In January 2014 I started my first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) after reading a blogpost on Poets & Quants. I did not know back then this would be the start of the many MOOCs I would complete in the next 10 months. Over the course of these 10 months I learned 3 important things about this new way to gain knowledge:

The wealth of knowledge accessible through MOOCs is enormous

Whether you want to study about the work of Scandinavian authors, the intricacies of app programming or just want to know something about horses there is a MOOC that will fit. The wealth of knowledge that is currently available through MOOCs is amazing. They cater to people with different needs from those who are working towards a MBA equivalent (I am one of them) to people who just want to know more about their field of interest and professionals with many years of experience. This wide range of people have something in common though: the desire to learn something new and to update their knowledge. This is great in an economy which requires everyone to keep on learning after they left formal education.

Completing a MOOC requires a good amount of discipline

With completion rates around 10% there is a fair chance you will not finish a MOOC you sign up for. Even though this low completion rate is not necessary a bad thing, it does indicate it requires a fair amount of discipline to complete a MOOC successfully. As there are no incentives other than your own motivation and discipline to continue learning, dropping out becomes easy. Where you have peer support and financial incentives (you already paid your tuition fee for the whole year) to help you to continue studying if it gets tough, these things are all absent in MOOCs. This is why MOOC users fall back on traditional forms of support such as study groups to maintain their motivation.

Employers do not yet know how to treat MOOCs

If you completed one or more MOOCs you might put it on your CV to demonstrate your learning. However, you just might soon find yourself explaining what MOOCs are to potential employers. As a recent graduate who was looking for a job I was in contact with several recruiters, none of which knew how to interpret those 3 lines on my CV. During the initial phone screening this was something that came up regularly. The most interesting questions I got was when I intended to finish my MOOC studies. As I see MOOCs as part of a lifelong learning strategy I kindly answered him I probably would never finish after which I explained the idea behind this answer. These interactions with recruiters show to me employers do not yet fully understand the potential impact of MOOCs can have on the professional development of their employees.

Having enjoyed this new learning opportunities, I continue in my journey towards new knowledge.

This post has first been published on LinkedIn.

One of the major tasks for college and university students is to stay organized. Away from the (loving) supervision of parents keeping track of what is due and when can become overwhelming, especially when the student has difficulties to set up a proper learning and work routine.

WhatsDue aims to help organizationally challenged learners to keep up with their assignments through a simple to use app that reminds them of due dates through customizable reminders.

Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.

WhatsDue is the simplest way for students to keep track of due dates. Professors or students send us their syllabi and we input all of the due dates into our system. Then, students simply subscribe to their courses in our app on iOS or Android and have all their due dates in one place. Students receive automatic reminders before due dates as well as push notifications when assignment details change.

Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.

WhatsDue has four co-founders: Dan Green, Aaron Taylor, Brennan Gleason, and Techtone.

Dan is the technical director of WhatsDue and our sole developer. When he isn’t writing code, Dan can be found testing out new features for WhatsDue.

Aaron is responsible for business development, growth, operations, and making sure that WhatsDue grows as quickly as possible.

Dan and Aaron met 3 years ago at the start of their studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. Both are completing business degrees with a specialization in finance and are set to graduate in 2015.

Techtone is a cloud integration firm based in Vancouver, Canada whose founder Omer Segoly is a long time friend and former classmate of Dan’s. Techtone ensures that no matter how many students are using WhatsDue, the app will always be quick and reliable.

Brennan Gleason is our graphic designer, responsible for all of WhatsDue’s gorgeous graphics and interfaces. Brennan and his designs have been featured in the Daily Mail UK, as well as on ABC News.

What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.

Many students have a hard time keeping track of due dates. Most schools recognize this problem and are trying to find solutions, but they rely on archaic learning management systems (LMSs) like Moodle or Blackboard. Most LMSs don’t offer students a place where they can see all of their due dates in one place, and this problem is amplified by many professors not using the LMSs properly.

We address this problem at every level. First and foremost, our app is easy to use for students and gives them exactly what they want: every due date in one place. Instead of relying on professors to use complex systems, WhatsDue employees input syllabi into our database. Any changes to assignments are immediately reported to all users via push notifications.

But we didn’t stop there. In order to make sure that nobody using our app ever forgets to start an assignment, we added customizable reminders. Our ultimate goal is to help students succeed by tearing down a major barrier to academic success: forgetting what’s due and when.

In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next.

We are currently active at select universities in the US, Canada, and Israel.

We also have a number of K-12 teachers testing the app for their classes.

Who is your target audience.

Our target audience is university students who are organizationally challenged. These students often have dozens of assignments to complete throughout each semester and need some extra help keeping up with the workload.

How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product.

The core of WhatsDue’s strength is our team. Our campus ambassadors are students who share their enthusiasm for WhatsDue with their peers and professors.

We convert students into users by making their lives easier by helping them keep organized.

What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.

WhatsDue is free and will always be free. For the time being, we are focused on gaining users. When we hit critical mass, we will earn revenue by offering school-related services that students normally use. These may include buying textbooks, hiring tutors, or searching for jobs.

Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them?

Our main competitors are homework apps like iStudiez and myHomework Planner. However, students need to enter all their own due dates into these apps, which is time consuming and a barrier to the organizationally challenged.

With WhatsDue, this isn’t necessary; students only need to select their class in the app. As a bonus, we keep the students updated about changes to assignments. As soon as we verify one, everyone subscribed gets a push notification.

If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding.

We are actively looking for funding.

Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share.

We did an alpha launch at Dan and Aaron’s university, and approximately half of the roughly 1000 students in the international program became regular users.

What are the next steps in growing your startup.

We are experimenting with different techniques for user acquisition, and our most promising one so far is working with professors. We have found that professors are excited about WhatsDue, especially because we don’t ask them to do anything other than send us a syllabus. Once we get the seed funding we need, we will expand our data entry team and target more North American universities.

How can people get in touch with you.

aaron@whatsdueapp.com www.whatsdueapp.com @whatsdue facebook.com/whatsdue

Google Helpouts will be shut down due to “slower than expected growth” on April 20th. Users can download their Helpouts history until November 1st using Google Takeout.

Launched in November 2013, Google Helpouts was an expert directory built upon the Google Hangouts infrastructure. At launch, the platform was used by several education companies including Coursera, Rosetta Stone and Alliance Française.

On the one hand, it is not unusual for Google to shut down products that do not gain enough traction, even though those products might have a dedicated group of users. On the other hand, there is a growing number of startups that offer the same service focused on a specific vertical.

Berlin-based Flexperto offers its platform to banks and insurance companies, Miami-based LiveNinja offers its Katana platform to a broader range of businesses that want to offer video chat based advice to their customers.

And then there is of course Chegg which uses InstaEDU’s on-demand technology to offer a low-cost college guidance counseling service. After being acquired by Chegg in June 2014, InstaEDU (now Chegg Tutors) offers on-demand tutoring sessions for students who are stuck during their studies or prepare for an exam at $0.40 per minute.

via The Verge

Further Reading

• Helpouts is shutting down | Google
• Coursera, Rosetta Stone, Alliance Française among the first to offer Google Helpouts | EDUKWEST
• Chegg Launches Affordable Online College Guidance Counseling Service | PR Newswire
• HEDLINE: Chegg acquires InstaEDU for $30 million | EDUKWEST

The University of Virginia announced the launch of a new edtech accelerator program. The Jefferson Education Accelerator will focus on edtech startups in the growth stage with at least $1 million in revenue and internal data that proves the service or product is working.

The accelerator takes equity in return for access to services including capital, consulting, research, pilots and mentoring. Over the long term Jefferson Education Accelerator has plans to become an independent quality control organization for the edtech market.

Jefferson Education Accelerator received an initial funding of $11 million by The Curry School Foundation and United Student Aid Funds and will operate as independent for-profit venture. It is led by Bart Epstein, former executive at Tutor.com.

Further Reading

• 'Merit, Not Marketing' | Inside Higher Education
• Top Dog at Tutor.com Leaves to Launch UVa-Backed Jefferson Education Accelerator | DCInno

Links

jeauva.com

My friend has a son who is an exceptional musician, and was recently accepted to one of the most prestigious college music programs in the country. The other weekend my friend went to visit his son, who took him to the music lab to show his dad what he was learning about the science of harmonization, and how music that sounds spontaneous is actually the result of complex scientific principles.

Like any parent would be, my friend is immensely proud of his son. And, like any good parent would be, he wonders how his son will take what he learns in school and translate that to a lucrative career—or at least one that pays the bills, and opens even the possibility of supporting my friend’s hoped-for future grandchildren.

It’s a scary thing if you've invested a significant amount of money in an education other people label “useless”. But as someone who has hired people for a long time now, I don’t believe any degree is “useless”.

If I can’t see the value of someone who understands the science of harmonization could bring to my organization, then I am doing a poor job as a hiring manager. And I’m missing the chance to bring some outside of the box thinking and potential for innovation into my business.

That said, it’s still the job candidate's responsibility to find a way to demonstrate how their education has increased their ability to think critically and bring a fresh perspective.

Job Training vs. Education

The infamous “underwater basket weaving degree” doesn’t exist. Next to that, art history might be the most dismissed major, at least in pop culture. However, art history is defined as “the study of art in its historical development and context”. Remove the word art, and think of that sentence in a different way. If someone can understand historical development and context, they can surely be taught the more practical aspects of most jobs.

Our tendency to conflate job training and education is a mistake. If we really believe in the power of the free market and creative destruction, than by definition most jobs people get trained for are in the process of becoming obsolete.

People do need to be trained to do whatever it is they are going to do for a living, but they also need to know how to think critically, observe and understand patterns, and be forward thinking - among many other things. If they don’t know how to do those things not only will the workforce leave them behind, but the companies that hire them will eventually be left behind as well.

Those qualities can be developed in a variety of places, but a liberal arts degree is one of those places. And, as Walter Isaacson said in this post, we do need engineers and computer scientists, but we also need people who understand what it means to be human.

Uphill Climb

All of that aside, if you are someone with a degree that others may dismiss, and you aren’t becoming a curator or a musician, you face an uphill climb. Hiring managers are short on time and long on candidates, and it’s on you to show how your education impacted the way you think, not just what you know--because, for the vast majority of professions, how you think is more important than what you know.

That’s true for any recent college grad, but it’s especially true if you just spent a significant amount of money on a degree that others don’t always view favorably. Finding ways to demonstrate your value, critical thinking skills, and entrepreneurial drive is not easy, but it is easier than it used to be. Write a blog, design an app, start a nonprofit—do something that shows you are more than just a piece of paper and that what you learned actually gave you a skill set that others may find valuable.

The only thing useless is accepting a paradigm that doesn't have to be true.

As part of his project Scholas Occurentes Pope Francis announced the launch of Scholas Labs last week.

Scholas Labs is a four-month edtech accelerator program which offers support with fundraising, mentorship and product tests in the Scholas network. The accelerator is supported by several tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Grupo Telecom.

In September Pope Francis launched Scholas.Social, a global, multi-religious and multi-cultural network that aims to connect schools through collaboration, encounter and shared interest.

Scholas Occurentes is based on the task to create an online platform that would transform the way students learn. It is modelled after two projects he ran as Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

Further Reading

• Startup Accelerator Scholas.Labs Announced by Pope Francis | Inquistr
• Nasce Scholas Labs, l’incubatore di startup del Papa | Wired
• Pope Francis launches Global Online School Network Scholas.Social | EDUKWEST

Links

scholaslabs.org

McGraw-Hill Education announced a partnership with Cerego, a provider of memory management tools. Under the partnership the companies will work on adaptive language learning products for K-12 students.

The first world languages program to be powered by Cerego is “Asi se dice” for the Spanish market, becoming available for classroom use beginning in Fall 2015.

Last month, Cerego announced a partnership with MOOC platform edcast to add personalized and adaptive learning features to online courses.

Cerego’s technology joins McGraw-Hill’s other adaptive learning products ALEKS and LearnSmart. The latter has been developed by Danish edtech startup area9 which McGraw-Hill Education acquired in February 2014.

Further Reading

• McGraw-Hill Education Teams with Cerego to Power Adaptive Learning Experiences to Help K-12 Students Learn World Languages More Effectively | PR Newswire
• Live from TransformingEDU 2015: EdCast and Cerego Partner to Create a Comprehensive MOOC Solution for Universities, Companies and Organizations | PRWeb
• HEDLINE: McGraw-Hill Education acquires Area9, David Levin new CEO | EDUKWEST

Links

mheonline.com/ceregodemo

Renaissance Learning announced the acquisition of UClass, a cloud storage and content management platform that allows school districts to upload their entire curricula.

Founded in 2012, UClass was used by 5,000 schools at the time of the acquisition having uploaded some 16 million items, including lesson plans, videos and games. It will now be integrated into Renaissance Learning’s suite of assessment and analytics tools with the team staying on board.

According to Jack Lynch, CEO of Renaissance Learning, the acquisition complements the company’s offerings.

Renaissance Learning made headlines in March of last year when it got acquired by private equity firm Hellman and Friedman for $1.1 billion. The acquisition came less than a month after Google Capital had put $40 million into the company at a valuation of $1 billion.

Renaissance Learning covers one third of US schools and is present in 60 countries with around 20 million students using the offerings at a cost of $5 per student.

Further Reading

• Renaissance Learning Acquires UClass, Bridges K12 Assessment and Instruction | PR Newswire
• HEDLINE: Renaissance Learning acquired for $1.1 billion | EDUKWEST

Links

uclass.io

Instructure has raised a $40 million Series E led by Insight Venture Partners with participation of Bessemer Venture Partners and EPIC Ventures.

The venture round brings the total raised by Instructure to around $90 million and it will be the last before the planned IPO later this year.

The investment will go into the launch of Instructure’s new business facing product called Bridge, a corporate learning and engagement platform. At launch CLEARLINK, OpenTable and Oregon State University are using the product.

Since its launch in 2011, Instructure’s Canvas LMS has been used by over 18 million students and teachers from more than 1,200 universities, colleges and K-12 school districts across the globe. With Bridge, Instructure aims to create a similar success in the corporate market.

Further Reading

• Instructure Secures $40 Million in a Pre-IPO Series E Round | PR Newswire
• On The Way To An IPO, Education Technology Startup Instructure Is Close To Raising A Big New Round | TechCrunch
• Education tech startup Instructure has raised $40 million | Business Insider
• Instructure Expands in Corporate Market With New Funding | Inside Higher Ed

Links

getbridge.com

In this episode, Marissa Lowman from LearnLaunch joins MEP to talk about the Boston education technology community, what it takes to build an engaged community, and the first cohort of their accelerator:  LearnLaunchX. Don’t miss it!

Marissa Lowman is the Executive Director and a co-founder of LearnLaunch. She is also the founder of EdTechup (now part of LearnLaunch), an organization that brings together education technology entrepreneurs and educators in the Boston area to collaborate with one another. Most recently, she worked in sales and marketing at mobile payments startup AisleBuyer, which was acquired by Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU). Lowman taught in Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship, worked for Teach For America and helped grow the National Partnership for Educational Access (NPEA) at The Steppingstone Foundation.

She also served as a member of the steering committee of the Boston Leaders for the Future of Education (BLFE) from 2010-2011. In addition, she served as the Marketing Director for DartBoston, which helps emerging entrepreneurs start companies. Lowman received her BA from Johns Hopkins University.

Social Media:

Marissa Lowman on Twitter

Shout Outs:

• Upcoming LearnLaunch Events
• Boundless Learning
• EverTrue

For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

As you might know, EDUKWEST was built upon the idea to share the conversations I had with edtech startup founders, investors and thought leaders. Over the years the team and I have added new shows, news coverage and opened up EDUKWEST to contributors from across the edtech landscape.

This year again we are going to focus more on our roots. I can already tease that we will get back into recorded interviews very soon here on EDUKWEST. We won’t do video interviews though but focus on podcasts instead, the format of consumption that our audience has favored over the past years.

We will start to record our new formats very soon, so stay tuned. But there is more. In the meantime we are thrilled to welcome Nick DiNardo and his Meet Education Project to our site. Enter Nick:

I've been an admirer of Kirsten and EDUKWEST for many years. In fact, Kirsten's video interview series was an inspiration for my early work with this podcast!

Why did I start this podcast? It's simple. Over the past 10 years, I've had had the chance to sit down with professors, c-suite administrators at higher ed and K-12 schools, ed tech entrepreneurs, and VCs...just based on a curiosity about different perspectives on the future of learning, inside and outside of our traditional education system.

Back in early 2013, I asked myself the question: would an audience benefit from these conversations? Should I record them? So I did. Almost two years later, I've been honored to have 75+ interviews with thought leaders and action takers across the industry. It's been a blast, and I can't wait to see what the future holds.

I hope to provide some value to you all with some of these conversations. Please let me know what you think on twitter (@nickdinardo33) or through email (ddinardo33@gmail.com). I'm easy to find.

I have to thank Nick for his kind words. We also recently sat down for a MEP episode, which you can check out right now on MeetEducationProject.com. Of course, we are going to post it here on EDUKWEST, as well.

To give you an idea about this partnership, we will be publishing Nick’s interviews with edtech startup founders and investors, starting with his archives and working our way through to the latest episodes. We plan to publish a MEP episode each Monday.

One of the biggest problems for language learners at any stage is to find people to practice their conversational skills with. Language exchange is probably one of the most popular methods but as I wrote back in the days, it’s complicated.

i2istudy aims to provide language learners and teachers with a platform that does most of the heavy lifting by providing them with interactive content and ideas to work on.

Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.

i2istudy is an international online community, where people teach and learn foreign languages. On i2istudy anyone can be both a student and a teacher. It is an easy and effective way to speak a foreign language with a native speaker.

Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.

The founders are Ilya Osipov, Anna Prasikova and Vadim Grishin. Before i2istudy.com we worked together on a different IT project.

Ilya Osipov CEO (IT entrepreneur)

Anna Prasikova CIO (linguist)

Vadim Grishin CTO (programmer)

How was the idea for your startup born?

The project started in 2014. The founders of the project are a group of linguists, programmers and entrepreneurs experienced in creating large Internet projects. We noticed that the most effective way of teaching is when a person studies face to face with another person, and, unlike math, for instance, almost every person in the world has a perfect command of their native language, or at least its conversational part. We realized that the native language is a precious knowledge that can be an object of exchange. By teaching your native language you can take lessons in a foreign language in exchange for free.

However, the difficulty is that sometimes there is nothing to talk about even in your native language and with a person you already know. Now two unacquainted people are able to talk for a long time in a foreign language, teaching each other at the same time!

Besides, it’s one thing to speak a language, but teaching it to someone else is another!

We created a new model of online studying, which had not existed before i2istudy:

• studying face to face with a system of slides
• according to the principle of time banking
• free, simple, on the spot

What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.

«I understand how I can learn a foreign language. But how am I going to teach? I don’t know what to do!» - that’s the most common question that we get from people.

We help people to find interlocutors for language practice and solve their contact problem - created the special connection platform, time banking, gave all training materials for the dialogue.

There’s no need to be a professional teacher on i2istudy! You get dialogues that have been prepared for you, along with games, pictures and films. The teacher doesn’t have to prepare for a lesson, only read the assignment and add your personal touch to it. That’s why anyone who speaks a language freely can teach it!

Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them?

The main competitor is www.italki.com. They use Skype for communication.

Our advantage is that we have audio and video integrated into the system, a platform for dialogue with educational materials and Time Banking.

In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next.

At the moment English, Russian, German and Spanish are in the system. Our regions are all countries who speak these languages.

We plan to add French and other European languages as well as extending the service to the Asian market. Right now we already have a few lessons in Chinese.

Who is your target audience.

They are people whose occupation requires them to spend much time in front of a computer.

They are those who want to brush up their knowledge of a foreign language but don’t have an opportunity to visit a tutor or have one come to their place and overpay for that.

They are people who want to study whenever they have free time – at a lunch break, while the baby is sleeping, simply when they have a free evening.

They are those who would love to talk to native speakers but don’t have foreign friends.

Those who don’t want to slave over textbooks and do homework on their own, but simply communicate in a foreign language without concentrating on grammar.

How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product.

We actively use Time Banking and Gamification in i2istudy. We motivate our users to invite their friends for sharing their native language and learning foreign languages. Each invited user receives bonuses from our system.

What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.

We have two kinds of study options: for free and for money.

FOR FREE - If you teach your native language and then you learn some different language. It`s like a barter. You share your language with each other, not using your money, but your time and knowledge as a currency.

FOR MONEY - If you don't want to teach somebody, then you pay money for learning.

Some people say «I don’t have time to teach, but I want to learn myself!» or «I don’t need to learn a foreign language, English is more than enough for me». If you don’t have the time to do both, you can teach and earn money from those who want to learn with you. In this case, users pay or, respectively, get money for their services. You can pay and or withdraw money on i2istudy.

OUR BUSINESS MODEL: We take a commission of 15 percent from paid study.

If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding.

We raised $ 300K from private investors.

Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share.

At the moment we are especially proud of the fact that users invite each other and we observe the viral growth of our user base.

What are the next steps in growing your startup.

Next milestones for us are growing the user base to a few million users and add more languages to the platform.

How can people get in touch with you.

For communication purposes with our users we use the feedback form in i2istudy, we use groups in social networks. We teach and learn in i2istudy with our users as well!

Former textbook rental juggernaut Chegg is on the home stretch to turn itself into a 100% digital company. Ingram Content Group will take over the entire physical textbook business of Chegg and market it under the Chegg brand starting May 1st 2015. Chegg will exit its warehouse operations by the end of this year.

The strategic Chegg Ingram partnership was launched in August 2014. Under the partnership Chegg will only earn 20% commission on printed textbook, but CEO Dan Rosensweig believes that digital revenues from services will balance out the loss in the long run.

Overall digital revenue grew 71% year-over-year to $28.5 million and made up 34% of total revenues in Q4 2014, up 12% from Q4 2013. The year-over-year growth of subscribers to Chegg’s digital services is 54%.

Chegg will use the freed capital from textbooks to further grow its digital services. The Student Hub currently reaches 50% of college students in the US and 75% of college-bound high school students.

Further Reading

• Chegg outsources Textbook Distribution to Ingram in its Transition to Digital Company | EDUKWEST
• Chegg and Ingram Content Group Announce Agreement in Principle Setting Chegg on Path Towards 100% Digital Revenue | Press Release
• Chegg Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2014 Results | Press Release
• Chegg Will Outsource All Its Print Textbooks to Remake Itself as a Digital-Only Company | Re/code

GuideSpark, which provides HR organizations with a platform to turn paper-based training material into interactive and mobile courses, has raised a $22.2 million Series C led by Meritech Capital Partners with participation from previous investors New Enterprise Associates, Storm Ventures, and IDG Ventures.

The new round brings the total funding raised to $42.2 million and will be used to invest in product, sales, and marketing. GuideSpark raised a $15 million Series B a year ago.

According to GuideSpark the company has over 500 customers ranging from small businesses to 15% of the Fortune 500. GuideSpark’s platform helps those organizations to communicate and engage with their employees through customized video and mobile experiences throughout every stage of the employee life cycle.

Further Reading

• GuideSpark Raises $22.2 Million in Series C Financing Round | Market Wired
• GuideSpark Raises $22.2M To Create Customized Videos That Make HR Less Tedious And Confusing | TechCrunch
• GuideSpark Snags $22M Series C for Developing HR Communication Tools | Xconomy

Links

guidespark.com

Lately, I have been looking at a lot of job postings. I often get excited about a possible opportunity and look at the company and become fascinated with who they are and what they represent.

“My, what I would love to bring to an organization like that, I appreciate their message, their mission. I have experience in what they are asking for and needing.

Oh, they require a college degree. Next…”

Most employers now expect applicants to have at least a Bachelor’s in order to be able to contact them. The message is clear-

Do not bother contacting us if you do not have a college degree. Nope. Stay away. We don’t care who you are, who you know, what you’ve done or what you are passionate about, or capable of.

Sometimes, employers don’t even make a notation as to what you have to be degreed in at all; only that you have one. It is as if, they check a box on the form and that’s it. No exceptions.

This brings up a few thoughts. My mother went to USC and received a degree in dental hygiene. Only to own her own remodeling company for 35 years.

My father carries a zoology degree from USC and has spent most of his career life as a purchasing manager, writer, and business owner.

For people who switch career paths in life, a degree becomes just a piece of paper. They still have to learn everything new that they need to know. Most of them do that with mentorship and work experience.

This current college degree only applicants phenomenon strikes me strange for the following reasons.

• With standard protocol in (big) business over the last twenty years, being to either outsource work to other countries or to pay people as little as possible to help their bottom line- Why would employers now demand a degree that will mean they will have to pay them more than someone without? Older workers were weeded out of positions because they had nice salaries, longer vacations and benefits. Only to be replaced by inexperienced workers who had to learn on the job but were paid much less. Now let’s hire people we have to pay more.
• People get bored. The few people I know that were completely born to do the same job are engineers. They are wired for it, love it, breathe it and usually have enough change to keep it exciting for them. Other than the Professional roles, (doctors, lawyers, teachers) I think people in general want to mix it up a little. When people (Yes, I am making sweeping generalizations here, but as this is only my opinion, I think it’s ok) find a new something that gets them excited, they want to pursue it. They have big energy for it; strive to learn as much as they can about it. They try really, really, hard.
• Reading the article reference here- it takes much longer to fill a position when one requires a degree than it does if it is open to other applicants.

• When employers add the must have 5-10 years of completely related work experience. Again, people get bored. Maybe they are looking for a new job because they are sick of their last job. They will bring that energy to a new company if they are tired of that work or market.
• Some employers complain that they can’t find any good applicants, no one fits the bill. Maybe it’s because you have knocked out 60 % of the potential people before you even know their name.

Sometimes it feels like a secret club, one that takes significant money and time to get into.

I am in NO WAY undermining a college education. It is very important and is becoming even more so as the years go on. However, for some, like me, a middle aged woman who has one daughter in college now and another one starting next year; taking the time and money away from them is not what I want to do. I do want to work, I want to work hard. I have ideas, energy and passion coming out of my ears.

But I don’t have the degree.

Next.

Further Reading

• How 'Upcredentialing' May Close the Middle-Class Path

The internet is a fabulous thing and has shaped modern life in numerous ways. And clearly it had its impact on the way people learn today. Not only are there countless learning resources available, often one can learn something new completely free of charge.

However, when looking for something on the Internet today, especially with the intention to gain knowledge, information and learn something new, the experience can be pretty overwhelming as there is so much content available. This is why curation in education has become so prominent over the past 2-3 years. Learners, and teachers alike, often rely on experts to cut through all the noise and come up with the best pieces of content, may it be articles, videos, infographics or other forms of content.

MentorMob allows experts to create playlists where they can break down a longer and often complicated process of learning something into small and digestible steps.

Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing.

MentorMob makes learning easier for everyone.The MentorMob community finds the best free learning content on the web and organizes it into free, comprehensive learning guides.

MentorMob’s mission is to empower anyone to start, enhance or master any skill or hobby by making the best free learning content of the web easier to find.

Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup.

MentorMob was started by University of Illinois Alumni Kris Chinosorn and Vince Leung. After meeting at UIUC, both Kris and Vince knew there had to be a better, more efficient way to learn for free online and that is when MentorMob was born.

Kris Chinosorn is a University of Illinois alum who acts now as the strategic and creative head of MentorMob. An early dotcom entrepreneur, Kris worked on several projects with the earliest employees of Facebook, Google and Paypal before coming across his realization of how to use the Internet to solve a worldwide problem.

Vince comes in as the tech head of MentorMob with an engineering degree from the University of Illinois. He started his career in California working for exciting projects for both enterprise and consumer spaces, including the Motorola Razr.

How was the idea for your startup born?

The idea for MentorMob sprouts from the backgrounds of Kris Chinosorn and Vince Leung. Both avid learners, they found early on that the Internet was not quite the incredible tool for learning new skills and hobbies that everyone thinks it is. Even with millions of free lessons online, the content is almost impossible to navigate. Enter MentorMob.

What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve.

We are addressing a problem that everyone has, but have yet to realize. Search engines find information, but don’t organize it. By curating and organizing the best online learning content, MentorMob allows people who spend all their time searching to actually start learning. And MentorMob provides the community a way to learn and interact with anyone else who’s learning it...anywhere in the world.

Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them?

Google. YouTube. The internet. All give you a lot of content and most is of questionable quality. MentorMob provides one definitive learning guide of the highest quality content that is out there on the web.

In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next.

We are anywhere people are searching the web to learn a new interest, hobby or lifestyle. We make top quality education accessible for everyone. Currently, we have launched with kiteboarding, photography, snowboarding, parenting, wedding planning, salsa dancing, bachata and entrepreneurship. We have a list of mobs we will be moving into shortly. Any you want to see?

Who is your target audience.

Hobbyists, educators and lifelong learners around the global. YOU!

What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost.

The first phase involves brand sponsorships. The value proposition is building a relationship with a highly qualified group of users learning the hobby that the brand wants to sell, to be coupled with a very high engagement experience. Since users are on MentorMob to learn a hobby it is natural to learn about related products and services that you will need.

Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share.

We are especially proud of watching our community grow, learn and interact around the world.

From our internal standpoint it has been extremely gratifying to see our name in Times Square for the ringing of the NASDAQ bell. Also, this past year we were top 3 at SXSW Entertainment and Content.

What are the next steps in growing your startup.

Getting the word out there to more people around the world. Sharing the love!

How can people get in touch with you.

• Kristin@mentormob.com
• @MentorMob
• www.facebook.com/mentormob

One Education, an Australian non-profit partner of One Laptop per Child (OLPC), aims to breathe new life into the project. It revealed a prototype of a new version of the educational computer that takes some pages out of Google’s modular smartphone project Ara.

The XO-infinity is a modular laptop, meaning the main components like WiFi antenna, battery, screen, camera and core are easily interchangeable through a Lego-like system. This makes the laptop easily repairable or upgradeable by simply switching out the desired components.

Through the system One Education hopes to reduce electronic waste as older or broken components can be changed separately instead of replacing the entire laptop. One Education aims for a lifespan of ten years instead of two for most laptops and tablets.

The XO-infinity can be used as stand-alone tablet or as a laptop and there are different processor units which enable it to run on Android, Linux or Windows.

The first working model of the XO-infinity is expected to be shipped in August with a public launch in early 2016.

Further Reading

• To infinity and beyond: A computer designed to outlast a childhood | Medium
• OLPC Australia to Launch a Modular, Hybrid Laptop/Tablet Called the XO Infinity | The Digital Reader
• Meet Rangan Srikhanta, the former refugee who wants to change the world one laptop at a time | Sydney Morning Herald

Links

one-education.org/infinity

Every so often, a new way emerges. A way for society to perform critical tasks in ways completely discontinuous from the trends and ways of doing things that came before. There was a time when schooling itself was an amazing innovation. Now, it is expected, and granted as a right. The new way needed is one that helps us use technology in a way that scales amazing teaching and learning experiences. Experiences that heighten learning and enrich lives, and are delivered in efficient and cost effective ways.

But I am not convinced most schools see it that way. We are in the midst of a sea change in higher education. At the top of the market, the rich get richer. The best students flow to the best schools and private endowments continue to grow. Meanwhile, thousands of schools struggle to find a way to do more with less. The only thing that has seemingly grown for them in the last 5 years is competition and regulation. Hardly a comforting mix.

It is in times like this that I encourage leaders across the education spectrum to repeat and believe one simple phrase, "there is a better way".

As a society, we are at the dawn of new technology, and real exponential advancement. The race in higher education should be to understand how best to deploy it as fast as possible. The exciting part is that the future will offer meaningful chances to improve teaching and learning. Most of what has happened in higher education with respect to technology in the last decade has merely increased access. We put traditional courses online and patted ourselves on the back. Viewed linearly through the lens of history, this was a critical first step, but the journey is far from complete. We have merely taken baby steps.

Instead of stopping there and spending time trying to realize the available efficiency offered by the current high tech paradigm, we should view our roles as pushing ahead to take the next step. Online courses are not the end. Rather, getting students online at scale is simply the end of the beginning. This is where it gets interesting. How can we simulate an operating room in a classroom and offer different scenarios in real time in an intense way? Can we offer business instruction complete with 1,000 unique simulations to 1,000 different people across the world at once in a way that gives them an enriching and deep experience? The people who will be really valuable in the future are asking those questions now. The people who will be really, really valuable are working to answer them.

So what is next? A lot. If you missed the opportunity at the time but want to know what it was like to be into the web, or mobile, or social before everyone else years ago, you now have another chance. Virtual Reality will be omnipresent and ubiquitous in 5 years. It is hard to find now. It is completely missing in education. The question is, who will take a leadership role and fill the gap? Why not you?

If you don't know what Oculus is, I promise you will be surrounded by it eventually. It's probably wise to start learning about it now.

You might think, I really don't know much about virtual reality, or how to apply it to higher education. That's the beautiful part. No one does. But someone will. Smart people see those horizons and fill gaps.

I am headed there, and I invite you to join me. Better yet, race me. Its time to think big thoughts and get started.

In this episode of Meet Education Project, Jessie Arora talks about new education technology companies, Teacher Square, and building a link between teachers and ed tech products.  Don’t miss it!

Jessie Arora, founder of TeacherSquare, is focused on improving educational outcomes for all types of learners and empowering educators to play a more active and meaningful role in tech adoption in our schools.  She is particularly passionate about cultivating the education startup ecosystem to help create tools and services that improve teaching and learning for all students. As an angel investor she focuses on the K12 education space, applying her experiences from Google, Citizen Schools & the Stanford Graduate School of Ed. She blogs at edcrunch.org and you can follow her @Jessie_Arora.

Social media & key links from the episode:

• Twitter:  @Jessie_Arora
• Blog:  edcrunch.org
• LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/jessiearora/
• Goalbook:  Streamlining the IEP
• Shawn Rubin, and teacher/entrepreneur community building in RI

EdTech Accelerators:

• Socratic Labs
• 4.0 Schools
• Imagine K12

School Models:

• Zaya.org

For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

E-commerce giant Alibaba together with Peking University launched a joined MOOC platform. Chinese MOOCs currently features over 20 courses from lecturers at Peking University which can be accessed for free. Some of the courses offer certifications for completion.

According to Tech in Asia, the platform also lists six other universities as partners, including University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, and Beijing Normal, yet there are no courses available from these institutions at the moment.

Chinese MOOCs enters a competitive market as both Coursera and edX have launched portals with Chinese partners over the past two years alongside homegrown portals like Kaikeba, Guokr, Jike Xueyuan or Xingshuai Teach.

Online education is growing fast as it has become an attractive alternative for students in China who feel those offerings are more flexible and cheaper compared to traditional alternatives.

Further Reading

• Alibaba and Peking University Establish Chinese MOOC Platform | TechNode
• Alibaba and top Chinese university launch new education portal for MOOCs | Tech in Asia
• China Sees Rise in Online Education as Students Prefer Its Flexibility | Yibada

Links

chinesemooc.org