Sramana Mitra: What about examining and testing? Especially, where you’re running full-fledged online programs, how do you handle testing? Sher Downing: We have actually been trying out a number of products in the last year and have purposely focused on avoiding issues of plagiarism and any type of cheating. We pride ourselves, on carrying the
Sramana Mitra: I’m going to switch to a different topic. Our audience is entrepreneurs. Talk to me about what you are doing in the realm of entrepreneurship education – first at the undergraduate level and then at the graduate level. Sher Downing: We currently have an undergraduate degree in Entrepreneurship and that includes coursework that
Sher Downing: One of the things that we do is have all tenured full-time faculty teach our online classes. So you get the same award-winning faculty online that you would get if you came in to take a course. We have surveyed the students and monitored the course just to see what the students enjoy.
Sramana Mitra: When people are working on these online programs – specifically, we are interested in understanding your online offering – are they doing online only program or is everything an online/offline combination? Sher Downing: Our online programs offer a real breadth of flexibility and ability to learn within a capsulated calendar. Students, at the
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Much is changing in the world of education. Universities are becoming large scale providers in online learning. Arizona State University is at the fore of this trend, running one of the largest business programs online. Sramana Mitra: Sher, let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself
Don Kassner: It remains to be seen if it’s going to break out the way that it used to break out. For us, we’ve been very happy with the success that we’ve had in growing this from nothing to a $10 million a year company. You were talking about getting entrepreneurs to that first million
Don Kassner: If you think about proctoring itself, integrity is critical. It’s a service. We’re providing service to both the student and to the institution. It’s important that it’s simple because they’re remote. They’re on their own device. People need to be able to understand the process. There’s the people side of it and that’s
Sramana Mitra: The large state universities are adopting this? Don Kassner: Yes, it’s typically large state universities. There’re some private universities in there as well. Generally speaking, you’re going to see most of it in the lower level, general administration courses where examinations and assessments are more critical. As you get in deep to any