I see you C Corp. and raise you a spreadsheet

If you click over to the General Assembly website these days you will find a new section for video classes under the heading Hybrid Education. It's the most robust online learning efforts GA has introduced so far, and gives a taste of the way they will be deploying the $4 million they raised earlier this year from folks like Yuri Milner and Jeff Bezos.

So far there are two courses online, Introduction to Web APIs and Forming Your Startup. They are on the short side, 45 minutes and a little under half and hour. The lesson on Web APIs is the sort of tutorial you might image finding on a Khan Academy. The course on forming your own startup, with Adam Dinow, an attorney at Wilson Sonsini, is a uniquely GA product, covering the legal intricacies and tax advantages of forming an LLC versus a C Corp. with the upbeat zeal of web tutorial. 

The videos are accompanied by PDF class materials and an on campus discussion, hence the hybrid title. For right now the courses are offered at a $4 and $5 dollar suggested donation, but GA's Adam Pritzker tells us that they are still testing and forming the project, so expect changes down the line.

GA co-founder Brad Hargreaves did an interesting interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education in which he talked about their approach to teaching working adults. "They are not selecting the educational provider as much as they are selecting the social world to which the educational provider can connect them. It follows, then, that an educational provider that can offer the greatest access to that social world to which the student aspires, will be relatively valuable in the eyes of the students."

If there is one thing GA offers, it is a sweet social scene. Web classes and happy hours seem like a match made in heaven when it comes to training today's keyboard warriors.