Krypton Community College is one of the newest and freshest online learning initiatives now underway.

It’s the brainchild of a working group organized by an inventive marketing professional named Seth Godin.

The idea is to run short, 4-week courses, taught by experts, and organized around small groups who meet up in person to talk through their learning.  Cue the promo copy:

Here’s what Krypton offers:

• Every month, a new course.
• Each course is based around the work of an author/teacher/scholar/speaker… someone with something to say and a track record doing it.
• A PDF with links to online and offline content (videos, essays and books) along with questions gets posted a week or so before the course starts.
• Each course has a local leader and about a dozen friends and colleagues who sign up to participate, in person.
• The group meets every week for four weeks.

The dynamic is simple and powerful: meeting in a group raises the bar for the discussion, pushes each participant to have a point of view and creates an enjoyable and energizing way to dive deep into the content. Like ChurchNext, Seth and his crew are taking thoughtful steps, making friends, and being open to criticism (and praise!) – this looks like a great experiment to be paying attention to.