Grant Proposal: The Graph, Free Course on Udemy and Alison

[admin]

Grant ID: 8687zv29b

Summary:

I will produce and publish a course on Udemy, Alison and a few others sites, teaching people how to use The Graph. This will both raise awareness and bring more developers

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

Describe what your project does or is aiming to do in 50 characters or less:
Onboarding via free education

If available, please enter a link to your project below:
https://www.ablockofcrypto.com/ the website from where we host meetups and grow our community. https://www.udemy.com/user/paulaguilfoyle/ this is my profile on Udemy, https://www.udemy.com/course/navigating-and-using-web3-blockchain-for-everyday-users this is the course Solana Funded. Cryptocurrency & Blockchain for Everyday Users | Free Course | Alison this is the same course on Alison.

How far along are you?:
I have been providing online education since 2010, in 2020 I pivoted my focus to educating those in web3.

Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you’re making?:
I have been teaching online for a number of years and have been a best selling Udemy Instructor. Udemy, Alison are both two very focused search engines and by publishing free courses on these sites, education becomes accessible and the Graph gets a new reach.

I have a direct reach of 130K on Udemy and 150K on Alison and my previous web3 related courses are ranking in the top 10 for free course on Web3 and Blockchain.

What’s new about what you’re making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn’t exist yet (or they don’t know about it)?:
Many people are joining communities and other free initatives to learn about web3 products and how they can use them and build on them. Whats new about this is the reach and exposure both Udemy and Alison have.

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
My vision is to onboard and retain users and developers in the web3 space

How will you measure success?:
Student numbers
Completion rates

What milestones will you achieve in the coming weeks/months, with or without the grant?:
I will continue to grow the learners community, with weekly online meetup. these help retain and onboard users in web3

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Other, Subgraph Developers, Indexers, Delegators, Curators

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
20000

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:
$8K subject matter expert
$12K Instruction Desing, development, production and publication.

Have you applied for (or already received) funding from somewhere else?:
Yes

If yes, please describe where you’ve received funding from and how much you have, or will, receive:
I recieved funding from the Solana Foundation to write and publish a course focused on explaining how to use web3 for end users. This has been live for 12 months and has over 5k learners

I also have other partnerships relating to educational conent in the web3 space, but these were not grants, but professional educational services.

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
I have been in web3 since 2017. As an online educator, my Google+ community was closed down, Facebook took the direct rights for group owners to contact members away, and Udemy changed its revenue policy in such a way, creators trying to sell courses got screwed. So I went in search of a better way and fell in love with the ideas of web3.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
With experience in Data and Analysics, I understand the importance of what the Graph offers and I want to help web3 in general and The Graph (not to mention I am a long time token holder haha)

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Individual

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Project (one-off)

Please select the category your project best fits into:
Other

Primary Community Poll

Do you fundamentally support this grant application, knowing that the final scope and grant amount may differ from the requested proposal?

• Yes
• No

Grant Committee Vote

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?

• Yes
• No

[asadus16]

Hi there! I read your proposal and went through the links you provided, so I came up with these questions:

1. I visited your profile on Udemy and your courses, which are mostly related to Microsoft Excel, and your expertise is in accounting as well (25 years). How will you ensure that your course meets all the requirements, even though it’s in a field totally different from your own, to be published on such a big platform?

2. Can you explain a bit about what ‘$8k subject matter expert means’? Keeping this in mind that you have applied as an individual for this grant.

3. For the course you have planned, could you explain which topics will be covered?

Other than these questions, I believe that the budget for a non-technical course is too high, considering that similar content is already provided by The Graph in their documentation and blogs, etc. Nevertheless, best of luck!

Thanks.

[paula]

Some of the course I have on Udemy are web3, and my experience on udemy I can make sure it is published, once the content and quality is right. I should really update my profile on Udemy, as I am in Web3 since 2017.

The course was technical, and so the need for a subject matter expert. I am not an experienced enough dev to deliver this on my own. So I will need to work with a subject matter expert.

I have not yet planned out the course structure and learning outcomes. This is for sure something I want to work with the Graph on, lets focus on a target student, create material to suit their needs and bring these to the Graph. Right now its very open. What will get the best result for the Graph.

Yes the budget is high, however there is a lot of hours in course design, video production and editing, and publishing. But once they are published the benifits will be there for a long time. Courses on Alison and Udemy tend to have a 2-3 year life cycle.

[asadus16]

Hey Paula, thanks for the reply!

Well, I personally believe you should have planned a proper course structure with the subject matter expert before posting the grant. But don’t worry, you still can do that. The DAO always looks for a clear roadmap to proceed with.

Make sure you do a bit of research on the content that has already been created by The Graph community/team so your course can be recognized as exclusive.

Regarding the budget and previous similar educational grants like this one, I recommend you explore the GraphAdvocates DAO Forum a bit.

Here’s a similar educational grant which was presented by @pakaliscious

Grant Proposal: Rust Office Hours Resources

Grant ID: 8676zy9un Summary: While there is a growing demand for Rust skills across web3 and many core developer teams working on The Graph, the pool of skilled Rust engineers remains fairly small. Furthermore, there are few existing Rust learning materials with content specific to The Graph. This project aims to support the development of blockchain data indexing-focused Rust engineers by creating free and open source learning content about concepts relevant to The Graph. Past and upcom…

[Regie]

Hi there !
How has your background in data and analytics prepared you for contributing to The Graph .
How do you plan to leverage your online educator experience in the context of contributing to The Graph
Can you articulate your understanding of The Graph’s role within the broader web3 ecosystem and its significance for decentralized applications?

These are a lot of questions though but your answer would determine a lot

[paula]

Excellent, thank you for the feedback and tips, have a wonderful day

[paula]

hay Ragie and thank you for the questions. Its my online educator experience and experience in instructional desgin for Udemy and Alison which the Graph will benefit from most. The course will be free for learners available on the top learners search engines. I have a great reach on both platform and I will also be using the meetups I host for further reach.

There is a lot of data on a blockchain, and we have many blockchains storing data in different standards. it becomes very complex to query this data for use in applications. This is where The Graph fits in. Its makes blockchain data more accessible, allowing apps to focus on what they need to focus on. Many of us have heard of Oracle data, feeding data into the blockchain, well The Graph does the opposite, Indexers pull the data from the blockchain, organise it and aggregate it into subgraphs.