Shaul Kuper is the chief executive officer of Destiny Solutions, a company that provides software solutions for higher education management on a cloud-based SaaS. He holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and genetics from the University of Toronto. In this interview he gives us a detailed overview of the origins of Destiny and of
In 2012, we saw some serious movement in the educational technology market. From massive online open courses (MOOCs) to iPad apps, the industry is seeing rapid progress on the wings of technology. Today, I will introduce you to another innovation that is positioned for rapid adoption. Introducing the Avaz App for Autism Electrical engineer Ajit
After this conversation with Anant, I went and talked to Radhika Ghosal, the 15-year-old from New Delhi, who took the MIT Circuits and Electronics course. Sramana: Radhika, how did you find out about edX? Radhika Ghosal: I found out about edX back when it was called MITx. I read about MITx on Hack A Day
Sramana: That is absolutely awesome. The state of engineering education in India, outside of IIT, is awful. Anant Agarwal: I really care about creating courses that have the same quality and rigor of on-campus courses. There is a misconceived notion that online courses cannot have the same quality of education. I disagree. We have proven
Sramana: Have you heard of a company called Pluralsight? Pluralsight has a similar model. The company is doing about $16 million in revenue. They are a bootstrapped company out of Utah, and they have a crowd source content development model. They do royalty sharing between content creators and Pluralsight when consumer or corporations pay for
Sramana: Isn’t there a possibility that a student could convince someone else to take a course for them and essentially defraud the system? Anant Agarwal: Absolutely. The certificates at this point are issued after signing an honor code. The certificates we issue are noted as honor code certificates. We have recently partnered with Pearson, which
Sramana: So there is no MIT stamp of any kind on that San Jose State degree? Anant Agarwal: No, not for a blended class like the example I gave with San Jose State. They get a San Jose State degree. Now, if the student took the public MIT course at the same time on edX,
Sramana: How does the model support the on-campus vision? If your courses are built by universities all over the world with an open source methodology, how do localized campuses leverage that information? Anant Agarwal: The platform is open source. The software is open source. The content is owned by the universities. They are the ones