Thought Leaders in Online Education: Katya Andresen, CEO of Cricket Media (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’m very interested in the business model. That’s one of the issues that we’re seeing in the Edtech industry. The business models are weak.

Katya Andresen: I agree with you. It can be really hard to monetize a social network. That is not our model. Our model is that we have consumers – parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts. They want to pay for their kids to have access to content and to be able to safely connect around that. That’s a proven revenue stream for us. The other side of our model’s emphasis is not that we have this relationship with Smithsonian. It’s just a nice thing that allows us to develop things and offer them for free in some cases. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Katya Andresen, CEO of Cricket Media (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’d like to double-click down on some of these use cases and examples. Why don’t we pick three or four different scenarios, which are really interesting ways in which your customers and users are using the products.

Katya Andresen: I’ll give you a couple of relevant examples. We have a product coming out in about a week or two, which we did in partnership with a startup in Palo Alto called Kindoma. It’s an app that accesses your family graph. Again, it’s this idea of great digital content to read and share, and at the same time allowing family members to interact around that content with the child safely online. This is the one I referenced before. It’s called Story Bug and it allows me, in real time with video, to read a book together. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. What are your thoughts about liberal arts colleges? I went to a liberal arts college as well. I went to Smith College. About five years ago, Smith started this big investment on a new engineering building. It was very plush. They invited me to speak at the opening. It was clear that the college was going through a lot of soul-searching like most other liberal arts colleges. What is the future of liberal arts education?

Karen Francis: I have a grand vision for what a liberal arts college experience could be. I say those words very precisely. Just because technology is enabling things to open up, doesn’t mean that the college campus can’t do that. I actually think that the real opportunity here is to look at places like Smith and Dartmouth and say, “You go there, but you’re not bound by the boundaries of the geography or the professors who choose to teach there for what you’re going to learn and experience.” >>>

The Funding of Avaz: Some Reflections

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Do you work with a lot of for-profit colleges?

Karen Francis: We work with any content providers. Some people are not institutions in the way that you and I would think of it.

Sramana Mitra: Your marketing service is for any kind of online or educational program?

Karen Francis: Yes. On the Academix Direct site, we work with any post-secondary institutions whether it’s traditional brick-and-mortar, online, or blended – which most of them are. Even the ones you think are traditional have online components now. The CourseTalk site is all online.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 5)

Karen Francis: To that end, we are paying a lot of attention not just to the individual course certifications but series certifications. edX is leading down this path. One of the next things that we’ll be introducing on our site in the next couple of months is the ability to upload your certification and then attach it to your official transcript. You might go to high school and you have a transcript from your high school. You don’t want to go to college the way that other people might think about it. You know which skills you want and you want to be able to prove to an employer that you’ve mastered it. You will be able to take that certification and attach that to your official transcript.

Sramana Mitra: You are maintaining consumer records on their certifications and transcripts?

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I have a bunch of questions on that. These are, again, trend questions. One of the big problems with the Internet, in my view, is that it’s a free-rider and free-loader population. What percentage of your traffic are paying users as opposed to people looking for free courses?

Karen Francis: The only way I could answer that right now would be to give you metrics on the paid course sales. I would say we’re too early for that. Most of the people on our site are connecting to free courses. I think that’s largely because they don’t know that they’re available yet. We’re really at the early stages of adding the courses. We’re just getting exposure now for those people who are willing to pay.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Does that mean that you catalog Pluralsight and TrainSignal and all of these course providers?

Karen Francis: Not everyone but if we don’t, it’s because we just haven’t contacted them yet. We’re really out there. We have a business development team seeking new course providers. You can also go to the site and say, “I have five courses. How do I get them on?”

Sramana Mitra: Now you get to pitch me why I should put out a course on your site.

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