e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Phil Hill

  • It’s Called Data Analysis And Not Data Synthesis For A Reason

    I’ve never been a big TEDtalks fan, but recently I’ve been exploring some of the episodes, partially based on peer pressure.

    In the process I ran across a talk from Sebastian Wernicke, who has a bioinformatics background but now seems to specialize in giving talks. The talk in question is “How to use data to make a hit TV show”, which starts by looking at two data approaches to binge TV production – Amazon’s use of data analysis to choose a new show concept, leading to Alpha House, and Netflix’s use of data to look at lots of show components but then to let humans make conclusions and “take a leap of faith”, leading to House of Cards. The anecdotes set up his description of where data fits and where it doesn’t, and this mirrors what Michael and I are seeing in the use the broad application of personalized learning.

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  • The Massive Decline In Larger Education Company Market Caps

    After our coverage of Blackboard’s CEO change last week, we were both interviewed by the Washington Business Journal, with the following lede:

    Analysts and sources I spoke with Monday, both on and off the record, said the decision to bring on Bill Ballhaus as CEO was a combination of Bhatt failing to make progress building the company’s business and lacking the experience needed to successfully run a company of that scale. And that means at least several years before Providence Equity Partners, which owns a majority of the company after paying $1.64 billion for it in July 2011, begins actively marketing the company for sale, according to industry experts.

    Earlier this week I wrote about Apollo Education Group, parent of the University of Phoenix, putting itself up for sale due to its weakening financial position. I also noted that I doubt that McGraw-Hill Education is going to be able to go public in the near-term. Part of the reason for this latter observation is the dramatic fall of Pearson in the stock market, triggered by its warnings that it would miss earnings estimates. In Audrey’s excellent year-end post on the business of ed tech, she noted:

    Private equity firms sure love buying ed-tech companies. Perhaps because the stock market’s sorta “meh” about them.

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  • Parent Company of University of Phoenix Could Be Sold to Owner of McGraw-Hill Education

    Apollo Education Group, parent company of the University of Phoenix as well as Apollo Global, is in “advanced talks” to be purchased by Apollo Global Management, owner of McGraw-Hill Education and of Cengage debt. Got that?

    To clarify, the Apollo Education Group is the parent company of the University of Phoenix, and they have a subsidiary called Apollo Global, which is a joint venture with the Carlyle Group, another private equity firm. While the confusion is understandable, Apollo Global Management previously shared nothing in common with the Apollo Education Group other than their admiration for the choir-directing sun-god.

    With that in mind, here is the news from the Wall Street Journal today:

    A deal between Phoenix-based Apollo Education and Apollo Global Management, a New York private-equity firm, could be worth about $1 billion, some of the people said, with one of them adding an agreement could be reached in the next few weeks. Apollo Education had been in discussions with a number of private-equity firms since late last year, but Apollo Global Management is the only one still in the running now, this person said.

    It is possible, as always, in such situations that there will be no deal, and another buyout firm could re-emerge.

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  • Blackboard Replaces CEO Jay Bhatt: What happened

    Just over four years since Providence Equity Partners acquired Blackboard and three years after they brought in Jay Bhatt to replace co-founder Michael Chasen, the company announced another change in CEO. Blackboard has removed Jay Bhatt and replaced him with Bill Ballhaus. The official reason from the announcement:

    Today, we are fortunate to be joined by a great leader – our new CEO Bill Ballhaus. Bill’s philosophy is directly in line with ours and his skill set is going to help us reach new heights. While this is certainly a change for Blackboard, rest assured that the heart of our mission and strategy will remain the same. [snip]

    So we have defined our strategy and now, with Bill joining the company, we’ll continue to execute against it. Bill has accomplished much over his career and his operational expertise has led various businesses to great success. He and I share a fundamental belief that if you make your first priority taking care of your customers, the business results will follow. So, under his leadership Blackboard will continue our focus on doing just that. We will deliver next generation teaching and learning capabilities to the market, continue our international growth, and improve even further the way we serve our customers and strive to exceed their expectations. Bill is uniquely positioned to help us execute against these priorities, and with him we’ll achieve significant advances for our customers and for Blackboard.

    While the official messaging is ‘full steam ahead’, to me this is a straightforward story that we have already been covering at e-Literate. In a nutshell, the attempted sale of Blackboard this year has failed, and the company has stalled in its turnaround attempts. (more…)

  • Unizin RFP For LMS: An offering to appease the procurement gods?

    Well this was interesting:

    In a blog post from Monday, Unizin announced a public Request For Proposals (RFP) to solicit bids for an enterprise and multitenant LMS. The RFP states its purpose:

    We seek to identify a qualified vendor (“vendor”) to make available an enterprise and multitenant learning management system and related services (collectively, the “LMS”) to Member Institutions.

    Say what? (more…)

  • Three Views of Top 10 e-Literate Posts in 2015

    It’s the year end, and I have writer’s block. Like many people, I would much prefer to play with numbers than get work done. Instead of just sharing the Top 10 or Top 20 blog posts in terms of 2015 page views, however, I thought it would be interesting to take three different views this time.

    Top 10 most-viewed blog posts on e-Literate for 2015

    This one is straightforward and ranked by page views, but note that several posts from prior years continue to get a lot of views.

    1. How Much Do College Students Actually Pay For Textbooks? (2015)
    2. What is a Learning Platform? (2012)
    3. A response to USA Today article on Flipped Classroom research (2013)
    4. Reuters: Blackboard up for sale, seeking up to $3 billion in auction (2015)
    5. First View of Bridge: The new corporate LMS from Instructure (2015)
    6. State of the US Higher Education LMS Market: 2014 Edition (2014)
    7. Why Google Classroom won’t affect institutional LMS market … yet (2014)
    8. Blackboard Ultra and Other Product and Company Updates (2015)
    9. No Discernible Growth in US Higher Ed Online Learning (2015)
    10. State of the US Higher Education LMS Market: 2015 Edition (2015)

    Top 10 most-mentioned blog posts in social media

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  • Georgia Tech and Udacity MOOC Degree: Missing targets but still worth watching

    Melissa Korn wrote an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal giving a progress report on that Georgia Tech / Udacity MOOC degree (the master’s in computer science).

    The Georgia Tech online computer-science program is relatively massive: It has 2,789 students enrolled this semester, compared with 312 in the campus-based version. It’s on track to turn a profit by May, according to Charles Isbell Jr., senior associate dean at the College of Computing. It has a steady stream of more than 1,300 applicants for each new term. [snip]

    At Georgia Tech, Mr. Isbell is still thinking on a grand scale: “It wouldn’t surprise me if three years from now we’re talking about 10,000 students instead of 3,000 students,” he said. “This is sustainable and this is scalable.”

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