e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Phil Hill

  • Coursera CEO Interview: Mike Caulfield nailed it two months ago

    Two months ago Mike Caulfield lamented the inability for many people in online education, especially massive online initiatives, to honestly learn from the past. In the post Mike referred to the failed AllLearn initiative and the seminal post-mortem written up in University Business.

    How does that relate? A paragraph from the 2006 post-mortem of AllLearn really stuck out for me:

    Oxford, Yale, and Stanford have kept quiet about the collapse of their joint e-learning venture…[h]owever, AllLearn’s closure could offer an unprecedented opportunity to step back and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the business model… Further research into the series of collapsed online ventures may shed some light on what makes a successful distance education program, and enable some of the surviving online providers to redefine their business models and marketing strategies accordingly

    Of course they don’t delve into these things honestly, and as a result most people in these institutions are unaware of them. Like Leonard, the institutions alter the record of the past. They wake up the next day with amnesia, consult a set of dramatically altered notes, and wonder why no one has tried massive Ivy League courses yet. The PR push to cover one’s tracks ends up erasing the institutional knowledge that could build a better initiative.

    Little did Mike realize that he was writing a script.

    One month later Coursera hired Richard Levin as its new CEO. As president of Yale, Levin was one of the key figures in the creation of All Learn in 2000, and after the 2006 collapse of the initiative Levin was one of the key figures directly responsible for the Open Yale Courses initiative.

    (more…)

  • Links to External Articles and Interviews

    Last week I was off the grid (not just lack of Internet but also lack of electricity), but thanks to publishing cycles I managed to stay artificially productive: two blog posts and one interview for an article.

    Last week brought news of a new study on textbooks for college students, this time from a research arm of the  National Association of College Stores. The report, “Student Watch: Attitudes and Behaviors toward Course Materials, Fall 2013″, seems to throw some cold water on the idea of digital textbooks based on the press release summary [snip]

    While there is some useful information in this survey, I fear that the press release is missing some important context. Namely, how can students prefer something that is not really available?

    March 28, 2014 may well go down as the turning point where Big Data lost its placement as a silver bullet and came down to earth in a more productive manner. Triggered by a March 14 article in Science Magazine that identified “big data hubris” as one of the sources of the well-known failures of Google Flu Trends,[1] there were five significant articles in one day on the disillusionment with Big Data. [snip]

    Does this mean Big Data is over and that education will move past this over-hyped concept? Perhaps Mike Caulfield from the Hapgood Blog stated it best, including adding the education perspective . . .

    This is the fun one for me, as I finally have my youngest daughter’s interest (you made Buzzfeed!). Buzzfeed has added a new education beat focusing on the business of education.

    The public debut last week of education technology company 2U, which partners with nonprofit and public universities to offer online degree programs, may have looked like a harbinger of IPO riches to come for companies that, like 2U, promise to disrupt the traditional education industry. At least that’s what the investors and founders of these companies want to believe. [snip]

    “We live in a post-Facebook area where startups have this idea that they can design a good product and then just grow, grow, grow,” said Phil Hill, an education technology consultant and analyst. “That’s not how it actually works in education.”

     

  • Clarifications on UF Online Payments to Pearson Embanet

    I wrote a post over the weekend that included information from the Gainesville Sun about the University of Florida Online (UF Online) program and its expected payments to Pearson Embanet. Chris Newfield from Remaking the University also wrote on the subject today. Chris raises some very important issues in his post, including his point:

    Universities may have a cost disease, but they now have a privatization disease that is even worse.

    In the article, however, there seems to be a misunderstanding of how the revenue sharing agreement works. Given the importance of the questions that Chris raises, I think it is important to understand the payment model used by most Online Service Providers (OSP) such as in place at UF Online.

    The part of the blog post that is mistaken, in my understanding, is this [emphasis added]: (more…)

  • Embanet and 2U: More financial insight into Online Service Providers

    While I have written recently about UF Online and 2U, there is actually very little insight into the operations and finances of the market segment for Online Service Providers (OSP, also known as School-as-a-Service, Online Program Management). Thanks to 2U going public yesterday and the Gainesville Sun doing investigative work on UF Online, we have more information on one of the highest growth segments for educational technology and online learning.

    2U’s IPO

    2U went public yesterday, initially offered at $13.00 per share and closing the day at $13.98 (a 7.5% gain). The following is not intended to be a detailed stock market evaluation – just the basics to present the general scale of the company as insight into the market. While there is not a direct comparison, this IPO is a much better IPO than the most recent ed tech offering when Chegg (down 2.7% its first day and down 26% to date). Based on 2U’s first day of trading and the IPO filing: (more…)

  • Two-Year Anniversary of Blackboard Acquisition of Moodlerooms and NetSpot

    Two years ago today, Blackboard made a dramatic change of course with a series of public announcements:

    At the time I described these changes:

    Most of the discussion in articles and blogs follows the meme of Blackboard entering open source, or even the meme of Blackboard acquiring competitors. I think the news is more significant than either of these two memes.

    Blackboard just did a 180-degree turn on their strategy for their core LMS business. They have moved from consolidating all customers into Learn 9.1 to providing products and services that are almost LMS-agnostic.

    Archive of Statements

    Given this dramatic turn of events, I wrote an additional post that captured the public statements (press releases, blog posts) from Blackboard, Moodlerooms, NetSpot, and even Blackboard competitors for the purpose of checking to see if the acquisitions really did signal a true change in strategy and support for open source. This two-year anniversary seems the perfect time to check up.

    Bb’s Previous Open Source View

    Just how big of a change did the announcements represent? Consider Blackboard’s moves regarding alternative LMS solutions in the previous six years. (more…)

  • Coursera and edX Hire New Executives: What about online experience?

    Today’s big news is the concurrent change in leadership at two of the big three MOOC providers. First, Coursera announced they had hired Richard Levin, former president of Yale University, to be the company’s new CEO. Besides being a big-name college executive, Levin also led (or at least was president during) the development of Open Yale Courses. As reported by the New York Times:

    Mr. Levin, who has been an adviser to Coursera since January, has been experimenting with online education for years, beginning in 2000 in a partnership with Stanford and Oxford. In 2007, he started Open Yale Courses to make dozens of classes taught by Yale professors available without cost.

    “The main thing we will work on is to establish this model so our partner universities feel that offering large-scale MOOCs is an important part of their mission that helps faculty expand their reach, and benefits the world,” Mr. Levin said.

    Mr. Levin, who has extensive experience in China, will also work on expanding Coursera’s presence there. Already, he said, China is the second-biggest source of Coursera enrollment, after the United States.

    Meanwhile, the Coursera founders and previous president are taking on new roles. Daphne Koller will become president, Andrew Ng will become chairman of the board of directors and chief evangelist, and Lila Ibrahim will become chief business officer.

    On the same day, coincidentally, edX announced they had hired Wendy Cebula as the company’s new president and chief operating officer. According to the company’s web site: (more…)

  • Proposed State Authorization: Dramatic increase in federal control of distance ed

    The Department of Education (DOE) released their proposed State Authorization regulations this week as part of the negotiated rulemaking process that seeks to replace previous rules struck down by courts in 2011. While the new process is more transparent than before (which was the basis of the court rulings), the proposed rulings would represent a dramatic increase in federal control of distance education and compliance burden for institutions. Greg Ferenbach from Cooley LLP noted these changes in a listserv discussion at WCET [used by permission from author, emphasis added]:

    What I don’t think many folks appreciate … is this proposal would be a huge change from the way things work today. From a quick read, it appears as though the proposal would require all states to authorize distance ed (with no exemptions for accreditation, etc.). Basically, this would be a mandate to either obtain specific state approval or participate in reciprocity as a condition for continuing to offer distance education with federal aid.

    Note that this is quite different from the last rule, which only mandated that you need to meet state requirements, if any, and thus it appears to impose a huge new burden on states and institutions. Think at least double.

    (more…)