e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Category: Ed Tech

The “Ed Tech” category includes posts about educational technology products themselves, including LMSs and other learning platforms, adaptive learning and other digital curricular materials products, learning analytics, and educational apps of all types. It also includes technical aspects of ed tech products, especially interoperability.

  • 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…)

  • Why VCs Usually Get Ed Tech Wrong

    I don’t often get to write these words, but there is a new must-read blog post on educational technology by a venture capitalist. Rethink Education’s Matt Greenfield argues that there is no generalized bubble in ed tech investment; rather, the problem is that the venture community has a habit of systematically betting on the wrong horses.

    It’s worth noting that Matt is not your typical VC. For starters, he doesn’t live in the Valley echo chamber. Perhaps more importantly, he has a background as an academic. He has a PhD in English from Yale, taught at Bowdoin and CUNY, and taught graduate classes in literature to teachers from the New York City public schools. As such, he has an unusual perspective for an ed tech venture capitalist.

    Matt uses digital textbook platforms as his example of the problem he wants to highlight:

    What type of ed tech have venture capitalists approached with the greatest enthusiasm and the largest piles of cash? The answer is new textbook solutions, including digital textbook platforms like Kno and renters of physical textbooks like Chegg, which just went public. Venture capitalists have put over $500 million into just the top ten companies in this sector….

    I talked to the CEO of an academic bookstore company recently. How many digital textbook platforms would you guess that his stores handle? Five? No, more than that. Ten? Nope, guess again. Twenty? Still too low. The answer is forty-two different digital textbook platforms. Forty-two. Now try to imagine each of those textbook platform companies pitching a book store. Or an author. Or a publisher. Or a venture capitalist. “Choose my platform, choose me! Our platform is totally different!” How many of those platforms does the world really need? How many of those platforms can make money? What do you think the meaningful differences between those forty-two platforms might be?…Meanwhile, even the century-old publishing incumbents are moving away from book-like things to adaptive courseware: learning objects that simply will not fit into the wrappers being built by companies like Kno.

    So there is a bubble in venture funding for education ventures that are obsolete at birth. Meanwhile, there are large opportunities in areas where few venture capitalists will invest.

    This is a fascinating case study. Why would VCs, with their much vaunted drive for innovation, be so taken with the idea of rebuilding an aging instructional modality (i.e., the textbook) on a digital platform—particularly when, as Matt spells out in detail in his blog post, it’s clearly a bad bet for a lot of reasons? It’s worth unpacking this a bit to get at the underlying pathology.

    (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…)

  • MOOCs and Academic Exchanges Now Allowed for Iranian Students

    One development covered here at e-Literate this year has been the US State Department and Treasury Department forcing the MOOC providers to block access for students in Iran, Sudan, Cuba and Syria. Kris Olds has also provided excellent coverage as well as Carl Straumsheim at Inside Higher Ed. In late January Coursera had to start blocking students in these four countries while edX continued working with these students. Then in early March edX had to start blocking students in Iran, Sudan and Cuba.

    Today’s news is that OFAC has granted a General License G to allow academic exchanges such as MOOCs to operate within Iran.

    (more…)