based 31Projects bills itself as “a project marketplace connecting organizations with top MBA and graduate students through real-world projects.” The site maintains a network of prescreened students interested in solving real-world business problems—it's open only to full-time students and recent alumni from the top graduate management programs in the US. Organizations in need of assistance can then post those opportunities on the 31Projects site. Postings can take the form either of challenges—crowdsourcing-style competitions whereby a company poses a business-related challenge and students compete to develop the best solution—or short-term consulting projects, which are done by a single student or team of students. Either way, 31Projects plans to charge a small posting fee along with a variable project fee based on the student compensation awarded once the project is done.

31Projects founder and CEO Jon Reifschneider explains: “Our vision is to provide an open platform where all organizations, regardless of size or resources, can easily and effectively identify and recruit the talent they need to be globally competitive. The projects and competitions are win‐win situations for both organizations and students, and can be used by employers to create a highly effective pipeline of top student talent into their organization.”

31Projects will go live in August. One to get in on early—or to emulate in other parts of the world?

Website: www.31projects.com
Contact: info@31projects.com

Spotted by: Preston Hubbard

We've already seen a variety of open education initiatives—including, recently, Betterfly and the University of the People—but we couldn't resist sharing news of one more. Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short, university-level courses.

Aiming to enable “learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything,” P2PU creates small groups of motivated learners and supports the design and facilitation of free courses. Currently, the project is in a pilot phase, and offers scheduled courses that run for six weeks and cover university-level topics. Each course package—organized by a volunteer—contains the syllabus, study materials and a schedule; learning takes place in small groups of between eight and 14 students. Peers in each course assess each other's work, and online certificates are granted upon completion of a course; P2PU is working towards gaining format credit as well. Ultimately, the goal is to become more of a platform so anyone can use P2PU to organize, design and offer courses. In the meantime, signup for the next round of courses will begin in September.

P2PU is supported in part by the Hewlett Foundation, the Shuttleworth Foundation and the University of California at Irvine. Social entrepreneurs: another one to be inspired by! (Related: Platform lets anyone create and monetize an online school — Five new business ideas focused on education & learning.)

Website: www.p2pu.org
Contact: www.p2pu.org/contact-us

Spotted by: Diricia De Wet

P.S. And be sure to check out the Khan Academy, too! Different set-up (one-man faculty), but also free and definitely worth sharing.

For those who want to learn a new language—or even brush up on a current one—there's already Popling for instruction one small bite at a time. Now a new alternative from Berlitz takes a similar approach but adds a social element with multimedia instruction and Twitter-like capabilities.

With support for 15 different languages, Vocabu offers a social way to build vocabulary. Users begin by entering the words they want to master—input can be done manually, or via the “Vocabu Wordclipper,” which lets them highlight any word on a page and drag it to their browser for automatic inclusion. A series of preset libraries are also available. Users can set goals as well in terms of the number of words they'd like to master each week, with badges to look forward to when they do. From there, Vocabu helps users learn the words from their “wordstreams” by trawling the web for visual references using sites like Flickr or for examples of the words used in sentences from real-time tweets on Twitter. Users of Vocabu can form groups for mutual learning and inspiration, and a “follow me” function mimics the one on Twitter for sharing and comparing the wordstreams being studied. Vocabu will soon be available as a desktop application, with an added word trainer function. Apps for iPhone and Android are on the way, too. Currently free and in beta, Vocabu will operate on a business model that offers both freemium and premium services.

When we wrote about Popling early last year, we were impressed by its bite-sized approach to educational instruction; now, Vocabu's addition of social elements makes just as much sense. Purveyors of other educational material—time to bring a social element to your own instructional offerings?

Website: www.getvocabu.com
Contact: vocabu@berlitz.dk

The field of education is buzzing with innovation. Both public and private sectors are introducing ideas involving new technologies and methodologies. It's fertile ground for fresh enterprises; here are five we spotted recently:

1. SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION ARTS 2.0 — Launching this year in the UK, the School of Communication Arts 2.0 will resemble a creative incubator as much as place of study. Half of the 50 students will enter on scholarships, with much of the funding coming from advertising industry sponsorship. Some of this money will go into an investment fund to assist startups created by students.

2. KNOWMADS — Also with an entrepreneurial theme, the Knowmads school in the Netherlands sets itself out as a platform for what it calls "changemakers"—business innovators who want to make a difference in the world. Students on the one-year course join a 30-strong team that uses action learning and real-world assignments to develop new skills for sustainable and socially-beneficial enterprises.

3. KNEWTON — A host of companies in the US offer assistance to students preparing for their college admission tests. Knewton stands out for its entirely technology-driven model: all courses are purely online, and deploy adaptive learning software and reviewable videos to ensure they are suited to a student's needs and schedule. The USD 690 fee covers 40 hours of live classes and a year's access to the video archive.

4. MYTESTANSWERS — Rather than offering a course to help prepare for admission tests, MyTestAnswers provides a cheap alternative: it allows students to find out where they went wrong on tests they've already done. The site features videos that fully explain how to correctly answer each and every question that has featured in a prior SAT or LSAT exam. Each video solution costs USD 0.99.

5. LARKS & JAPES — Learning a skill doesn't always mean paying a teacher. Larks & Japes in Millerton, NY organises one-day skillshare workshops covering a remarkable range of subjects, from HTML to reverse decoupage. A voluntary donation of USD 10 is solicited to cover costs. Attendees are encouraged to propose and then teach future courses in their own areas of expertise. Larks & Japes was inspired by Brooklyn Skillshare—and similar events are being organised in other US cities.

Spotters: Sam Mar, John Greene, Paige Harnden, Gergana Stoeva

Much the way TeachStreet helps consumers find nearby experts who can teach them something new, so Betterfly aims to connect them with teachers, tutors, coaches, trainers, stylists or anyone else who offers a service that can help them learn, look or feel better.

Now in beta, New York-based Betterfly deliberately excludes companies from its list of service providers, focusing instead on individuals with specific expertise. "When searching for someone to teach you Spanish, give you a massage or improve your yoga technique, it's more important to know who the best person is, rather than knowing just the name of a language school, spa or yoga studio," founder Joshua Schwadron explains. "Imagine if eHarmony.com told you that your future wife worked at Citigroup, but left it up to you to figure out who she is. Now what?" Such experts can create a free, highly customizable page on which they can promote their qualifications, services, locations, special offers and payment policies; display reviews from verified clients; upload resources like instructional videos and lesson plans; maintain real-time booking systems, complete with last-minute deals; and even create their own blogs. Users seeking an expert of some kind, meanwhile, can search for free based on more than 20 factors such as availability, friends' recommendations, verified reviews and value.

Ad-supported Betterfly is currently available only to U.S. users. One to partner with or emulate for aspiring self-improvers in your part of the world...?

Website: www.betterfly.com
Contact: www.betterfly.com/site/contactus