Professor Facebook: Social Network Co-Designs New Course At General Assembly

Facebook is dipping its toes into the teaching space with a new class at General Assembly, a popular education venture for startup co-working and vocational training. The new co-designed curriculum will teach aspiring developers how to develop social applications on the Facebook platform. “Facebook is happy to be working with General Assembly to help developers and would-be developers learn how to leverage the power of social,” they write in a statement to TechCrunch.

The decision back in 2007 to allow developers to build applications, such as games and music services, for the social network is often hailed as a watershed moment when Facebook pulled ahead of then-rival, Myspace. Since then, social apps have become a staple of social networking, from Facebook to Twitter and Google+.

While social applications have become big business, it is uncommon for a university to offer such industry-specific training. Indeed, Secretary of Education Arne DuncanĀ once called Career and Technical Education “the neglected stepchild of education reform.”

General Assembly has experienced rapid expansion from its New York Origins by wrapping startup-specific training from programming to management courses around a co-working space for technology startups. The new partnership with Facebook helps give this new educational alternative a big advantage over universities that have trouble keeping pace with rapid industry innovation.

For those interested in the class, tuition is $4,000, will take place in New York and London. In NYC, the course will go on from November 6 through January 29, and be taught by Peter Sullivan, the founder and CEO of social travel startup, Tripl. Learn more here.