In the wake of the recent referenda https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/179, The Polkadot Blockchain Academy team is posting this discussion today to help steer our activities in a way which aligns with the needs and interests of the Polkadot community as much as possible.

We are currently planning two in-person Academies in H1 of 2024, the first in Hong Kong in January and the second in Singapore in May/June. At present the target is to bring 100 students to each cohort, 50 Developer track and 50 Founders track.

Particularly during the PBA3 retroactive payment referendum, we have heard calls from community members and representatives to create online versions of the course to help scale the numbers of graduates we can produce, particularly given the per head expense of hosting in person courses.

Creating an online version of the course is currently planned as an item for the current PBA team to tackle in H2 of 2024. Given what we’ve heard from you so far, and given present market conditions, we would like to open the floor to the community to have their say on whether or not we should accelerate this process and if we do, what this might look like to best serve the broad needs across Polkadot. Please note that since the planning of the next waves of the Academy has started earlier this year, we are already locked into certain contracts and obligations with service providers in both locations based on ecosystem’s previous strategy.

We are considering options such as the following:

Option 1 : Keep to the current plan with two cohorts of 100 students in H1, 2024 and online course production to start H2.

Option 2: Accelerate a pilot during H1, keeping the original plan for the in-person program, and if successful start production online earlier.

Option 3: Prioritise rollout of the online course, reduce the size of the in person cohorts to free up time and capital to accomodate online students sooner (keeping in mind the limitations of existing obligations).

We invite the community to comment below with your views on these options, or indeed to table other suggestions for us to consider.