Update: Jeez – sorry about the multiple typos (mistakenly showed in thousands instead of millions). Fixed now. Pitchbook – a database service for M&A, private equity and venture capital – listed in Hot Topics what they saw as the top ten most valuable ed tech companies based on public valuations1. The definition of startup is […]
ASU, edX and The Black Knight: MOOCs are not dead yet
In 2012 I wrote a post during the emergence of MOOC mania, pointing out some barriers that must be overcome for the new model to survive. So what are the barriers that must be overcome for the MOOC concept (in future generations) to become self-sustaining? To me the most obvious barriers are: Developing revenue models to […]
Cisco’s Collaborative Knowledge: Further blurring of higher ed & professional dev lines
Cisco, which at one time was the most valuable in the world, made an announcement that apparently got no one’s attention (outside of the venerable e-Literate). Cisco1 released a new product, Collaborative Knowledge (CK), that is designed to allow companies to access real-time expertise and enable collaborative work based on employees’ expertise, or in another word, […]
2U Learning Platform Update: Removal of Moodle, addition of accessibility options
2U has now been a public company for over a year, and that had what is easily the most successful education IPO in recent history. Shares have almost doubled from $13.00 at IPO to $25.50 last week. At the same time, there is a swirl of news around their new partner Yale and the Physician Assistant’s […]
Interesting Comment on Pearson’s LMS Plans From Customer
On April 1, long-time eCollege (aka Pearson’s LearningStudio) customer Texas Christian University (TCU) gave an update on their LMS selection process to the student newspaper TCU360. In this article there was an interesting statement1 worth exploring [emphasis added]. “eCollege” will soon be a thing of the past. TCU has narrowed its search for a Learning […]
Ellucian Buys Helix LMS, But Will It Matter?
At this year’s Ellucian users’ conference #elive15, one of the two big stories has been that Ellucian acquired the Helix LMS, including taking on the development team. I have previously described the Helix LMS in “Helix: View of an LMS designed for competency-based education” as well as the subsequent offer for sale in “Helix Education […]
About the Diverging Textbook Prices and Student Expenditures
This is part 3 in this series. Part 1 described the most reliable data on A) how much US college textbook prices are rising and B) how much students actually pay for textbooks, showing that the College Board data is not reliable for either measure. Part 2 provided additional detail on the data source (College […]