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IBL News | New York

Google announced the introduction of its new Google Analytics with machine learning at its core, which is privacy-centric by design. They are built on the foundation of the App + Web property presented last year.

The goal of the giant searching company is “to help users to get better ROI and improve their marketing decisions.” It follows what a survey from Forrester Consulting points out that improving the use of analytics is a top priority for marketers.

The machine learning models include will allow the ability to alert on trends in data, like products seeing rising demand, and help to anticipate future actions from customers. “For example, it calculates churn probability so you can more efficiently invest in retaining customers at a time when marketing budgets are under pressure,” says in a blog-post Vidhya Srinivasan, Vice President, Measurement, Analytics, and Buying Platforms at Google.

It also adds new predictive metrics indicating the potential revenue that can be earned from a particular group of customers. “This allows you to create audiences to reach higher-value customers and run analyses to better understand why some customers are likely to spend more than others, so you can take action to improve your results,” wrote Vidhya Srinivasan.

The new Google Analytics provides customer-centric measurement, including conversion from YouTube video views, Google and non-Google paid channels, search, social, and email. The setup works with or without cookies or identifiers.

They come by default for new web properties. In order to replace the existing setup, Google encourages to create a new Google Analytics 4 property (previously called an App + Web property). Enterprise marketers are currently using a beta version with an Analytics 360 version with SLAs and advanced integrations with tools like BigQuery.

IBL News | New York

IBM (International Business Machines) announced yesterday it will split into two public companies, in a bid to focus more on higher-margin businesses like cloud computing and AI. Currently, AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft dominate the market for cloud services.

The 109-year old company shifted into the cloud with the acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion in July 2019.

IBM –which currently has more than 352,000 workers – said it expects the separation to cost $5 billion.

The tech giant will list its legacy IT infrastructure services unit as a separate entity named NewCo by the end of 2021. Software sales and demand for mainframe servers have been in decline in recent years.

NewCo will have 90,000 employees and $19 billion in annual revenue. It will serve 75% of Fortune 100 companies when it makes its share market debut, according to IBM.

The market received well IBM’s announcement, and investors praised the move by CEO Arvind Krishna [in the picture], with shares closing nearly 6% higher.

“We divested networking back in the 1990s, we divested PCs back in the 2000s, we divested semiconductors about five years ago because all of them didn’t necessarily play into the integrated value proposition,” Arvind Krishna – who took over as CEO in April –wrote in a blog post. “To drive growth, our strategy must be rooted in the reality of the world we live in and the future our clients strive to build. Today, hybrid cloud and AI are swiftly becoming the locus of commerce, transactions, and over time, of computing itself.”

IBL News | New York

Course-creation platform Thinkfic announced that it raised $22 million in new funding led by Rhino Ventures, which was already an investor. Previously, the Canadian startup raised $3 million.

Vancouver–based Thinkific claims that over 50,000 users have earned over $650 million by building and selling online courses through its platform. The startup company also reported a 200% increase in people making courses since March.

“We have been profitable for many years [since 2018], but we chose to raise this additional funding to accelerate innovation, and scale our team,” wrote Greg Smith, CEO & Co-Founder at Thinkific in a blog-post. The plan is to grow from a current team of 180 employees to 500 people within a year or so. “We want to help one million knowledge entrepreneurs grow successful businesses in 5 or 10 years.”

The company – which competes with Udemy, Teachable, and Skillshare, among others – highlights “stories like those of John Michaloudis, who was able to grow an Excel course to $20,000/month in just 6 months, or Tim Vipond, co-founder and CEO of Corporate Finance Institute (CFI), who’s been able to train 600,000 financial advisors.”

“Our users want control over their brand, own customer relationship, and build their own sustainable businesses,” explained Greg Smith. The firm doesn’t take a cut of the revenue from creators nor charges transaction fees, contrary to its competitors.

“Thinkific’s business model, user numbers, and ~ 150% year-over-year revenue growth tracks, by stage, very closely to Shopify which is now Canada’s most valuable public company,” stated Rhino Managing Partner, Fraser Hall.

The company was built out of a need for Greg Smith when he wanted to offer an LSAT class online as an instructor. Along with three more co-founders [in the picture below], he created Thinkific to enable entrepreneurs to build and commercialize courses of their own.

IBL News | New York

The education of over 90% of the world’s enrolled student population–nearly 1.6 billion learners–continues to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teachers have worked individually and collectively to find solutions and create new learning environments. For six months now, teachers around the world have been finding creative approaches to face school closures, adapting, and improvising to keep their students learning.

There are many inspiring stories on how teachers kept doing their job throughout the crisis. They remind us that teachers are a vital lifeline for their students.

Some teachers traveled for hours each day to establish small learning groups around a laptop, others walked door to door to distribute thousands of much-needed school meals during the lockdown, yet others delivered their classes from the back of a truck.

Mikel Amigot, IBL News | New York

ClassEDU Inc, a startup company led by Blackboard co-founder and former CEO Michael Chasen, plans to launch at the end of October a powerful LMS interface for Zoom, which will be adding in live assessments, an attendance tracker, a proctoring tool, and a gradebook, along with other capabilities and features. [See below the video showing the platform]

Washington DC-based, Class for Zoom announced this week that it closed $16 million in seed financing. Early prominent investors in Zoom, along with Deborah Quazzo, Partner at GSV Ventures, and other edtech venture capitalists participated in the funding.

“Teachers using Zoom today need frictionless tools to take attendance, hand out assignments, give quizzes, grade items, or even talk with students one-on-one,” said Michael Chasen. “We designed Class for Zoom to feel and work like an in-person classroom.”

Zoom web conferencing is currently used by over 100,000 K-12 schools and colleges across 25 countries, becoming de facto a learning platform. ClassforZoom.com took advantage of the Zoom phenomenon and built on top of this platform, attracting plenty of capital. For its initiative, it used the software development kit that Zoom makes available to third-party developers.

Due to COVID, students and teachers needed a better tool than Zoom to complete their daily learning tasks.

“Class for Zoom fills a major pedagogical gap at a critical time, by making the virtual classroom feel and operate more like the traditional classroom,” said Lev Gonick, Chief Information Officer at Arizona State University and board member of ClassEDU.

The app, designed for small virtual or hybrid classrooms, is still in development. The price of the product hasn’t been announced yet, although Michael Chasen disclosed that it will be sold to schools as an annual subscription.

Another startup built expressly atop of Zoom is Grain.co, which lets users take notes and share clips from video calls on other media platforms. It attracted $4 million in April 2020.

IBL News | New York

The most comprehensive plans to limit the COVID-19 virus’ spread can break down when students party on.

The New York Times yesterday narrated the case of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where over 40,000 students take tests twice a week, cannot enter campus building unless an app vouches that they test negative, and everyone wears a mask.

University scientists developed a quick, inexpensive saliva test, and other researchers put together a detailed computer simulation, modeling the movements of everyone on campus–including some little partying of students.

However, enough students continued to go to parties even after testing positive, dismissing commands from public health officials. Common sense was absent. Partying after receiving a positive test result wasn’t on anyone’s expectation.

Some fraternities and sororities, as well as some off-campus housing, throw large parties and gatherings ignoring containment plans.

Some of the infected students even tried to circumvent the app so they could enter buildings instead of staying isolated in their rooms, university administrators said in a letter to students.

Last week, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported an uprising in cases and imposed a lockdown. Students had to stay in their off-campus dorms.

IBL News | New York

Today, creating memorable and effective user experiences adjusted to the target audience determines ultimately the success or failure of any web enterprise.

Consumers have millions of products to choose from. What separates the excellent from the mediocre comes down from the user experience.

The UX (user experience) design process starts by understanding the psychology of the user. It needs to effectively address the user’s desire to find the information quickly and convince him or her to come back.

The UI (user interface) layout should be designed to engage the audience, identifying the type of actions the user will take, whether it’s requesting more information, signing up for a service, or purchasing a product.

That’s when visuals, blocks of content, intuitive navigation, logical structure, call to action buttons, and other interactions will all come together.

UX and UI designers will start by keeping sight of businesses’ branding, marketing goals, and corporate strategy. They then put themselves in the user’s shoes, anticipating their motivators and turn-offs. Instead of making assumptions, by conducting user testing, surveys, and research on how people interact, it removes the guesswork and provides a starting point.

Consider also that consumer habits change. A website that left people satisfied two years ago, may now be less effective. It’s interesting to check the latest trends in web design.

Tools like FlowMapp, Stormboard, and Whimsical can help construct user flows, determining how a design needs to be structured to later building a wireframe and prototype. Lastly, usability testing is the final step before the project goes live.

The golden rule on UX, UI, and usability processes, is to keep users at the center.

• Resource: UX design process: a simple (but complete) guide

#UX research is instrumental in creating products that people use and love. Here are the 5 best practices to get the most out of your #UserResearch – https://t.co/AiJJvZEP2m.

— Udacity (@udacity) August 19, 2020

IBL News | New York

President Trump urged universities to continue reopening their campuses, even as some institutions have reported clusters of COVID-19 outbreaks and hundreds of new cases.

“We have learned one thing, there’s nothing like campus there’s nothing like being with a teacher as opposed to being on a computer board,” Trump said during a White House press briefing yesterday. “The iPads are wonderful but you’re not going to learn the same way as being there.”

President Donald Trump blasted universities that have canceled in-person classes, arguing that the virus is akin to the seasonal flu for college students–despite the commonly shared view of health experts that the novel coronavirus is deadlier than the flu and more easily transmitted.

“For older people and individuals with underlying conditions, the China virus is very dangerous, but for university students, the likelihood of severe illness is less than or equal to the risk of the seasonal flu.”

Currently, universities are rethinking opening plans after a spike in infections in the last week as students returned to campus. The pressure is mounting to close campuses. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill decided on Monday to suspend in-person classes for the fall. Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and The University of Pittsburgh also pivoted to online-only classes for undergraduates before they arrive on campus.

The COVID-19 virus is already spreading through colleges mostly because of off-campus parties, and daily life in sororities and fraternities. A recent example was known yesterday. Last weekend at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa, bars and sidewalks were crowded with sorority members and other students reveling in their return-to-school rituals, sparking the fury of university officials.

Also, yesterday, The New York Times linked at least 251 cases of the virus to fraternities and sororities across the country, including in Washington, North Carolina, Berkeley, Calif., and Oxford, Miss.

IBL News | New York

Experts predicted yesterday that many colleges will follow the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s decision to backtrack plans to reopen its campus for in-person learning and shift to remote learning amid a surge of COVID-19 cases among students.

For now, two major research universities have announced to reverse plans to resume in-person instruction, although at a smaller scale than UNC. The University of Notre Dame decided yesterday to suspend in-person classes for almost 12,000 students, moving undergraduate classes online for two weeks while keeping students on campus. Michigan State asked undergraduates who had planned to live in residence halls to stay home.

Crowded, mask-free parties at Oklahoma State University, Notre Dame, Iowa State, Villanova, and other colleges took place over the weekend. The lack of social distancing, along with dorm contact environments, are predictable scenarios for the spread of the pandemic–epidemiologists claim.

UNC-Chapel Hill decided to move all undergraduate classes online starting today Wednesday, while it offered students the opportunity to cancel residence hall requests with no penalty.

The announcement on Monday followed reports of four Coronavirus clusters over three days in dorms, apartments, and a fraternity house. As a result, 130 students tested positive.

As of Monday morning, 954 students were tested, 177 students were put in isolation and another 349 in quarantine.

After consultation with state and local health officials, #UNC’s infectious disease experts and the @UNC_System, Carolina is making two changes to de-densify campus. First: On Wednesday, Aug. 19, all undergraduate instruction will shift to remote learning https://t.co/BaKlNB6jEr

— UNC-Chapel Hill (@UNC) August 17, 2020

This week, UNC’s infectious disease experts are making changes to de-densify campus.

“As much as we believe we have worked diligently to help create a healthy and safe campus living and learning environment, we believe the current data presents an untenable situation,” UNC-Chapel Hill’s Chancellor, Kevin M. Guskiewicz, and Provost, Robert A. Blouin, wrote in a statement.

In April, the interim president of the UNC announced that he wanted all campuses to re-open in the fall. In August, the UNC Board of Governors announced their mandate for campuses to reopen. Last week they all got their way, with the dorms at UNC re-opening at full capacity, despite faculty and staff workers’ protests.

Yesterday, the editorial board for the Daily Tar Heel, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s student newspaper, called out university leadership after the outbreak.

“Everybody told the university not to reopen, and it was only a matter of time,” said Nikhil Rao, a student government senior adviser who has participated in online meetings with provost Bob Blouin every month since April along with other student leaders. “I would be shocked if I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

Meanwhile, university officials are blaming off-campus parties and activities for the surge in COVID-19 cases.