Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 7)

SM: What is your estimate of the 2010 tutoring market? JC: In dollar terms, the numbers that I have seen suggest that the market is around $4 billion. There are 53 million students in public education in the United States. The real question, which I don’t think anyone can answer, is exactly how many of them need

Read Full Article »

Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 6)

SM: How many students have you worked with online? JC: Thousands. What is really important is that we have created an online experience built on best practices we learned from our in-person tutoring sessions.

Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 5)

SM: If we were viewing the screen of an online tutoring session, what would we be seeing? Is there a whiteboard? JC: It feels like a whiteboard. It is a shared environment where both teacher and student can see the lesson plan. The teacher can make comments on the screen and write on the screen,

Read Full Article »

Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 4)

SM: Has your online offering increased demand for your tutoring services? JC: We have also seen growth in pure student demand. Here I refer to students of families who are calling in and saying that they are interested in the Sylvan service but that they would like to take it online. They do not even

Read Full Article »

Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 3)

SM: Let’s talk about your online business. When did you start delivering your supplemental tutoring services online, and what was your strategy for doing so? JC: We started back in 2001. That was the launch point for our online program delivery. There were a couple of factors driving us to build an online program.

Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 2)

SM: Do the teachers recommend you to students’ parents? JC: Sometimes. It is true that our service is a referral or word-of-mouth business. We have been and still are the largest private employer of teachers in the country.

Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 1)

Jeff Cohen is the president of Sylvan Learning, a leading provider of tutoring services to students of all ages, grades, and skill levels. Before rejoining Sylvan, he served as president of Catapult Learning, which he grew from $65 million to more than $130 million. Prior to joining Catapult Learning, he was the senior vice president

Read Full Article »

Deal Radar 2008: WiZiQ

I spoke at length this morning at my INSEAD Global Entrepreneurship Forum talk about entrepreneurial opportunities in the educational technology space. Today’s Deal Radar post focuses on WiZiQ, an online tutoring technology startup that offers a learning center and an online collaboration tool for teachers and students for a wide range of subjects and grades. The

Read Full Article »