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Mikel Amigot | IBL News, New York

edX.org announced yesterday the launch of the so-called MicroBachelors Program, intended to adult Americans who cannot afford a traditional Bachelor’s degree and cannot take the time away from work to pursue one.

These fully online programs consist of three to five courses, without admission requirements or application, and are priced between $500 and $1,500 (roughly $166 per credit).

Once learners complete the full program and pass, they will earn a MicroBachelors program credential from the university offering the program. This stackable credential can be applied toward a full bachelor’s degree.

The first two MicroBachelors are IT Career Framework, from Western Governors University (WGU), and Computer Science Fundamentals, from NYU. A third one, Professional Writing, from Arizona State University (ASU) is forthcoming.

The Information Technology Career Framework is a 6-month program with three courses, is recognized for credit by WGU and costs $1,347.

The NYU’s Computer Science Fundamentals is a 6-month program with three courses and costs $500. However, this program is pending recognition for credit by Thomas Edison State University (TESU).

In the whole MicroBachelors program, learners will be able to apply credits from one of edX’s university credit partners toward a full Bachelor’s degree.

“This is the first credit-backed stackable credential, marking a significant milestone in online learning,” Anant Agarwal, co-CEO at edX wrote in a blog post.

“These programs are a significant step towards making a key academic milestone — the Bachelor’s degree — accessible and doing so in a way that positively impacts the members of our workforce most at risk to be displaced by automation and other changes in the workplace,” he added.

In addition to WGU, NYU, ASU, TESU, edX is collaborating in its MicroBachelor program with organizations such as SunTrust Foundation (now Truist Foundation) and Walmart.org.

In this regard, the Truist Foundation announced yesterda that it has awarded a $1 million grant to edX to support the initiative.

“Our participation in the edX MicroBachelors Program Skills Advisory Council, a group bringing together the key stakeholders in this arena, is a fundamental part of creating these conversations,”  said Lynette Bell, President of the Truist Foundation.

edX plans to continue adding more MicroBachelor programs and new credit pathways that stack into full degree options with other university partners in the future.

Mikel Amigot | IBL News, Milwaukee

Esri, the Redlands, California-based company that manages the GIS mapping software, has been quietly developing a successful and free MOOC program, setting a reference in the corporate world for digital education at scale.

Esri’s MOOCs, now part of the Top 100 Free Online Courses list provided by Class Central, has attracted over 150,000 enrollments worldwide, as mentioned in an interview with IBL News. [Watch the interview below].

The most successful open course has been “Cartography”, with 80,000 learners.

So far, they have developed five MOOCs, ranging between 4-6 weeks long, and include certificates of completion, free of charge.

A sixth course, titled Spatial Data Science, is currently in the works. Esri’s passionate subject matter experts teach those online classes.

The completion rate numbers on these courses are as equally impressive, varying between 25% to 30%. “Our students must be more motivated than others,” Adena Schutzberg, MOOC Program Manager at Esri, explained.

Esri’s MOOC program was started by David DeBiase, a GIS instructor and manager within the company. His idea was based on expanding teaching while driving marketing opportunities.

In addition to MOOCs, Esri offers a hundred short classes intended to keep up with the fast-paced developments in geospatial technology. The corporation uses its own home-made LMS.

To promote active learning and engagement in courses, the MOOC instruction team nudged students toward active, independent and social learning.

“Our tough-love approach guided students to practice a skill needed for future success and provided the instruction team members with a new perspective on their roles in teaching and learning,” stated Adena Schutzberg.

She keynoted the last IEEE Learning with MOOCs conference, which took place in October 23-25 in Milwaukee, WI.

Her talk titled “Using Tough Love to Promote Active Learning” was exclusively recorded by IBL. [Watch it below]

Mikel Amigot | IBL News

“In education, AI is still a sleeping giant,” researcher Dr. Tony Bates wrote in a must-read article.

Today, one of the most extended cases of AI in teaching and learning lies in chatbots. These intelligent tutoring systems, that guide conversations or “chat” through text or voice interactions, are on the rise.

In a recent interview with IBL News, David Joyner, Associate Director of Senior Experience at the Online Master of Science Computer Science and instructor of the program, commented on the new role of Georgia Tech’s AI-agent –formerly known as Jill, and now named ATA– on how it is connecting students to other learners in the same class.  “It’s a social TA (Teacher Assistant),” he explained.

Chatbots have become a common tool for banks and large finance and marketing companies as a way to reduce costs and response times. Now, a growing number of colleges and universities use this technology.

Two examples:

• Australia’s University of Adelaide announced that students received responses 13 times faster, and learners’ approval of the quality of service increased by 60 percent, after deploying a chatbot to deal with admissions questions in 2018.

• Western Governors University, or WGU, in 2018 received a $750,000 award from the National Science Foundation to use machine learning in order to improve interactions with students and help them with the decision-making process, i.e., to find programs.

Among many others, companies like Oracle, AdmitHub, and Ivy.ai, also provide this type of solution.

As AI-based adaptive technology advances, systems will deal with several tasks, as Tony Bates reminds.

At least, they will:

• Provide teaching content to students and simultaneously provide support by giving adaptive feedback and hints to solve questions related to the content, as well as to detect students’ difficulties/errors with content or exercises.
• Curate learning materials based on students’ needs, such as providing specific recommendations regarding types of reading materials and exercises, along with personalized courses of action to aid in the students’ learning experience.
• Facilitate collaboration between learners by providing automated feedback, generating automatic questions for discussion, and an analysis of the process.

It is undeniable that there are inflated expectations for AI –a term that is often incorrectly used to describe any computational activity.

Beyond the extreme hype, there are clear areas of application. AI enables adaptive learning by recommending personalized content, predictive analytics, automated feedback and support in many conversations.

Artificial Intelligence is not a panacea for education. However, by having access to massive amounts of information and analyzing these data sets through algorithms and computational power, innovative software organizations can develop worthwhile applications.

Mikel Amigot | IBL News, New York

Pearson –the world’s largest ed company with a $6.6 billion market value– announced yesterday its CEO John Fallon, 57, will step down in 2020 after a successor is appointed. Sidney Taurel, 70, Chairman, is leading the search for the next CEO.

John Fallon’s departure comes just three months after a severe profit warning that knocked the company’s confidence in the transition into digital products, decreasing its market value by a fifth.

It will mark the end of a dramatic seven-year tenure for Fallon, whom after succeeding Marjorie Scardino in 2013 cut costs and jobs (16,000 over the past six years.) while gradually selling important assets, such as Penguin, Financial Times, and a stake in The Economist.

[In addition, Pearson said yesterday that it will sell its remaining stake in Penguin Random House to Bertelsmann for $675 million. Pearson sold a 22 percent stake back in 2017.]

Stocks in Pearson (PSON) rose yesterday 1.7 percent on the London Stock Exchange after the news of his resignation. Pearson needs to show investors that difficulties in the US business are transitory rather than structural, according to some analysts.

The value of Pearson’s stock has dropped by 57 percent since 2013. Most recently, the company warned investors that its U.S. textbook sales for 2019 would be weak. During Fallon’s time in charge, Pearson has had six profit warnings to shareholders.

“We’re now at the stage where it’s time to transition to a new leader, who can bring a fresh perspective,” Fallon said in a prepared statement.

Marjorie Scardino, who lead Pearson for 16 years, turned Pearson into a behemoth, managing more than two dozen acquisitions. Fallon’s job was to restructure the company by removing legacy parts and reorienting the company into digital learning services.

It seems that shareholders have finally lost their patience with Fallon. It’s the end of an era.

Today I shared with our colleagues that I’ve decided to retire from @pearson in 2020 and that we are selling our remaining stake in @penguinrandom. I wanted to share this news with our wider community, too. https://t.co/PVuzb0AEIt

— John Fallon (@johnfallon) December 18, 2019

Mikel Amigot, IBL News | New York

An innovative science- and tech-focused four-year Catholic university is now forming as an in-person undergraduate an online graduate college in Los Angeles County.

Dr. Jennifer Nolan, a cognitive scientist, and college instructor is launching the initiative as a 501c3 nonprofit institution. She is now assembling an administrative team and working towards becoming a degree-granting, licensed institution.

The newly formed Catholic Polytechnic (CPU) will begin with a few select online certification courses.

“We will combine a deep quest for scientific, tech, engineering and business expertise with the enduring truths of the Catholic faith,” Jennifer Nolan explained to IBL News.

“Our goal is to become recommended by the Cardinal Newman Society ‘Guide to Choosing a Catholic College’, to have all professors take the Oath of Fidelity to the Magisterium, and to abide by Ex Corde Ecclesiae.”

Sacraments, Masses, and Adoration will be hallmarks of student life.

Courses and programs in the works at CPU will revolve around Business, Sciences, Engineering, Math, and Bioethics, and may  include:

• Introduction to Computer Programming
• Server-side Web Programming
• Data Structure and Algorithms
• Computer Architecture
• Cyber Security
• Philosophy of Science
• Electromagnetism
• Electrical Engineering Applications: Sensors, embedded and IoT

“Based on the empirical science of learning and the Minerva model, course content will be delivered using novel methods of instruction, with emphasis on hands-on learning, debate, creative thinking, and writing skills,” Nolan said.

The primary goal will be job placement in business and polytechnic careers. The aim would be to place at least 95% of Catholic Polytechnic graduates in business, science or tech career-driven jobs or graduate schools.

”By training STEM innovators with knowledge of business and theology, we hope Catholic Polytechnic University will help bolster the Catholic Church and provide great careers for Catholics nationwide.”

Several donors have expressed interest in helping the school achieve its goals, the Catholic Business Journal reported.

The date of the launching has not been determined yet.

In Los Angeles County there are 4.4 million Catholics.

Mikel Amigot | New York 

Mikel Amigot | IBL News, New York

ISTE, a 40-year-old nonprofit that annually hosts one of the most influential edtech conferences, acquired EdSurge for an undisclosed amount, in a transaction expected to be finalized by the end of the year. The announcement came yesterday by surprise at the EdSurge’s Fusion conference.

Burlingame, California-based EdSurge, that provides journalism, research, job offerings, events, and other edtech services, will become a nonprofit media organization by joining ISTE. Its shareholders, including investors such as Reach Capital, GSV Capital, and TAL Education, will not receive any return on their investment, according to Richard Culatta, ISTE’s CEO since 2017.

EdSurge will keep its brand on news stories, newsletters, and research. Most of its 30 employees will be hired as staff members, although headcount reductions were announced. “Any time when you look at combining teams and roles, there’s always the chance that there are redundancies,” Culatta said.

“Core to this acquisition, however, is maintaining EdSurge’s journalistic independence,” Betsy Corcoran, CEO at EdSurge, said in an email to readers. “What this arrangement gives us is an opportunity to focus on the work—not just focus on paying the bills, not just focus on survivability,” she added.

Founded in 2011 as a venture-backed, for-profit news organization, EdSurge raised more than $8 million from a mix of investors and received millions of dollars in grants from nonprofits and foundations, such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, NewSchools Venture Fund, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

With a revenue stream of over $16 million, staff of 60 employees and 25,000 membership educators, the Arlington, Virginia-based ISTE, publishes books and research journals. However, two-thirds of the income came from the annual conference.

In 2017, its CEO started talks about buying a news-media outlet. He ended up buying EdSurge, although he didn’t write “a big check”, he said. Betsy Corcoran confirmed that the acquisition did not come with a huge price tag.

Jeffrey R. Young, senior editor at EdSurge, and Stephen Noonoo, K-12 editor in the news site, posted a detailed story about the antecedents of the transaction yesterday.

• Betsy Corcoran’s reflections on the future

Mikel Amigot | IBL News, New York

Yesterday, Sachem Head set its sight on 2U Inc., pushing the company to explore a sale. As a result of it, the stock registered its biggest gain since 2016, almost 14% to $21.18.

With a market value of about $1.3 billion, 2U saw its shares fall more than 70% over the past 12 months and faced numerous class-action lawsuits for allegedly false or misleading statements during the second quarter. The stock dropped 65% on July 31st after a controversial earnings call wherein its CEO and former CFO drastically tempered short-term growth plans.

The New York-based activist hedge fund has been building a position in OPM 2U (Nasdaq: TWOU), apparently becoming one of the top shareholders, and now saying it’s time to sell. The exact size of its stake is unclear.

Sachem Head Capital Management LP, founded by Scott Ferguson in 2012, believes that 2U would be an attractive takeover target for private equity firms and other education technology companies, sources told Bloomberg.

Sachem Head’s positions and views tend to move the stock market. For example, the influential fund, that invests $3.2 billion on behalf of clients, recently called on Whitbread PLC to sell its Costa Coffee business before it was spun off to Coca-Cola Co. It also pushed Eagle Materials Inc to split its core businesses, before the company’s board agreed to spin off its heavy and light materials businesses into two publicly traded entities.

Last week, Sachem Head announced that it wanted Instructure Inc –whose main product is the leading Canvas LMS platform– to pursue a full sale process, as IBL News reported quoting Reuters.

Instructure (NYSE: INST), with a similar market cap to 2U, was the second education company that Sachem Head targeted, although that move was not apparently related.

2U has been making some changes in management lately in an attempt to calm down investors and arrive in better shape to the crucial earnings call on November 12th. Last month it appointed a new CFO –Paul Lalljie, a former Neustar Inc executive– and new CMO –Jennifer Ogden-Reese, a former SeatGeek Inc. executive.

•  Past reports about 2U at IBL News