Thought Leaders in Online Education: O’Reilly Media Chief Content Officer Karen Hebert-Maccaro (Part 1)

Karen discusses the trends in online learning including in-the-moment and multi-channel.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as O’Reilly Media and your activities in online education.

Karen Hebert-Maccaro: I’ve been at O’Reilly Media as Chief Content Officer for about a year. I have spent much of my career in talent development and talent management roles including Chief Learning Officer for a high-tech company in healthcare. Prior to entering the corporate world, I was in academics. I taught and was the Associate Dean of School of Business in Massachusetts for about 12 years. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jason Stoffer of Maveron (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch topics a little bit to look at some other categories that you tend to invest in. You like to invest in education it seems – online education. I saw that you’ve invested in Course Hero. We’ve done a big story on Andrew. I love what Course Hero is doing. Huge numbers of college students are hanging out on Course Hero both sharing and using course notes.

What I like about the business is it has a very clear monetization model. It’s not some foo-foo business. I love the fact that Course Hero is essentially a subscription business. A large number of their users are subscribing. Andrew bootstrapped that business for a long time. I think it was already about $10 million before they raised money. >>>

Man and Superman: Future of Education

In the One Million by One Million online curriculum, almost eight years ago, I decided to put in a line as a joke: “We’re working on a chip that can be implanted in your brain and it will transfer ALL the entrepreneurial knowledge from my brain to yours. However, this chip is not quite ready yet. So, in the meantime, please study the curriculum and learn the methodology of entrepreneurship that we have designed.”

Well, little did I know that this would cease to be a joke by 2018.

In fact, in the next decade or two, perhaps, this sort of implant will become the future of education.

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Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: Jumpstart Games CEO David Lord (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the trends in your space that are worth discussing?

David Lord: The primary trend that is happening is this integrated classroom. We also have the Google Classroom. There’s this unified front where everything is tied together so that the solutions are delivered to classrooms in an easier way. They also apply to more students because they’re not as rigid. Integrated classrooms, adaptive learning, lower cost of entry are real big trends right now.

We’ve got a lot of assessment software out there. The trends that we’re seeing is a move to open resources. People are trying to >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: Jumpstart Games CEO David Lord (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What results do you have?

David Lord: We’re in 50 to 60 schools already. We’ve got 500 classrooms. We’ve got our first efficacy report that has been peer-reviewed. We’re seeing great results – about 18% improvement in scores in standardized tests using our Jumpstart Academy math product. We’re starting with that and we’ll build the rest of the suite. On the school side, we’ll not only offer grade-based products, but we also offer single subject stack.

There will be a STEM stack with a math product. There’s computational thinking. There will be reading. You can also >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Gaming: JumpStart Games CEO David Lord (Part 1)

This conversation highlights Gamification in online learning.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to JumpStart Games.

David Lord: I’m the CEO of JumpStart Games. We build games for kids ages 3 to 13. Some of our products include JumpStart, which is our legacy brand that has been delivering early childhood learning for 25 years. School of Dragons is a science-based game based around Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon and NeoPet.

Sramana Mitra: Also set some context about how big the company is. What is the footprint? >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Steve Gross, CEO of Calvert Education (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Can you give me an example of the projects?

Steve Gross: An example would be developing a contraption that leverages materials that normally wouldn’t be available inside the classroom.

Sramana Mitra: But what has that got to do with online learning?

Steve Gross: There’re two things that we are talking about simultaneously. One is online learning and the other is virtual learning. There’s a huge degree of overlap there but they’re not exactly the same thing. We are digital first and everything we’re >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Steve Gross, CEO of Calvert Education (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So your primary business on the B2B side is as an online curriculum provider, effectively.

Steve Gross: That is true but I don’t think that’s the full description of it. I would say that we are a curriculum provider as well as an online program manager. What that means is we provide the curriculum and also the educational platform in which that curriculum and reporting resides. We also provide the services that are required, specifically tailored and optimized for the virtual environment, which is different from the brick and mortar environment. >>>