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Coursera makes first foray into K-12 education with online courses for teachers

Ki Mae Heussner — Wed, 01 May 2013 04:00:21 +0000

Coursera, one of the driving forces behind the MOOC (massive open online course) movement reshaping higher education, is bringing its disruption to K-12 schools. But its target audience isn’t the students; it’s the teachers.

On Wednesday, the startup said it had partnered with several schools of education and other institutions and museums, including schools of education at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Virginia, the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art, to bring free professional development courses to teachers via the web.

“We looked at our technology and realized that for 7-year-old kids, streaming university content for them wasn’t going [to be effective]. But the lever for that 7-year-old kid may be to help them get a better teacher,” said Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng.

Most school districts don’t have the resources to offer quality professional development programs that match the interests and needs of individual teachers, he said. Typically, teachers are pulled out of their classrooms for a few days a year (disrupting instruction for their students) and are required to follow the same program, regardless of the subjects they teach or their strengths and weaknesses.

With its new courses, Coursera said teachers can focus on the topics, areas of expertise and pedagogies that are most relevant for them. For example, early courses will cover topics including content development, the common core curriculum, character education and implementing flipped classroom and blended learning strategies.

The courses will follow the same format as other MOOCs on Coursera and will adopt the startup’s peer-grading approach. For example, teachers could write a lesson plan or videotape themselves teaching and then receive feedback from other members of the course.

Teachers, educators and even parents can take the new courses for free but, as with other Coursera classes, they can pay $30 to $100 for the “Signature Track” option, in which their identity is verified and they receive a certificate at the end of the course. Coursera’s hope is that, in time, school superintendents will award teachers continuing education credit for the courses. But Ng said that, so far, they’ve only had informal conversations with superintendents about the possibility.

Given the attention MOOCs have received in the last year, it’s not so surprising that the phenomenon is spreading to K-12 education. Conversations are underway about adapting the MOOC format for K-12 students and other educational organizations are offering one-off MOOCs for teachers and administrators. But Coursera is the first of the major MOOC providers to make a foray into K-12 education and given the debate it and its rivals Udacity and edX have stirred among colleges and universities, it will be interesting to see how it is received by K-12 educators.

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Udemy adds revenue stream with private online learning sites for companies

Ki Mae Heussner — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:13:42 +0000

Ambitious individuals who want to bulk up on new skills can turn to online learning site Udemy for lessons on everything from web development and programming to accounting and entrepreneurship. And it might not be long before their employers start picking up the tab.

Next week at the Arizona State University/Global Silicon Valley Education Innovation Summit, the online learning startup plans to launch a new corporate training program that enables companies to create private online learning sites for their employees.

“The general idea here is that, ultimately, employers and managers can work with their team members to develop individual learning plans,” said Dennis Yang, Udemy’s COO.

Since launching in 2010, the company has focused on individuals, with a site that enables anyone to create an online course and then sell it or offer it to students for free. But expanding into corporate training opens up a new and potentially big revenue stream for the company.

Veteran online learning site lynda.com, for example, has built a profitable business by collecting subscription fees from individuals and corporate clients. It’s also an area that other new online learning sites, like Codecademy or Skillshare, could ultimately look to for money-making opportunities.

With the new program, corporate clients can select content from Udemy’s library of 7,000 premium and free courses and provide it to employees through a secure site bearing the company’s branding. They can also use Udemy to create their own online courses and view analytics on employee activity and performance.

To start, the company said it will waive access fees, so corporate clients only pay for the cost of the content. Yang said that, for now, it offers corporations bulk purchasing discounts but will ultimately offer subscription pricing.

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Developer training company Pluralsight releases online coding courses for kids

Ki Mae Heussner — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:13:32 +0000

Developer training company Pluralsight, which has long helped professional programmers improve their technical chops, is turning a bit of its attention to kids.

As momentum builds behind bringing computer science to younger students, Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard said his company wants to do its part for the cause. And, on Monday, the Salt Lake City-based company released a couple of free online courses teaching elementary, middle and high school kids how to code.

“We feel that the world needs to raise awareness of the importance of being more technical with computer science at an earlier age,” he said.

As a star-studded video released last month by Code.org emphasized, the country needs more technical talent. Less than two percent of students study computer programming — and 90 percent of U.S. schools don’t offer programming. Meanwhile, programming jobs are growing at double the pace of other jobs, according to the non-profit.

In addition to sites like Codecademy and Treehouse, which could be for professionals and students, more startups, including Kuato Studios, Tynker and Hopscotch are beginning to take on this problem directly with games and kid-friendly programs that teach the basics of coding.

But for Pluralsight, which is a subscription-based business, the new kids’ courses represent more of a goodwill- and loyalty-building effort than a new revenue source, Skonnard said. Its first courses focus on MIT’s programming learning environment Scratch and the programming language C#, but Skonnard said it plans to grow its library of kids’ courses, and expand outreach to schools, over time.

Pluralsight partnered with the non-profit Teaching Kids Programming, led by developers Lynn Langit and Llewellyn Falco, to create the C# course and Skonnard said both new courses were designed to be more interactive and attention-based.

The company, which launched in 2004, claims more than 200,000 subscribers and, earlier this year, raised $27.5 million from Insight Venture Partners.

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Digital learning startup Benchprep expands into video-based software training courses

Ki Mae Heussner — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:00:17 +0000

When Benchprep launched two years ago (and rebranded from its initial launch as Watermelon Express), it focused only on interactive test prep content. But over time, it spotted an opportunity in providing content for the classes students take before and after the SAT, ACT and other standardized tests. On Monday, the startup is taking a step beyond those basic curriculum classes (algebra, chemistry, etc.) with software training courses delivered via video.

In addition to the 40 courses on Excel, Adobe and other software tools, the Chicago-based company has rolled out video courses for about 20 other subjects, including college-level math and chemistry.

The expansion, said Benchprep co-founder Ashish Rangnekar, furthers the startup’s plan to be a one-stop shop for digital learning content for college students.

“We asked what can we offer them that goes along with their educational life cycle? One of the big things that emerged was software training,” he said.

He also added that while the company had previously included video in parts of other offerings, expanding into entirely video-based courses is another way they can keep students engaged on mobile, a platform on which they’re already extra active.

While Rangnekar acknowledged that subject matter content on Benchprep may overlap with content found on Khan Academy and skill-focused content may be similar to that on Udemy or lynda.com, he emphasized that unlike those sites Benchprep is a distributor, not producer of content. For the new software courses, for example, the startup partnered with CompuWorks and the NROC (National Repository of Online Courses). Other content partners include Pearson and O’Reilly. He also said that while other online learning sites offer classes on software like Excel and Adobe, Benchprep’s courses specifically target college students using those tools for classes, not adults hoping for professional advancement.

Students may be able to access some content from other online learning sites for free or a lower one-off charge. But Benchprep believes its value is as a central location for students to not only access courses that fill a variety of needs but get help evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, as well as recommendations on the courses that will help them progress.

To drive home that “education-as-a-service” proposition, the company last fall adopted a subscription model in which students pay $30 a month.

To date, the company has raised $6 million from investors including New Enterprise Associates and says it has 410,000 registered users, 60,000 paying customers and offers more than 200 courses.

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Hollywood talent agencies join tech VCs in investment in online learning site CreativeLIVE

Ki Mae Heussner — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:14:50 +0000

CreativeLIVE, an online learning site that competes with the likes of lynda.com and Udemy, is bringing in a different kind of investor. After raising $7.5 million from Greylock Ventures last October, the Seattle-based company on Monday said it had added about $500,000 more from Hollywood talent giants Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Endeavor, as well as Google Ventures and Crunchfund.

That doesn’t mean CreativeLIVE students will soon get online directing classes from Ben Affleck or be able to take a virtual acting class from Jennifer Lawrence, but as the online education provider grows, CEO Mika Salmi said its new agency connections will keep its talent pipeline full of authors, politicians and other creative professionals who want to expand their brand online.

“We pride ourselves in having world-class experts teach our courses,” Salmi said. “As we expand into new topics, we want help sourcing these people.”

In addition to the new investors, CreativeLIVE said Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr and Hunch and chairman of the board of Etsy, was joining CreativeLIVE’s board as an independent director.

CreativeLIVE, which has been mostly under-the-radar since launching in 2010, provides both pre-recorded and live online courses in the creative arts, including photography and filmmaking, as well as software development, business and other entrepreneurial topics. In the last year, Salmi said, the company has increased its course catalog by more than 200 percent to offer more than 200 courses, included 15 live classes a month. The company also said revenue climbed 400 percent.

The backing from Hollywood talent agencies highlights that online courses are becoming an interesting new platform for creative professionals to build their audience and brand. On Udemy, for example, people who have released successful books are able to generate additional income and publicity and those who might otherwise turn to publishing are finding that the web courses can be an easier and faster way to get their content out.

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A Twitter chat: How technology in schools can help bridge the skills gap

Ki Mae Heussner — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:12:40 +0000

The digital economy is demanding new skills from workers, but too many students finish high school unprepared for the future. To explore how emerging technology and new approaches to education could address that, this week, I moderated a Twitter chat with McGraw-Hill SVP Jeff Livingston and Rashid Davis, principal of New York’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School. You can check out a Storify of the conversation here, or see an abridged version of the conversation below.

About to kick off a chat w/ @MHEducation's @LivingJeff & @PathwaysInTech's @RashidFDavis for a chat on college & career readiness. #CCRchat—
Ki Mae Heussner (@kheussner) February 07, 2013

We started the Twitter chat with some context. McGraw-Hill’s svp of College and Career Readiness Jeff Livingston pointed out that the topic is especially relevant now because, in addition to the changing economy, the high school diploma has lost so much of its value.

@kheussner HS diploma certifies that your family is stable enough to get you to school most days for 12 years, anything else? #CCRchat—
Jeff Livingston (@livingjeff) February 07, 2013

https://twitter.com/livingjeff/status/299649147617828865

At the same time, we’re seeing the emergence of all kinds of new technologies – like adaptive learning platforms and online courses.

https://twitter.com/rkiker/status/299649358834565120

Science and technology skills are more in demand than ever before, but there are mismatches between what employers need and what students are learning.

https://twitter.com/rashidfdavis/status/299651597833756672

This didn’t come up explicitly in the Twitter chat, but it’s worth noting that a few recent surveys have highlighted this gap. A McKinsey survey in December found that only 42 percent of employers think students are prepared for work while 72 percent of educational institutions do. In a recent GE survey, C-suite execs said linking schools with business was one of their top priorities. Davis’ Pathways in Technology Early College High School, in New York, is one example of how that can happen. The school is backed by IBM and in six years, students get a high school degree, an associate’s degree and better chances for an entry-level position at IBM when they graduate. Chicago offers similar schools and educators in Maine, Massachusetts and elsewhere are also looking at the model.

https://twitter.com/rashidfdavis/status/299654297417818112

As the economy goes digital and the Internet becomes an even bigger part of lives, those with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) backgrounds will be well-positioned to succeed…

https://twitter.com/wonderoftech/status/299653588710461440

But some pointed out that it’s important to remember that a STEM education doesn’t necessarily guarantee employment:

https://twitter.com/iPublicPolicy/status/299657674444914690

… And others emphasized that focusing on STEM subjects shouldn’t come at the cost of learning “softer” skills.

https://twitter.com/rashidfdavis/status/299656176877056001

https://twitter.com/livingjeff/status/299656149630861312

In addition to developing a more relevant knowledge base, some tweeted that students need more experience in the workplace and connections with working professionals. (Another little side note: more startups — like Careerosity, Mytonomy and ModernGuild — are trying different approaches to this.)

https://twitter.com/iPublicPolicy/status/299660853064630272

https://twitter.com/aryoerg/status/299654733168254976

https://twitter.com/AMulkeyEDW/status/299654349464952833

The chat also highlighted how new adaptive learning technology and analytics platforms could personalize education so that schools can better assess what students actually know, not just how much time they spent in a classroom.

https://twitter.com/livingjeff/status/299661246242885632

That could potentially lead to new ways of structuring schools and organizing classrooms…

https://twitter.com/livingjeff/status/299662979950071809

https://twitter.com/rashidfdavis/status/299663369122750464

As schools and families explore these different options there will doubtlessly be plenty more debate but Livingston and Davis emphasized that students can start by creating a plan.

https://twitter.com/rashidfdavis/status/299664705948094464

https://twitter.com/livingjeff/status/299664291034963968

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Coursera classes for college credit? Five online courses approved for credit equivalency

Ki Mae Heussner — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 05:00:11 +0000

Massive open online classes are moving ever closer to legitimacy. Last month, Udacity announced a partnership with San Jose State University to pilot three online classes for college credit. And on Wednesday, Coursera is set to announce that five of its courses have won approval from the American Council on Education (ACE) for credit equivalency.

That doesn’t mean students of those courses will be guaranteed credit by traditional universities — institutions have the option to accept or decline the credit — but it indicates that the courses meet ACE’s standards. And, importantly, it creates the opportunity for Coursera students to not just use online classes to burnish a resume, but to potentially earn a degree.

When Coursera first announced its decision to seek ACE approval back in November, Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng told GigaOM:

“Ever since we launched Coursera, we’ve known that university degrees are important. We wanted a more systematic way for students to earn academic credit… This is just a step in that direction.”

Over the past few months, in addition to Udacity’s San Jose State partnership, a few institutions, including the University of Helsinki and the University of Washington, have unilaterally announced that they would award credit for some Coursera courses.

But the ACE recommendations mean Coursera classes could be eligible for credit at potentially 2,000 U.S. colleges and universities.

To be eligible for the credit, students need to sign up for the course’s Signature Track, which requires them to take extra steps to validate their identity, and then take an online proctored exam (through third-party ProctorU). The Signature Track costs $60 to $90 and the proctored exam costs $30 to $99.

For now, just five courses have been approved for credit equivalency, four for college credit and one for vocational credit: Pre-Calculus from the University of California, Irvine; Introduction to Genetics and Evolution from Duke University; Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach from Duke University; Calculus: Single Variable from the University of Pennsylvania and Algebra from the University of California, Irvine.

Momentum is certainly building behind massive open online classes (MOOCs). But it’s important to remember, as we saw this week when Coursera was forced to suspend a class for the first time after complaints about technical glitches and the design of the class, they’re not without their limitations and are still very much evolving.

Image by jcjgphotography via Shutterstock.

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After 17 years, online learning veteran lynda.com raises $103M (is an IPO ahead?)

Ki Mae Heussner — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:00:34 +0000

If you haven’t paid much attention to lynda.com before, you’re going to want to keep your eye on it now. The online learning company, which has helped more than two million people learn software, business and creative skills through video courses, on Tuesday announced that it has raised $103 million in its first (yes, first) outside financing round.

That’s a lot of money for any company to raise – but especially for one that has been around for the past 17 years and profitable for the last 15. It’s yet more evidence that the online learning sector is burning up — and it may signal that lynda.com is positioning itself for an IPO or acquisition by a company with deep pockets.

The company, started by husband and wife team (or rather, wife and husband team) Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin, was launched in 1995 to give professionals, students and hobbyists better tools – not just books and manuals – to learn computer skills. Over the years, it’s grown to include video-based courses on everything from how to use Adobe Photoshop and WordPress to how to lead productive meetings and become a thought leader.

In the past year or so, startups like Codecademy, Treehouse, LearnStreet, creativeLIVE and others have launched to help people learn programming, business and other skills online. But Weinman said that lynda.com’s new funding wasn’t motivated by the appearance of new rivals.

“We’re not taking this investment in reaction to competitors,” said Weinman. “We think this industry of online education is in its infancy and there will be lots of approaches. We’re very confident in our approach.”

And it has good reason for that confidence – in the last year, the company said it earned more than $100 million in revenues from subscription fees from individuals and enterprise clients, which include top Fortune 50 companies, universities and government agencies.

CEO Eric Robison emphasized that the company doesn’t need the funding but said the timing is right for the company to expand internationally, scale its web platform and move into new content areas.

The company could do that in-house – and it recently added a new CTO to get its expansion plans off the ground. But, now it also has the resources to buy up other startups competing in the space.

As I’ve noted before, lynda.com has been relatively quiet while other upstarts have brought new approaches to learning to the web. But it looks like the company’s ready to make some noise.

“We’ve been very focused on running our business,” said Robison. “This is the year we get out there with more visibility.”

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With ‘verified certificates,’ Coursera offers model for making money from web classes

Ki Mae Heussner — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 07:00:14 +0000

If 2012 was the year MOOCs (massive open online courses) captured the country’s imagination, is this the year we start to see if they can be a money-making reality?

Over the past few months, online education startups Coursera and Udacity – both of which launched barely a year ago — have started to pull back the curtain on their revenue-generating plans. In December, Coursera launched an employer-matching service in which it receives payment for identifying students who might make for good job candidates. Udacity has indicated that it has begun to make money in similar fashion.

On Wednesday, Coursera announced the beginning of a new service that it’s said will be its biggest source of revenue: selling “verified certificates” to students who opt to have their identity authenticated.

“It offers students a better way to show off their work,” said co-founder Andrew Ng. “It’s for job seekers and people who think it might be useful – if you think you might be looking for a job ten years from now … You can show a potential employer that you can complete these courses offered by the top schools.”

Photos, keystroke matching authenticate identity

The new option, called the Signature Track, is available on a course-by-course basis and will cost from $30 to $100, depending on the kind of class.

When students sign up for the track, they’re asked to take a picture of both themselves and a form of identification, as well as type a short phrase to create a biometric profile. Whenever they submit an online assignment, Coursera will attempt to match the keystrokes to make sure the students are who they say they are and not imposters recruited to ace an assignment. Assuming they successfully complete the course, students will receive an electronic certificate from the school and Coursera, and they’ll be able to share a detailed record of their course performance with anyone online.

These certificates will not count towards degrees, but Coursera is working with the American Council on Education (ACE) and credit equivalency for its courses is on the horizon.

At launch, the verified certificate program only includes five classes from four universities, including a nutrition health class from the University of California, San Francisco; a computational investing class from Georgia Tech; a microeconomics course from the University of Illinois and an introductory Duke class on genetics and evolution.

I think it’s telling that, so far, Duke is the only one of Coursera’s many brand name schools to sign on (no offense to you Bears, Yellow Jackets and Illini faithful out there). Ng said they expect others to ultimately join the program and I expect that others will participate as well, but you can see why top-tier schools might want to take a wait-and-see approach. A Harvard degree isn’t the same thing as a Harvard certificate and schools likely want to be sure that they can expand their reach without diluting their brand.

Certificates could make students more visible to potential employers

It will also be interesting to see the kinds of students who sign up for the certificates and how they’re able to use them. While $30 isn’t an unreasonable price to pay for a credential, most students likely wouldn’t pay too much more unless they expected to see a professional pay off. At the very least, Ng said students in the Signature Track will likely be more visible to employers recruiting through the site but the company has not yet determined how much weight the certificates will carry.

Ng said that he and co-founder Daphne Koller, both of whom are Stanford professors, “are not out to monetize, [but to] give everyone an education” — and their commitment to offering free courses, as well as financial aid to students who can’t afford the certificates, shows that their incentives are in line with their students’. But they still need to show their university partners and the rest of the MOOC-infatuated mob that they can create a sustainable business. Coursera’s model is just one of several that are starting out but, given its traction among students and top-tier schools, its outcomes could provide insight into what’s to come.

Image from ryabinina via Shutterstock.

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Online learning site Udemy nabs $12M to expand to new platforms, targeted content

Ki Mae Heussner — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:00:02 +0000

Just last week, we wrote about how a decent percentage of instructors on online learning marketplace Udemy are earning a nice chunk of change selling courses on the site. Well, it seems the site itself is making out pretty well, too

As the user base has grown to 500,000 students around the world, revenue has climbed 400 percent. And, on Friday, the company plans to announce that it had raised $12 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Insight Venture Partners and included investors Lightbank, MHS Capital and Learn Capital. It brings Udemy’s total amount raised to $16 million.

Dennis Yang, the company’s newly-appointed COO and president. said the new funding will enable the company to expand its mobile options (it currently has an iPad app but will soon follow with apps for iOS, Android, Kindle and Windows 8) and build out its content into deeper niche subject areas.

The San Francisco startup competes with plenty of other online learning sites, from free platforms like Coursera, Udacity and Codecademy to paid sites like Lynda and Treehouse. But, while all of those sites similarly give students access to online courses, Udemy is unique in that it lets anyone become an instructor by creating and offering free and paid video-based classes on a range of subjects its site. Udemy offers more than 5,000 courses on a range of subjects, from computer programming and entrepreneurship to literature and fitness. Its instructors include individual experts and best-selling authors, as well as university professors and institutional and business leaders.

Since its launch in 2010, however, other startups, including Skillshare and CourseHero have created their own online marketplaces of courses created by self-appointed experts. As competition mounts, Yang said, Udemy’s challenge is to offer a course creation process that’s as seamless as possible and provide students with a learning experience that’s as engaging as possible. For example, right now, the site only enables students to communicate with professors and peers via Quora-like message boards, but he said they’re putting a lot research and development behind potentially improving on-site social interactions.

On sites like Udacity and Coursera, a significant amount of revenue is expected to come from certificates and other kinds of credentials. And while Yang said he wouldn’t be surprised to see something similar on Udemy, he explained that accreditation would be the responsibility of content creators, not the platform itself.

He also said that just like those and other online learning sites see an opportunity in using student data to help employers find potential job candidates, Udemy similarly plans to put its data to work. If it offered a career-mapping service, it would be through partners, he said, but other data-driven initiatives are on the horizon.

“There’s a great data play underlying our business. We capture a lot of information,” Yang said, adding that, in the future, they plan to share more data and analytics with instructors.

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