Companies Use Online 'Universities' to Lure Customers

By SARAH CARR

Barnes & Noble.com, the online arm of the giant bookseller, has announced that it will help create an online "university" for its customers, although the courses and modus operandi will be quite different from those found at traditional universities.

The venture is the latest in a series of efforts by businesses trying to attract and retain customers by offering them some form of free education. Although officials at the companies involved insist that such projects are unrelated to traditional higher education, they have co-opted the terminology of academe. And, if such initiatives attract students, they could have a broader impact on both the perception and practice of education, especially online education.

Barnes & Noble.com made a deal with notHarvard.com, a company that creates online courses for businesses hoping to woo customers with the bonus of education. The courses, in jazz, yoga, and film noir, among other subjects, will be free.

Judy Bitterli, chief executive officer of notHarvard, says the courses are designed to build "brand loyalty" among Barnes & Noble.com customers.

"The courses will add stickiness to their site," she says. "They help Barnes & Noble.com build their brand, and, ultimately, we hope, they will help sell goods and services."

She adds that notHarvard is helping several other businesses, including Talk City and jobs.com, with similar online minicourses.

Gustav D. Carlson, vice-president of corporate communications at Barnes & Noble.com, says the deal is a strategic move to appeal to customers who are looking more and more to the World Wide Web as a place to find educational materials and information. (Barnes & Noble.com is one of several booksellers with which The Chronicle has partnerships for online book sales.)

"Studies are showing that people are looking to the Web for content as much as for simple business transactions," Mr. Carlson says.

Another company, LearningBrands, also creates online courses aimed at customers of specific businesses, like the recipe magazine Cook's Illustrated.

Although companies like notHarvard and LearningBrands have adopted the terms "courses" and "universities" to describe what they do, they also insist that their offerings are more akin to Home Depot "how to" demonstrations than to traditional college courses.

A typical course created by notHarvard might have six to 12 lessons, lasting about 30 minutes each. Students in the course could communicate with their instructor during regularly scheduled office hours.

The offerings of notHarvard and LearningBrands are so new that their appeal to online shoppers cannot yet be measured. No comparable models exist, since the idea of using free education on the Internet as a way to lure customers is a recent one.

But officials of companies involved in the deals say the concept has roots in tried-and-true business practices. "In real life, we have been doing this for years," says Ms. Bitterli, of notHarvard. "You can go to Home Depot and learn how to build a deck -- and it's likely that if you learn how to build a deck at one place, you will also buy your nails there."

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