Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 2)

Karen Francis: We’re seeing the emerging trend of students saying, “This is why I want this track and this is what I’ll take. I’m not going to take the rest of it.” They are able to customize what they want either from a broad perspective of choosing colleges and institutions or saying, “I’m going take a blended experience. I don’t want just online or just in the classroom. I want to be able to mash it all together.” There’s enormous activity and investment in education technology today. We’re seeing lots of experimentation. I don’t see a clear winner yet, which is exciting. More and more people are saying, “What is the result I want from my education?” Then, work backwards and say, “How do I then use the technologies available to gain that result?”

Sramana Mitra: How does CourseTalk fit in to this picture?

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Karen Francis, CEO of Academix Direct (Part 1)

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Online Education continues to be a fast-changing field, and various people are working on various aspects of the industry to make a complicated puzzle come together. This conversation explores some of those pieces.

Sramana Mitra:  Let’s start with introducing our audience to you as well as Academix Direct and CourseTalk.

Karen Francis: My name is Karen Francis. I’m the CEO and Executive Chairman of Academix Direct. I’ve been in my position for just over four years and I come with a strong marketing and general management background. I was fortunate enough to be on the Board of Trustees at Dartmouth College where I got my undergraduate degree. I have a Harvard MBA. That gave me a unique perspective on education and on what’s behind the curtain of putting together an academic institution. I’ve always been very >>>

Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 7)

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 which is a real demarcation for success. We’ve passed that. Now, where do we go from here? Are we going to be a $100 million company or a $1 billion company? I have no way of knowing yet, but right now, the company’s growing. The market seems to be growing.

Sramana Mitra: You’re growing at a decent pace. It’s not like you’re growing anemically.

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Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 6)

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 why fun is so critical. We’ve that face-to-face connection with the student in a situation where they’re in high stress. We want to make sure that we bring in an element of relaxation to it. Those four pillars were critical for our business. We have, since day one, made sure that we follow those. The key element in executing is your ability to really find that base of what your company is going to be and be very consistent in building off that base.

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Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 5)

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 program, the project starts to change. Generally speaking, the focus is going to be on courses that rely heavily on assessments. That’s all over the board. We have Liberal Arts, Math, Science, Healthcare, and many different disciplines.

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Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: So the shareholders of Andrew Jackson came in as separate investors into the new entity, ProctorU?

Don Kassner: That is correct.

Sramana Mitra: So that’s how ProctorU was funded?

Don Kassner: Yes.

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Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When you look at those early adopters of your technology, what strikes you as the common characteristics of these kinds of players? What were they doing that made them early adopters?

Don Kassner: They had those typical early adopter feature sets. They understood that they needed to take their online education service to another level. They were looking for unique technologies that would allow them to do that. They’re no different than most early adopters because they’re on the leading edge of what they demand within the marketplace. That has changed since that time. But in the early days, it would be schools like California Southern and Troy University who were entrepreneurial. They’re risk takers. They do different things and those were the ones that were eager to try the solution.

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Building a $10M Company Proctoring Exams Online: Don Kassner, CEO of ProctorU (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You gave a presentation to a group of universities explaining that there’s something that you wanted to do and they resonated with that. Could you explain what that pitch was?

Don Kassner: We got up and showed what we were doing at Andrew Jackson University with this remote proctoring product that we had developed, which we were calling ProctorU. Essentially, it was a product demonstration at this particular education conference.

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