Thought Leaders in Online Education: Jim Donohue, Chief Product Officer, Cengage Learning (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’d like to double-click down further on each of these categories. Since you’re on the roll with the student-led learning piece, explain to me how you go to market with that. Looks like your instructor-focused business is through reps but the student-focused business is a consumer business? Is that correct?

Jim Donohue: It’s sort of both. Let me explain. Instructors are still making these decisions but what they use to make their decisions is based on what made their lives easier, to be honest. Instructors generally care very deeply about their students but there was nothing to evaluate the effectiveness of one learning material over another. So, we still market directly to the professor but now we can go in and say what the Holy Grail is, what we’re all working on in this industry is quantifying learning.

When you use this approach, 22% of the time your students will perform better on tests. You’ll have a 5% or 10% better retention rate which is a big issue for colleges as students are dropping out because they feel overwhelmed. If you use this material or this approach, you can improve your learning rate, you can improve your retention rate, and you can improve your outcomes.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Jim Donohue, Chief Product Officer, Cengage Learning (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Alright. So I understand exactly where your position is now. Obviously, you’re at a very interesting point of the history of your industry. As the Chief Product Officer, you’re looking at the industry. As you said, you’re looking at the digital strategy. So talk to me about what other digital trends that you are observing or analyzing to derive your product strategy.

Jim Donohue: I think it’s more about what our product strategy is versus digital trends. It’s a really interesting time in the industry because you have a dichotomy right now. You have a group of professors who are critically important to us who are not as savvy, technically or digitally, as their students. You have the average professors, in their late 40s and 50s, comfortable with the computer but probably were not raised as that digital native and haven’t thought about their whole life of having digital access.

So, they’re trying to make a transition and we spend a lot of time, as an industry, trying to service them and to help them make that transition. For instance, at Cengage, we have a very comprehensive service group. Every time a faculty chooses to use our product, we actually set up some technology for them, especially if they don’t know how to themselves. We can actually even create course outlines for them that really match the technology we have. That’s one part of the market.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Jim Donohue, Chief Product Officer, Cengage Learning (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Cengage is one of the three major publishers of educational texts and materials. In this interview, we explore a range of trends in higher education with Jim Donohue, their Chief Product Officer.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start, Jim, with an introduction for our audience to Cengage and yourself so that we know whom we are talking to and the context of the conversation.

Jim Donohue: Cengage is the world’s second largest educational text and materials company. We are primarily a book company and in our educational division for higher education, we’re still about 70% print based. The goal has been, obviously, to make a rapid change as the industries change.

I think higher education is an interesting animal in that it has been, in the last couple of years, pretty resistant to the kind of technology that other related industries have caught up with. As a result, it’s still very much focused on print and I think that’s going to continue for a few more years. I think, the challenge for this industry is to offer must-have products that will really encourage professors to make that move because their students are demanding it. I think it’s a really interesting dichotomy as I look at it through the Cengage lens.

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The Future of Education: 10 Trends To Watch

It is that time of the year when we tend to pause and reflect. What have we achieved this year? What are the highlights of culture, business, technology, and trends that we have observed around us?

For me, the most exciting and positive movement at present is in the domain of technology impacting education. And it is an impact that is coming from many different directions.

Let’s explore them in further detail.

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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2013: Omninox, Gainesville, Florida

Omninox develops interactive, mobile study guides called Omniguides™ for high level math and science courses. It aims to consolidate the material that students learn for Advanced Placement (AP) STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) classes by offering built-in software tools such as a calculator, quizzes, and sketchpad with social sharing. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Interview with Shaul Kuper, CEO of Destiny Solutions (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. I am not totally convinced about the Coursera business model and whether it is going to scale to the extent to support the amount of venture funding they have raised. EdX is a different story, because it is non-profit funded. As long as they sustain themselves, they are going to be fine. But with a MOOC business model, can you be a venture-style multibillion dollar business? I am not at all convinced about that.

Shaul Kuper: I agree with you. Unless you are going to start selling advertising, I just don’t understand that model. I typically believe that you get what you pay for. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Interview with Shaul Kuper, CEO of Destiny Solutions (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s say I am a consumer, and I sign up for a course in economics on the site of Cornell. I am a consumer, not one of Cornell’s business customers. Then I want to find a job. When I go to the Cornell website, are the resources I am able to access specific to Cornell, or are you also bringing employability resources through your relationships with various employers?

Shaul Kuper: At this time we are not doing that. These resources are provided by the universities. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Interview with Shaul Kuper, CEO of Destiny Solutions (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You have been in the continuing education space for a good decade or more. What are the trends of the industry?

Shaul Kuper: What is interesting to us, having dealt with continuing education for so long, is that about two years ago presidents of the universities woke up one day and realized that the students they thought they had on campus aren’t the students they have on campus. >>>