Posts tagged education
John's Tumblr: We can do better than lecture videos
What I meant to say about this article about online education: MOOCs are a breakthrough in distribution of educational content, but not really a breakthrough in the way that we learn. What this article points out is that there are more important developments in the way we teach and learn…
Fully agree.
Meet the man behind Europe’s hottest VC firm - GigaOm presents a good interview with Neil Rimer, Index Ventures
Neil Rimer doesn’t get a lot of publicity. Compared to some of his more high profile colleagues at Index Ventures, the cerebral investor tends to stay under the radar.
This is despite the fact that he’s one of the driving forces behind what must be Europe’s leading venture capital firm, certainly as far as the web is concerned. As one of the founders of Index back in 1996, he is intimately responsible for a business that has scored major coups with companies like Skype, MySQL, ASOS, Betfair and more.
So what is he interested in right now? What trends is he watching closely?
I caught up with him to find out where he plans to invest — and hear about the smart money in big data, the problem with Europe’s clone culture — and find out about the investments he wishes he’d made.
Index has invested heavily in online fashion in the last few years — most recently with money put intoNasty Gal. What is it that attracts you there?
The thing is that we’re big in marketplaces. We didn’t wake up and say “let’s do fashion because it’s sexy” — it just happens to be an amazing category for e-commerce. The things I’m really interested in are marketplaces, and the notion of using social networks to do much more valuable things.
I mean it’s valuable to connect people and keep in touch, but that’s just getting to know each other. So we’re in a company called Funding Circle, which isn’t that well known but is really transforming the way businesses finance themselves by connecting them directly with investors in the U.K.
I think that’s a very powerful application of a marketplace, and that’s just business finance. There are lots of other financial products we buy, like insurance, that I think could be transformed by these kinds of things. So marketplaces is still something I’m going to put a lot of money into.
Another hot marketplace you’re involved in is travel. You’re an investor in Housetrip, which istargeting the European hotel market in an Airbnb-style way. Meanwhile another European Airbnb competitor, the Rocket Internet-backed Wimdu, is doing well. How do you see this panning out?
Housetrip are leading in Europe and they want to own that space. But they’re focused on family travel, holiday rentals, and that’s different to Airbnb.
All these other guys saw Airbnb and just copied it. I mean that’s clearly what Rocket does — and I don’t think you get the best people by doing that. Eventually your own people clone you. But Airbnb is a different thing from Housetrip, it’s typically more social, you’re staying with someone, usually while they’re there. They also have whole places, but that’s not really in their DNA.
But even if you believe the market is different enough today, the reality is that Airbnb will need to expand — especially if they go public, which is clearly where their investors are pushing them.
Yeah, they want to be in this market too. There are very few markets where it’s one player takes all, and we look at it from a DNA standpoint — where are they coming from and what’s their guiding vision? They’re very different, and I believe that Airbnb is more in the eBay of resources: eBay for houses, eBay for cars, eBay for boats — rent everything. Housetrip is more like the Conrad Hilton of the 21st century.
You don’t get that when you’re defining yourself by those guys in a different market and saying “they’ll come and buy us one day.”
You’ve started investing pretty heavily in big data companies, too. What drives you there? Do you think there are payoffs we can’t see yet?
I think we are trying to be very pragmatic about all this.
Let me give you a counter-example: our foray into clean tech — which was really not a foray, since we entered the forest, took a look around and said it wasn’t for us. We are not ever keen to invest in an area because think it will be a good idea at some point in the future, but we don’t know how. So when we invest in big data, it’sKaggle, it’s Factual, and it’s Alertme: businesses where we can actually see and touch the way they are acquiring the data and turning it into something valuable that they can sell and scale. We’re not doing a lot of speculative stuff in big data.
What about those who criticize big data, and are concerned that it can deliver lots of information, but not really produce useful insights?
I was surprised to hear that there are a lot of skeptics of big data. I don’t know how you can be skeptical of it: more data is better than less data, and more ways of extracting insight from that data is better than fewer.
So: you’re excited by marketplaces and big data. What other trends do you think will become more important over the next few years?
The other one is education and knowledge, which where we’re just getting started in. I led an investment inStack Exchange, and I really love that company… they’ve kind of cracked the best way to aggregate and curate knowledge about a wide array of topics. Everyone knows Stack Overflow, but few people know aboutphoto.stackexchange.com or gardening or DIY, but they’re very good sites and they’re infinitely better than the crap Google used to point you to.
We can do a lot with that, and they pay nothing for that content, and they pay nothing for their traffic.
We’re going to look a lot more around education — the technology just enables this stuff. Teaching stuff online, this stuff wasn’t usable for a long time. Like video conferencing 10 years ago wasn’t usable, but today I’m avoiding travel because of it.
You’re not alone in thinking that — but doesn’t change in education take a long time? It can take a couple of years, five years, 10 years — even a generation — for the impact to really shake out.
It depends. All the vocational stuff, where you’re trying to learn a skill or achieve a level of proficiency in a language, or coding, or in English — we know in China what a big deal learning English can be, and what a difference that makes for someone in terms of their earning power. That’s measurable.
People make these decisions over a long period of time, but I think there’s less stickyness that we think — a lot of these things have been institutionalized, but people aren’t happy with them. There are a lot of degrees you can get in the U.S. that are worthless, but they are companies that make a lot of money.
The technology and these platforms for exchanging knowledge and helping people get to a different place in their life, I think that’s going to be a big area for us.
So what’s the company you wish you’d invested in right now?
Kickstarter, honestly. I think Kickstarter is a profound, profound company. The execution’s obviously great, and we’re just at the beginning. Most people don’t even know it exists yet.
We didn’t see it, so it’s not like I’m kicking myself for making the wrong call… but I think that’s a very, very important company — not just in what it’s doing, but in the theme it’s unlocking. It changes the social dynamic, and it shows also how much pent up goodwill there is among people to fund stuff with no financial return. Imagine what they’d be willing to do, by the way, for financial return.
Photographs used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Lift Conference
Make your case to your school’s IT/administration for YouTube with this video. Now your school can unlock and grant you access to content on YouTubeEDU.
YouTube for Schools lets schools access free educational YouTube videos while limiting access to other YouTube content. Students can learn from more than 400,000 educational videos, from well-known organizations like Stanford, PBS and TED, and from up-and-coming YouTube partners with millions of views, like Khan Academy, Steve Spangler Science and numberphile. Schools can also customize their YouTube for Schools experience, adding videos that are only viewable within their school network.
National Competition Selects 12 Libraries and Museums to Build Innovative Learning Labs for Teens
(Washington, DC) —Today, the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the first 12 winners of a national competition to build 21st Century learning labs in museums and libraries around the country. The winners—four museums and eight libraries—will receive a total of $1.2 million in grants to plan and design the labs. Inspired by YOUMedia, a new teen space at the Chicago Public Library, and innovations in science and technology centers, these labs will help young people move beyond consuming content to making and creating it.
“This competition was announced in answer to President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign, a nationwide effort to bring American students to the forefront in science and math, to provide the workers of tomorrow with the skills they need today,” said Susan Hildreth, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. “Libraries and museums are part of re-envisioning learning in the 21st century; they are trusted community institutions where teens can follow their passions and imagine exciting futures.”
“Digital media are profoundly influencing young people’s lives, their behavior, their civic participation, and where and how they learn,” said Robert Gallucci, President of the MacArthur Foundation. “These innovative new teen labs are designed to provide young people with engaging and diverse opportunities for learning and exploration beyond the classroom. The nation’s libraries and museums play an important role in leveling the playing field by providing greater access to learning experiences that equip our young people with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st Century.”
Locations for the 12 new learning labs include: San Francisco, CA; Thornton, CO; Columbia, MD; St. Paul, MN; Kansas City, MO; New York, NY; Columbus, OH; Portland, OR; Allentown, PA; Philadelphia, PA; Nashville, TN; and Houston, TX.
The learning labs will be based on new research about how young people learn today. Teens will use both digital and traditional media that promote creativity, critical thinking, and hands-on learning. The labs will connect teens to mentors and peers, as well as anytime, anywhere access to information through online social networks so that they can pursue their interests more deeply. The winning institutions will match the funds from the competition and partner with local educational, cultural, and civic organizations to build a network of learning opportunities for young people.
IMLS and MacArthur selected the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) and the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) to manage the competition. They will ensure the new lab locations use best practice principles, based on research and evidence in the field of youth digital learning, to help young people gain 21st century skills and an effective STEM education.
The 12 recipients of this round of grants were selected out of a pool of 98 applicants from 32 states. Applications were evaluated by professionals with relevant expertise in digital media and learning and museum and library management. Winners will participate—in-person and online—in a community of practice that will provide technical assistance, networking, and cross-project learning. Application materials for a second round of grants will be available in spring 2012. More information is available at www.imls.gov.
The pleasure of working as a scientist is having another series of methods to see how the world around us works. That’s how people should be taught science as young children: a way to approach the world. It’s so much fun that people would use it their whole lives whether or not they go into science.
'Hangout Academy' Brings Learning to Google+
Launch reports that a team of six developers who have never met in person—they met through Hangouts—are developing the Hangout Academy, which is designed to “connect people in search of knowledge with experienced professionals and hobbyists willing to share it.” The platform launches October 9.
How Will Colleges Innovate as the Market Is Disrupted?
The following article by Jeffrey Selingo appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education on July 11, 2011 (source: http://bit.ly/mUWYQK)
Remember cellphones in the early 1990s? They were either installed in a car or you had to carry a bulky bag around with you—that is, if you could get decent signal. Few then thought they would become the ubiquitous devices they are today.
Cellphones were a “disruptive innovation.” That’s the process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors. The term was coined by Clay Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School.
Christensen has written plenty of books about the phenomenon. And later this month he is coming out with a book co-written with Henry J. Eyring about how it might impact higher education (The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education From the Inside Out).
Last week, I was invited to a daylong session led by Christensen at Harvard Business School to talk about innovation in higher education. The invite-only group was made up of about 40 “disruptors” in academe, officials from Western Governors University, BYU-Idaho, P2P University, University of Phoenix, Straighterline, Babson University, the University of Southern New Hampshire, the Gates Foundation, DeVry, the Center for American Progress, and McKinsey, among others.
I agreed to attend the discussion on background, but I’m able to share my overall impressions or quote from some individuals where I got their permission or talked to them separately.
The ideas we talked about last week might seem toxic to many in traditional academe. But if current economic trends continue, much of traditional academe is going to be forced to change. Families can no longer use their house as an ATM. States are making tough choices about the size of government, and public colleges are often left at the end of the line. And now the federal government is likely to cut back on many of its fiscal promises to deal with an out-of-control deficit.
The bottom line is that we’re likely to face a future where students and their families pay a lot more of the cost of a college education out of pocket. Without grants and loans as a safety net, students are probably going to make different choices than they do now (read: less expensive choices). We’re likely headed toward a future where smaller, struggling colleges need to move to new models of doing business, while elite, wealthy colleges continue to support the current model.
What are some of the attributes of those new models, according to those already at the forefront of innovation in higher education?
Disaggregated universities. Christensen pointed out that in the early days of the personal computer, the entire machine was proprietary. Everyone sold their own version. Then IBM realized they could build a better and cheaper machine by getting the parts from others. So now, for the most part, a Dell machine, an IBM machine, etc., all have similar parts made by the same manufacturer. What happens if the same thing happens in academe—where courses, in particular, are disaggregated from the institution? An institution that is able to create a workable business model to offer its courses to others could become the Intel of higher education.
A “modular-based” university. There was a lot of discussion about how universities still personalize the academic experience for students. New majors are created. New concentrations are created. All require more faculty, more infrastructure, etc. Christensen used the example of an automobile axle manufacturer in Michigan, which had 28 different manufacturing pathways for the 28 different axles it produced. It was found that each time the plant doubled the number of pathways, its overhead costs increased by 30%. That plant went out of business. Meanwhile, a similar plant in Indiana had two pathways. It went to the automobile manufacturers and said, If you can make a product that goes through this process, we can give you a higher-quality product at a lower cost. Recently, when Christensen showed the slide of the 28 different pathways at the first plant to a group of hospital executives, their first reaction was: This is a general hospital, where 80 to 90 percent of the cost is overhead. My reaction to the slide was the similar: This is a university. Christensen pointed out that Western Governors University only offers four degrees and hasn’t raised tuition in five years. He asked, What if traditional colleges offered only a few “gateway” majors, and then used technology to personalize and individualize teaching on specific subjects?
The high “cost” of first-year courses. Most colleges make a high profit margin on entry-level courses, which of course go to support other parts of the college, some of which students who fail out of these early courses will never utilize. The cost of failure is also high for these students since many of them are already fully enrolled and on the hook for student loans. The key is for colleges to reduce the risk for students early in their college careers. Enter players like Straighterline, which offers entry-level college courses for $99 a month or an entire freshman year for $999. They have two dozen partner colleges that agree to accept the courses as transfer credits, but many institutions don’t want to accept the credits because of opposition from faculty or because they’re worried about losing the cross-subsidy from these entry-level courses.
Inefficiencies all around. What’s to blame for rising college costs? Even this group couldn’t agree, but there was a lot of discussion about inefficiencies in two areas conceived in the early 20th century that no longer work in a 24/7, Internet-connected society: the academic calendar and the credit hour. We’ve written a lot about institutions questioning the value of both in the last year. One shocking number thrown around at the meeting last week was that 40 percent of all credits earned have not been applied to a degree or a credential. In other words, these are students with credits who dropped out or earned more than they needed for a degree. Figuring out a way to put those credits toward a credential could help greatly in college-completion goals. A surprise to me at the meeting was learning more about BYU-Idaho, which now has 25,000 students. Its cost per student is only 3 percent higher today than it was in 2000. It has managed costs by changing the traditional academic calendar and day by squeezing more classroom hours out of both.
Given its location, the discussion at Harvard was very business-focused. Indeed, many of the “disruptors” come from a business-school background. But if traditional academe doesn’t bring some business sense to a few areas of its operation, then it’s likely that some of these disruptive innovations will move up market over the next decade and put a big piece of traditional higher education out of business.
