Adrian started Study.com in 2002. Read how the trends in online education have impacted the evolution of a very interesting business. Excellent story.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Study.com. What do you do? Where is the company located?
Adrian Ridner: What we try to do is develop the simplest way to learn. We’ve created over 20,000 short, animated video lessons. We’ve organized them all in courses covering major subject areas, all the way from elementary school to college. We’re currently helping over 25 million students and teachers every month to improve their grades and even earn low-cost college credit. We’re located in Mountain View, California and have been bootstrapped since 2002.
Sramana Mitra: How does what you do fit into the context of all the other things that are happening in the online education segment, especially K-12 and college? For example, how does what you offer compare with Khan Academy? >>>
Inspired eLearning is doing something very effective in Cyber Security education. Read on to learn more.
Sramana Mitra: Give us a little bit of introduction to yourself as well as to the company.
Felix Odigie: I have a background in Computer Engineering. I went to Northeastern University and did my Masters at the Wharton School. The company I run is actually Inspired eLearning. We’re into security awareness and compliance e-learning space. We provide education for the enterprise.
To make that a little simpler for everyone, what we stumbled upon is, it became very difficult for hackers and network intruders to attack network infrastructure because there was a lot of investment in securing networks. The natural place for them to gravitate towards was to hack the individuals who are already inside infrastructure. That was easy. We are susceptible to phishing scams. That was our mission. >>>
i-Human Patients, Inc. is a cloud-based e-learning company that is focused on rapidly developing and evaluating critical cognitive competencies in healthcare students and practitioners. Its main value proposition is that it simulates encounters with patients in order to teach users how to quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively assess and diagnose patients.
Brad knows how to sell. Read how he turned that skill in to a $20M revenue business with very little formal education.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Brad Lea: I was born in Cottage Grove, Oregon in about 1969. My journey began right there.
Sramana Mitra: Did you grow up in that community?
Brad Lea: Yes, I grew up there until I was 14 years old.
Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that? Where did you move to and how did the journey evolve? >>>
This discussion takes us into the realm of learning games and their future.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as Jumpstart.
David Lord: I’m the CEO of JumpStart. JumpStart has been the leader in learning-based games for the past 25 years. JumpStart was founded by Bill Gross before Idealab. Our key brands are JumpStart Math Blaster and School of Dragons. We have been educating children, which is our mission, for the past 20 years.
Sramana Mitra: Children of what age do you focus on?
David Lord: We try and build products and subject matter that apply to children of all ages, but our core age range is kinder preparation to K-3. >>>
There will be an acute need for trained medical professionals as healthcare becomes democratised around the world. Norm discusses what his company is doing in this very important realm using online education principles.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to i-Human Patients. What do you do? What trends are you working with?
Norm Wu: I’m a serial entrepreneur. Even in high school, I had a little bit of entrepreneurial experience. I was one of the co-founders of the campus radio station. I became very interested in technology. I started working in Silicon Valley after getting my BS and MS at Stanford. I worked on reconnaissance systems for the defense industry. This was during the Cold War when we really needed to understand what the bad guys were doing with respect to radars and missiles. >>>
Some thoughts on learning objectives driven instructional design.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Learning Objects.
Jon Mott: I’m the Chief Learning Officer at Learning Objects. My responsibility at the company is to bring a learning science, higher education, and learning design perspective to both our product development and to implementations with clients. My background is both in academia and instructional design, as well as corporate education, adult learning, and corporate training.
Throughout my career, I’ve really had this focus on, “How do we help individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need at any given point in time to pursue goals related to the next things they’re trying to achieve in their lives?” >>>
The white-labeled education services business is scaling rapidly, and institutions of all sizes are building online programs. Learning House operates in the small, regional college and university segment, and has built a nice business.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised and in what kind of background?
Todd Zipper: I was born in New York. I went to University of Pennsylvania for my undergraduate and studied History and Economics. Like many people from Penn in the mid 90s, I made my way to Wall Street – to the Equity Research Department of Solomon Brothers, which eventually became Citi Group. >>>