Thought Leaders in Online Education: John Miller, Chief Operating Officer of Hands-On Learning (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Then what do you do to fill those gaps? Do you develop content modules to be delivered over the Internet around those skill gap areas?

John Miller: What we are in the process of doing with our clients is identifying the gaps and then, building a goal alignment. We go through a very detailed assessment on both sides. We try to identify what lines of business in their arena are changing, and what are the talent requirements that are going to be needed going forward. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: John Miller, Chief Operating Officer of Hands-On Learning (Part 1)

There is a huge gap between industry and academia today. Learn more about the lay of the land and identify opportunities for entrepreneurship.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with giving our audience a bit of context about Hands-On Learning (HOL). What do you do? What major online education industry trends are you aligning with?

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sari Factor, CEO of Edgenuity (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: That’s true in general. Part of the error that the venture capital industry is making is to fund a lot of free stuff. This hides all the problems of whatever product or service they’re trying to sell. Entrepreneurs think that they’re doing great by offering something for free. Eventually, it doesn’t monetize. I’m more interested in companies that can deliver enough value so that they can actually charge for it.

Sari Factor: I agree.

Sramana Mitra: This whole MOOC thing, I don’t think it’s going to work.

Sari Factor: Good content costs something to develop. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sari Factor, CEO of Edgenuity (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How long has Edgenuity been around?

Sari Factor: Since 1998. It was called Education 2020 until the beginning of 2013 when we changed the name.

Sramana Mitra: How is your company funded?

Sari Factor: We were owned by an investment firm called Weld North. It’s a partnership between Jonathan Grayer, the former CEO of Kaplan, and KKR. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sari Factor, CEO of Edgenuity (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I get all these things that you’re saying. Let’s say there’s a rural school that can afford to manage the core and in the edges; they can’t afford that many languages or higher level mathematics and sciences. My question is how much does it cost them to include that in their curriculum? Given that they cannot afford teachers, can they afford to layer you guys into the mix? If they do, the existing teachers who are teaching the core, can they then supervise the learning of those accelerated courses?

Sari Factor: Some can and some can’t. It depends on the certification requirements in a given state. Back to your original question, what we’re finding is indeed some schools are interested in using us to augment their staff. If they do not have somebody who’s qualified to supervise a course, we can do it through distance learning.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sari Factor, CEO of Edgenuity (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Your system maintains the personalized skill gap data for every student that is on your platform?

Sari Factor: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: Can different teachers, as they progress through the grade, access that data?

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sari Factor, CEO of Edgenuity (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: They are using online curriculum but there’s a teacher who’s telling them, “You take this course. Do this exercise.”

Sari Factor: Absolutely. The system is telling the student how much they need to accomplish each day, but a teacher is always monitoring that. We offer adjunct teachers as well. We provide that service. That’s a very small part of our business but one that is growing and we think will continue to grow. There’s always the supervision of a teacher.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sari Factor, CEO of Edgenuity (Part 2)

Sari Factor: It’s also an excellent solution for acceleration. We have situations where students in middle school might be ready for geometry, which is typically taught in the 10^th grade. But there is no Geometry curriculum or teacher at the middle school level. They might take a course from a high school teacher administering the course from the high school campus, but they would be studying the curriculum appropriate for high school mathematics while they are still in middle school. We see both ends of the spectrum – the low-level and high-level kids.

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