IBL News

Author: IBL News

  • Adobe Launches a Free Analytics Curriculum for Higher Education

    Adobe Launches a Free Analytics Curriculum for Higher Education

    IBL News | New York

    Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) announced this month its Analytics global curriculum to educate learners on data science. This initiative is part of the Adobe Education Exchange and the Adobe Creative Campus program.

    As part of this program, college instructors and students are able to use Adobe Analytics for free and access a course curriculum that includes hands-on activities.

    “Digital literacy is paramount for students in today’s digital economy, and this program meets the needs of today’s employers while exposing students to careers they may not have considered,” said Amit Ahuja, Vice President, Experience Cloud Platform and Products at Adobe.

    Adobe said that past participants have used the experience to land careers at The Home Depot, Boston Consulting Group, Amazon, and nonprofits like Learning Forward.

    Professors from institutions including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Utah, and the University of Michigan partnered with Adobe to develop the curriculum, helping shape the program to ensure it is easy to implement among any college or university.

    The program has four core modules that can be incorporated into any curriculum. Participants get access to a sandbox environment, which allows students to use Adobe Analytics with rich demo data. It is meant to be self-paced. The modules focus on: Data Collection, Data Strategy and Architecture, Standard Metrics and Functionality, and Analysis Workspace Fundamentals.

    • Adobe: Free professional development courses and educational resources

  • October 2021

    October 2021

    OCTOBER 4-7, 2021
    Learning Impact Conference 2021

    OCTOBER 5-6, 2021
    CLO Symposium

    OCTOBER 5-7, 2021 – Online Event
    VMWORLD

    OCTOBER 5-7, 2021
    CoinGeek Conference

    OCTOBER 5-8, 2021
    OLC Accelerate 2021

    OCTOBER 7, 2021
    InstructureCon Online

    OCTOBER 11-12, 2021
    Open Networking & Edge Summit

    OCTOBER 12-13, 2021
    7th Annual Future of Work Summit

    OCTOBER 12-14, 2021
    CCUMC 2021 Conference in the Cloud

    OCTOBER 18-22, 2021 – Virtual
    2021 Open Education Conference

    OCTOBER 19-20, 2021
    Future Workplace Summit

    OCTOBER 19-21, 2021
    Enlighted

    OCTOBER 20-22, 2021 — Las Vegas, NV
    Dev Learn

    OCTOBER 20-22, 2021
    Women in Tech Summit

    OCTOBER 23-29, 2021 — Orlando, Fl
    Infocomm

    OCTOBER 26-29, 2021 – Philadelphia, PA, and Online
    Educause 2021 Annual Conference 

    OCTOBER 27-28, 2021
    NGA’s State Strategies for Skills and Lifelong Learning Systems conference

  • Robinhood Rebounds Into Its Initial IPO Price of $38

    Robinhood Rebounds Into Its Initial IPO Price of $38

    IBL News | New York

    Robinhood Markets, Inc. (HOOD) rose 7.20%, to $37.68 yesterday, nearly rebounding into its initial public offering price of $38. This surge took place after a catastrophic debut in the Nasdaq last Thursday, with a decline of 8%.

    Among the positive pieces of news for the trading app start-up is that Cathie Wood of ARK Investments bought 1.3 million shares on Thursday, the day of the offering.

    The company said that 301,573 of its users—or 1.3% of the people who have funded accounts — had bought into the IPO.

    However, that number doesn’t reveal how much of the offering went to the firm’s customers, who were expected to be allocated as much as 35% of it. Robinhood (HOOD) didn’t release the total number of shares that retail traders bought.

    It seems that Robinhood’s fate is in the hands of those retail investors in the next few weeks and until the company reports its second-quarter earnings — on a date that has not yet been released.

    Big institutional investors and financial pundits continued questioning yesterday Robinhood’s revenue model and marketing claims, such as its “democratization of stock market.”

    “The Robinhood crowd, coupled with the Reddit Rebellion, has made day-trading both profitable and fashionable again, with very little attention paid to the history of speculative episodes like these,” wrote Ron Insana at CNBC.

  • September 2021

    September 2021

    SEP 7-9, 2021
    Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Annual Conference 2021

    SEP 13-14, 2021
    Zoomtopia

    SEP 13-14, 2021
    Maicon Artificial Intelligence

    SEP 13-15, 2021, New York City
    SALT New York 2021

    SEP 20-24, 2021 – Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
    EC-TEL 2021

    SEPT 20-24, 2021
    OLC Accelerate 2021
    Onsite: October 5-8, 2021

    SEPT 21–23, 2021
    TechCrunch Disrupt

    SEPT 22-23, 2021
    Skillsoft’s Perspectives 21 Unleashed

    SEPT 27-29, 2021
    BoS Conference Online Spring

    SEP 27-30, 2021
    Open Source Summit

    SEP 28-29, 2021
    The AWS Summit Washington, DC

    SEPT 29-OCT 1, 2021
    Learning with MOOCs VIII

    SEPT 29, 2021 – Los Angeles
    TechDay LA

    SEPT 29-30, 2021
    AI and Big Data Expo North America 2021

  • August 2021

    August 2021

    AUGUST 4, 2021
    IMS Technical Congress

    AUGUST 9-11, 2021
    ASU+GSV Summit: The Dawn of Age of Digital Learning

    AUGUST 10-12, 2021
    MD&M WEST

    AUGUST 11-12, 2021 – Virtual Event
    TDWI Virtual Summit Series: Modern Data Architecture

    AUGUST 11-13, 2021 — Santa Clara Convention Center
    Internet of Things (IoT) World (The AI Summit)

    AUGUST 17, 2021
    WordPress.com Growth Summit – Americas & EMEA

    AUGUST 18, 2021
    WordPress.com Growth Summit – Asia Pacific

    AUGUST 17-19, 2021
    CIO100

    AUGUST 17-19, 2021
    Ai4 2021

    AUGUST 20, 2021
    Duolingo of Duocon

    AUGUST 24, 2021
    2021 IEEE Future Technology Summit

    AUGUST 29 – SEPT 1, 2021 – Salt Lake City, UT
    ATD 21

    AUGUST 31-SEPT 1, 2021
    Experience Makers Live

  • Coursera’s App for Zoom Enables Instructors to Integrate Live Meetings into Their Courses

    Coursera’s App for Zoom Enables Instructors to Integrate Live Meetings into Their Courses

    IBL News | New York

    Coursera (NYSE: COUR) released this week a new version of its app for managing Zoom lectures on its platform.

    The Live2Coursera app for Zoom, which builds upon a basic version developed last year, is available for free download in the Zoom App Marketplace.

    The app allows instructors to record, share and upload lectures to their classes and integrate live meetings into their courses on Coursera.org. Meanwhile, students have more download and viewing options, including the ability to chose data bandwidth speed.

    “Recorded Zoom lectures have the potential to be valuable, long-term digital assets for both educators and learners,” wrote Shravan Goli, Chief Product Officer at Coursera.

    Instructors and students can engage with the Live2Coursera app anonymously, not being required to create their own personal Coursera account.

    Currently, the recording capabilities are only available for Zoom customers with paid cloud recording access.

    The Coursera for Campus Basic plan provides students with free access to world-class online courses, hands-on projects, and job-ready skills training.

     

  • Trading App Robinhood Shares Fell 8.3% in Its Nasdaq Debut

    Trading App Robinhood Shares Fell 8.3% in Its Nasdaq Debut

    IBL News | New York

    Popular trading app Robinhood’s (NASDAQ: HOOD) shares dropped over 8.3% yesterday in its Nasdaq debut to $34.82.

    Usually, the hottest tech IPO price is above expectations, but this wasn’t the case with Robinhood. Big money managers didn’t show any appetite for this stock. It was a big blow for the trading app company and for GenZ and Millenials who bought shares during the IPO.

    The Silicon Valley fintech startup sold 52.4 million shares, raising close to $2 billion. Co-founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt each sold about $50 million worth of stock.

    The stock opened at $38 apiece, matching the price the company agreed to sell its shares a day earlier, at the low end of the IPO target range ($38 to $42). However, the stock soon sharply dropped as much as 12% to $33.35 at midday in New York.

    After it opened for trading, 49 million shares worth $1.8 billion changed hands in the 30 minutes. By 1 pm in New York, Robinhood was among the most actively traded stocks in the US, surpassing the likes of Apple and Tesla by the number of shares traded.

    The $38 opening trade gave Robinhood a valuation of roughly $32 billion, putting it in the orbit of other large brokers like ETrade, which had an $11 billion equity valuation when it was bought by Morgan Stanley last year. Robinhood is valued at 10.5x forward EBITDA.

    Private investors had valued Robinhood at $11.7 billion last September.

  • One-Year-Old, Zoom-Based Class.com Startup Raises Another $105 Million

    One-Year-Old, Zoom-Based Class.com Startup Raises Another $105 Million

    IBL News | New York

    Class.com continues its funding spree. The startup, founded in 2020 as a learning platform to expand Zoom capabilities, announced today that it raised an additional $105 million in Series B funding.

    Class is built on the Zoom Meetings platform and simply adds into its teaching and learning tools. Features include taking attendance, hand out assignments, give a quiz or test, grade work, proctor exams, and talk one-on-one with a learner.

    The reported round was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. Additional investors participating include: GSV Ventures, Emergence Capital, Maven Partners, Owl Ventures, Insight Partners, SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Fund, Learn Capital, Reach Capital, Slow Ventures, Sound Ventures, Chimera Investment, Daher Capital, Guy Oseary, Bill Tai, and Super Bowl champion and entrepreneur Tom Brady.

    The company founded by ex-Blackboard executive Michael Chasen has raised over $160 million in under a year.

    “Class has a bold vision for changing the way the world learns, and we have experienced increased demand for Class not just in the United States, but around the world,” he said.

    “Over the past year, students and instructors around the world have been using Zoom to power remote and hybrid classes,” said Audrey Witters, Managing Director, Online & Entrepreneurship Programs at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Class strategic advisory board member. “Class offers features designed to make virtual classrooms around the world feel more like real classrooms.”

    Class.com will become available this summer. Names of customers have not been provided. In this regard, the startup says, “since launching less than a year ago, Class is already deployed in the United States and in over 20 countries worldwide.”

     

  • Course Catalog Company Open Sesame Raises $50 Million

    Course Catalog Company Open Sesame Raises $50 Million

    IBL News | New York

    Professional e-learning company OpenSesame.com announced last week a $50 million investment by equity firm JMI Equity with participation from existing investors, FTV Capital and Altos Ventures. To date, the total funding date is $107.4 million.

    Portland, Oregon-based, 173-staffed company stated that the last investment will accelerate its innovation and global expansion. AI-powered course curation will be one of those areas, according to Don Spear, CEO of OpenSesame.

    With a catalog of over 20,000 learning courses in 19 languages — including classes from TED and Harvard Business Publishing —, Open Sesame has noticed a surge in demand on topics such as diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and leadership development. OpenSesame’s Simon platform allows learning administrators to customize lessons.

    Also this month, Open Sesame announced the integration of its courses with Microsoft Viva’s Employee Experience Platform (EXP), powered by Microsoft 365 and utilized primarily through Microsoft Teams.

    U.S. education tech startups raised over $2.2 billion in 2020, a 30% increase from 2019.

  • The IMS Global Consortium Certifies the Open edX’s Lilac Platform

    The IMS Global Consortium Certifies the Open edX’s Lilac Platform

    IBL News | New York

    The last version of Open edX called “Lilac” has been formally certified as an LTI Advantage platform by the IMS Global Learning Consortium.

    Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) is a standard to connect extensions to educational platforms.

    The Consortium announced last month that “Open edX Platform Lilac has completed conformance testing for the IMS Standards.”

    The edX organization became a contributing member of IMS in 2020, after years of disagreement.

    The Open edX platform has long supported LTI as an extension mechanism to enable a wide range of learning experiences.

    The “Lilac” version uses the LTI consumer XBlock.

    Ned Batchelder, Open edX Architect, stated that “as an open-source platform, we believe strongly in supporting standards like LTI that enable instructional teams to choose the best tools for their needs.”

    The Open edX platform and code will remain under the ownership of MIT and Harvard through a new non-profit organization that will receive $800 million from 2U Inc.

    [Disclosure: IBL Education, the parent company of the IBL News service, uses Open edX software on its platform, and provides custom ecosystems]

    • IBL News: Deep coverage of the purchase of edX Inc. by 2U