Author: IBL News

IBL News | New York

Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle joined forces with Brian Chesky, founder and CEO of Airbnb, to establish a $100 million college scholarship fund called the Voyager Scholarship, the Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service.

Set with a $100 million personal contribution from Brian Chesky to the Obama Foundation, the fund will support college students pursuing careers in public service.

“This scholarship gives college students financial aid to alleviate the burden of college debt, meaningful travel experiences to expand their horizons, and a network of mentors and leaders to support them,” explained the Obama Foundation.

The deadline to apply is this upcoming June 14, 2022, as explained on the official website.

The scholarship will support 100 students in the first year and grow to assist more students committed to developing careers in public service. It will be a two-year program intended for students in their junior and senior years of college in the U.S.

Students will be invited to an annual summit that will help to define their public service journey. At the summit this fall, they will meet with President Obama and Brian Chesky to talk about the role of empathy and understanding in leadership.

After graduation, they will join the Obama Foundation’s global community, giving them access to the Foundation’s resources and programming.

“We need a generation of leaders who are willing to cooperate and build bridges, but it’s hard to build a bridge if you haven’t seen the other side of the river,” said Chesky in an announcement video [below].

IBL News | New York

Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) will launch a four-week residential, immersive program that will bring together entrepreneurs, business leaders, VC investors, and preeminent faculty this summer.

The program, called Stanford dy/dx, will equip 25 high-growth start-up teams with the knowledge and capabilities to rapidly grow and scale as they continue their entrepreneurship journey.

“This program gives participants access to the world-class education that Stanford GSB offers,” said Jonathan Levin, the Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Garth Saloner, dy/dx faculty co-director and the Botha-Chan Professor of Economics, mentioned that the VCs “that shaped the programs, ideas, and content, and identified participating companies” will be Accel, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sequoia Capital.

Anne Beyer, dy/dx faculty co-director and the Staehelin Family Professor of Accounting, added: “We hope that the relationships participants build through this program will allow them to support each other during their time here and beyond.”

In a shared statement from Accel, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sequoia Capital, the dy/dx venture allies expressed: “dy/dx will push entrepreneurs to develop the business acumen needed to thrive in an increasingly complex and competitive landscape.”

IBL News | New York

Unable to beat AWS or the next two cloud providers (Azure and Google Cloud), IBM has joined AWS by signing a multi-year collaboration agreement. IBM will make a variety of its software available as a service on AWS Marketplace.

The deal includes joint investments to make it easier for companies to consume IBM’s offerings and integrate them with AWS. There will be integrated go-to-market, developer training, and software development programs for vertical markets, such as travel, oil, and gas.

The IBM offerings on AWS will cover technologies such as AI, security, and sustainability. The products are built on Red Hat OpenShift Service and cloud-native apps on AWS.

Other services currently available on AWS Marketplace include IBM API Connect, Db2, IBM Maximo Application Suite, IBM Security ReaQta and Security Trusteer, Security Verify, and Watson Orchestrate.

With Arvind Krishna as CEO at IBM, the big blue has set partnerships with both long-time business partners and competitors alike, such as Salesforce, SAP, and Microsoft Azure.

The company also made open source more integral to its software strategy, evidenced by the $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat.

Also, IBM has doubled down on its commitment to hybrid clouds, while AWS and Microsoft have battled for leadership in the public cloud market.

At the end of 2021, AWS controlled 33% of the cloud infrastructure services market, with Azure owning 22% and Google Cloud with 9%. IBM — the owner of Softlayer — is fifth behind Alibaba in the low single digits, according to market researcher Statistica.

According to experts, IBM has failed to distinguish what its value is compared to competitors, especially when targeting data scientists and developers.

IBL News | New York

IMS Global Learning Consortium announced its new name and logo this week: 1EdTech Consortium. The certification logo will change as well as becoming 1EdTech Certified.

This Lake Mary, Florida-based, 20 years-old nonprofit organization provides open standards, such as LTI, assessment, data, and digital credentials for shaping open EdTech ecosystems. It includes 740 member organizations, including K-12 school districts, state departments of education, higher ed institutions, government-led initiatives, and EdTech providers.

According to a news announcement, the rebranding “is meant to reflect a collaboration united in enabling an open, innovative and trusted tech ecosystem across K-12, higher education and corporate learning, that lifts the potential in every learner.”

Rob Abel, CEO of 1EdTech, said that “our new, refreshed, and modernized logo is part of this change.”

He added: “We work collaboratively on the common foundations for an open, innovative, and trusted educational technology ecosystem bolstered by what amounts to an unparalleled joint investment in technical work that lifts the entire sector.”

Updating the branding and logo won’t be immediate. Website, social media channels, and meetings and events will reflect the transition along the way.

However, the IMS logo won’t go away. “The brand will remain associated with our standards for many years to come (also, we have no intention of republishing hundreds of thousands of pages of technical work),” said the organization.

The new website address is 1edtech.org, but imsglobal.org will remain active until the move of resources to our new site takes effect.

IBL News | New York

The share of people working remotely from home for pay due to the COVID pandemic dipped below 10% for the first time in more than two years, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released this month.

The exact figure was 7.7%. The pandemic high was 35% in May 2020.

People with a bachelor’s degree were five times more working from home than those without.

Asians were the most of any demographic to report working from home due to the pandemic, with nearly 20% working remotely. Less than five percent of Latinos answered the same.

More women than men report working remotely for pandemic reasons, though the difference between the two groups has narrowed from 10 percentage points in May 2020 to 1 percentage point.

Among age groups, those 25 to 34 years old were the most likely to work remotely.

IBL News | New York

AI-powered plagiarism detection is gaining momentum.

Utilizing natural language processing (NLP) technology boosted by machine learning algorithms looks like a smart approach, rather than using the traditional word-for-word match approach to detect plagiarism is what new companies such as Stamford, Connecticut-based Copyleaks are doing.

This week, this company announced that it raised $6 million in Series A funding. The financing was led by the Israeli venture capital firm JAL Venture.

Copyleaks said that it will use the capital raised “to expand its presence across industries, safeguard its intellectual property, and continue to provide cutting-edge AI solutions,” according to a press release. “Copyleaks’ main differentiator will be distinguishing plagiarism across languages, such as from English to Spanish, and scanning for a writer’s stylistic voice.”

Currently, the firm works for organizations such as Oakland University, SEMrush, and UNICEF. Education.

“Our use of artificial intelligence allows for a very comprehensive text originality analysis, copyright infringement detection, and AI grading,” said the company.

IBL News | New York

A district school in San Antonio, Texas–area will allow qualified teachers and staff members to carry a concealed firearm on campus.

This is part of the so-called “Guardian Program” unanimously approved by the Board of Trustees this month.

The school is La Vernia High School, a small district 25 miles east of San Antonio.

To become a guardian, teachers and staff members would need to already have a license to carry and complete 20 hours at a firing range and 20 hours of classroom training.

In addition, they would need to pass annual psychological exams and take random drug tests.

Aside from this Guardian Program, Texas schools can also have one school marshal who can carry a firearm.

IBL News | New York

The Boston University’s Questrom School of Business Online MBA on edX.org, once considered the “biggest experiment” ever run in the institution’s history, was presented as a huge success this month.

The first graduates [three of them in the picture above], who will get their degrees tomorrow, on May 22, 2022, say that the program has changed their lives.

A total of 308 students are on track to graduate this May. At least one-third of them are expected to pick up their degrees in person. The graduates’ average age is 39, they hail from 43 nations, and a third of them are women.

This Online MBA took nine-month gestation before its launch in the fall of 2020. The full cost of the degree was $24,000, a quarter of the typical in-person program price tag.

Now, the Dean of the school says that “the experiment has exceeded our expectations on all fronts.”

IBL News | New York

Class Technologies Inc., which manages class.com, announced yesterday the acquisition of Blackboard’s Collaborate virtual classroom tool, owned by Anthology and used by 1,750 educational organizations.

In addition, Class Technologies Inc. said, without providing further details, that “it will become the preferred virtual meeting technology partner to Blackboard.”

The acquisition is expected to close in Q2 of 2022. The amount paid for Blackboard Collaborate was $210 million, disclosed Techcrunch in a story endorsed by Class by retweeting it on its official account.

Blackboard Collaborate became part of the Anthology product suite following the company’s purchase of Blackboard last year. Class.com was created by Michael Chasen, co-founder of Blackboard, in 1997. The start-up soon reached a whopping valuation of a unicorn after raising substantial funding from private equity VCs.

After closing, Blackboard Collaborate will be renamed Class Collaborate, and 50+ employees that work on this tool will join Class.com.

The two companies said in a press release that “they will also partner to build a tight integration between Blackboard Learn and Class to promote student success.” 

IBL News | New York

2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), the parent company of edX, announced yesterday the creation of two university advisory councils to help further the company’s mission and business strategy.

The University Leadership Council (ULC) includes presidents, provosts, and chancellors from 230 nonprofit colleges and universities. This council is a reconstitution of the former edX Advisory Board.

Their members include:

• Cynthia Barnhart, Provost, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Malte Brettel, Vice Rector, RWTH Aachen University
• Chris Clemens, Provost, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Reginald DesRoches, Provost and President-Elect, Rice University
• Wayne A.I. Frederick, President, Howard University
• Alan Garber, Provost, Harvard University
• Ellen Granberg, Provost, Rochester Institute of Technology
• Benjamin E. Hermalin, Provost-Elect, University of California, Berkeley
• Jean Morrison, Provost, Boston University
• Rob Mudde, Vice-Rector Magnificus/Vice President Education, Delft University of Technology
• Mamokgethi Phakeng, Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town
• Jennie Shaw, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), The University of Adelaide
• Deborah Terry AO, Vice-Chancellor and President, The University of Queensland
• Bin Yang, Provost, Tsinghua University
• Charles Zukoski, Provost, University of Southern California

The University Partner Advisory Council (UPAC) is comprised of academic leaders, digital transformation, and education strategy managers from across the combined 2U and edX partner network.