Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

More than 20 million students currently use Google Apps, and another 10 million are soon to join, thanks to a deal with Malaysia.

As students and schools are increasingly storing more of their data and documents in clouds of Google’s servers, Backupify recently announced that it has tripled its education user base, with more than 40,000 new education users since January of this year. Schools are using the cloud-based backup service to ensure critical data is archived and safe, even if it would be accidentally deleted or lost on Google’s servers.

Education is a notoriously slow adopter of technology, but Google Apps is growing quickly, if not virally, doubling over the last two years. And the current 20 million users include seven million inside the U.S. alone — led by Oregon that adopted Google Apps in all K-12 classrooms in 2010.

And sometimes, they’re using Backupify because they have to:

“Millions of students and educators around the world are currently using Google Apps to enhance collaborative learning,”  Backupify CEO Rob May said in a statement. “The education sector is ahead of other industries in this regard, but faces unique compliance requirements for data privacy and retention that demand an effective backup strategy.”

To celebrate the recent growth of Google Apps for Education — and their own growth — Backupify put this infographic together:

Image credit: John Koetsier/Venturebeat

Thanks to technology, we’re watching a revolution happen in education right now.

From the explosion in popularity of language learning apps like Mindsnacks to the media furor about the rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs), companies are being built around the idea that technology can radically reshape our relationship with education.

Educating the well-educated

MOOCs have attracted more attention than any other edtech category, and with good reason. Imagine being able to take a physics class with Stephen Hawking without having to enroll at Cambridge, or learn poetry with Helen Vendler, and explore the solar system with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The possibilities are seemingly endless — especially for the hyper-literate, hyper-educated communities of bloggers and journalists who typically write about this technology. These platforms started as experiments in distributing high quality education for single classes, and blossomed into fully-fledged companies on the strength of early, massive enrollments.

There’s an amazing amount of potential embedded in the idea of MOOCs, but for now, they are only struggling experiments aimed at the outer edge of enthusiasts of esoteric learning.

Enrollment figures point squarely at largely unfulfilled promises. Katy Jordan, an educational researcher, pulled together published stats, largely from Coursera, and plotted enrollment and completion rates for various popular MOOCs.

Harvard’s computer science class CS50x on edX had an amazing 150,349 enrolled students, of which 0.9 percent completed the course. Attrition rates on that level would instantly doom a college. While MOOC proponents argue that these completion rates are irrelevant because of varied interest levels of participating students at the outset, they’ve set the stage for their own measurement by using enrollment factors as their topline metric in interview after interview.

Education for the rest of us

But let’s say you ignore the massive discrepancy between enrollment and completion. Let’s say you focus, instead, on the stated mission of these companies. Each company states that its mission is access to education. So who is getting that access? Certainly not the millions of elementary and high school students struggling with a crumbling K-12 system in the U.S. Even if these kids have access to computers and broadband at home (which is a big “if”), they don’t necessarily have the skills to teach themselves the material with little or no human interaction.

Educating these kids in the subjects, and with the methods that they need to learn are not directly tied to jobs or expensive credentialing systems — the emerging business models of the biggest players in edtech. These kids are in the thick of the learning bell curve, not the autodidactic wunderkinds taking symbolic systems courses at the age of 12.

Many of the students that we work with at my company Tutorspree fall into this category. They are kids who are still learning to learn. Some are hugely advanced for their age, some need extra help — all want something more than the purely digital options being pushed by media and many government agencies.

These kids and their parents tell us every day that they need a real person to teach them, to learn with them, to react in real time to errors and successes, and to provide the kind of personal warmth and encouragement that computers cannot provide.

The power of people

We’re not the only ones noticing the importance of having real people interact with one another to make education work better. The MOOCs are beginning to hire teaching assistants and tutors to create emotional buy-in and attachment with students.

Sal Khan isn’t pushing for his videos to be the final say in teaching. They are meant as a gateway to unlock significantly higher rates of one-to-one teacher student interaction in the flipped classroom. Codecademy may use a carefully structured system to help people start learning to code, but they also encourage meetups and high school groups to get together to support one another through the really hard stuff.

The media likes to talk about how technology is creating radical shifts in education. Journalists talk about increases in access, tracking, and new mediums for delivery. But none of that is enough.

The real test of edtech is still to come. Companies will have to prove that they are able to actually teach students, not just put lessons in front of them.

We need teachers if we want a system that is effective for the students who really need help, and want real progress.

Aaron Harris is the founder and CEO of Tutorspree, a New York-based startup that finds the perfect tutor for every student.

Follow him on Twitter @Harris. 

Top image via Flickr 

Pincus took to the stage this afternoon at the NewSchools Venture Summit, a major ed-tech conference. He revealed that Zynga will offer startups “innovating around games and the classroom” access to office space, game designers and product managers.

The accelerator has already lined up several companies to participate, including Kidaptive, LocoMotiveLabs, and Motion Math. Social learning startup Edmodo will also be joining as a charter partner.

“Everybody at Zynga is passionate about having a positive world impact,” said Pincus. “We want to help these companies leave the nest.”

Together with the NewSchools Venture Fund, Zynga will offer funding to the five or six startups in the inaugural class. To support this initiative, Zynga.org has provided $1 million in funding for the accelerator’s first year.

“We’re proud to partner with Zynga.org on this project, which brings together the world’s leader in social gaming, the top K-12 education impact investor and an initial cohort of all-star entrepreneurs,” said Ted Mitchell, CEO, NewSchools, in a statement. “Together, we are excited to push the boundaries of how students learn through educational games.”

At the conference, Pincus drew a comparison between the new program and Y Combinator, the elite technology accelerator program for startups.

This is a guest post by Andrew Smith Lewis, executive chairman at Cerego.

Why is it that so many people who opine on matters of education do so by espousing an “either or” position, reducing their argument to a zero sum game, thereby forcing readers to take sides?

Isn’t that the exact opposite of what education and learning are supposed to be all about?

Take, for instance, the recent Washington Post piece by Sabrina Joy Stevens, a teacher-turned-education activist based in Washington D.C, who wrote an opinion-editorial piece for the paper criticizing personalized learning tools. 

In her piece, Stevens propagates common misconceptions about personalized learning tools. But as the executive chairman of a company focused on personalized learning, who works closely with great teachers to find a balance between technology and instruction, I am compelled to point out how misguided — and misleading — her arguments are.

First of all, I take issue with her basic definition of personalized learning, which betrays a few bad assumptions. Stevens believes that personalized learning tools are nothing more than a patch for a broken education system, suggesting that the promise of personalized learning is built around a goal of “digitized, standardized learning.”

It is an error to think that personalized learning is just set of digitized practice problems. We’re not talking about old multiplication tables in newly digitized form, where students get increasingly difficult questions until they get one wrong, then get easier problems until they get them right again. Those kinds of tools are trivial, and they’re not oriented to change outcomes. Digitized drill-and-kill is not revolutionary, nor is it personalized.

The fact that any learning tool is digital is simply table stakes these days. Digital is a condition of modern living and learning — nothing more, and nothing less.

Second, true personalization is the exact opposite of standardization. True personalization accepts that we all learn differently and at different paces, and that what actually makes it into our brain can vary drastically from student to student. The desired outcomes may be standardized, but the path to that outcome, and the goal of increasing the speed and likelihood of reaching positive outcomes is precisely the goal of some of the most innovative companies leading the personalized learning charge.

But the argument that irks me most is the suggestion that personalized learning tools are trying to be a replacement for teachers.

Personalized learning tools are not replacing teachers. They don’t seek to replace personal interaction, either.  Any argument to such effect is fear-mongering fabrication.

The truth of the matter is, personalized learning tools are a way for teachers to learn more about their students, and a way for students to learn at their own pace. These tools are designed to be a powerful supplement for teachers, not a replacement. They give teachers more context, and more data upon which to make pedagogical and intervention decisions.

Embrace this idea:  humans are wonderful at certain tasks, and decidedly less than wonderful at others. The most stubborn among us may resist this truth, but the most stubborn among us have also resisted nearly every positive technological change since…forever.

Personalized learning tools are not created to subtract something from the classroom as Stevens suggests. Rather, they aspire to be additive and empowering. They free up teachers to spend more time interacting with students on an individual basis, foregoing the rote call-and-response of yore. Any honest teacher will admit that when it comes to certain aspects of her profession, she may as well be a machine, and that’s bad for everyone.

Teachers should not be charged with transferring knowledge to students in bulk, playing to the median, the mean, or in many cases the lowest common denominator. Personalized learning tools can fundamentally improve the quality of student-teacher interactions by stratifying roles and enabling more frequent, bespoke, high-intensity, and high-functioning engagement.

The role of teachers is shifting from “sage on the stage” to the “guide on the side.” That’s a fact. Modern, forward-thinking teachers can be more effective with their talents when they are enabled to cater to each student’s own trajectory, rather than preaching to tuned-out masses. We should be empowering students to explore self-directed learning paths. And we should enable teachers enrich that journey, helping a student move forward if and when they get stuck.

Personalized learning tools, in the hands of savvy teachers, make those teachers more effective, and improve student learning outcomes non-trivially. They build on what teachers already do best.

I will continue to fight for one of education’s biggest and most important ideas, and I know that many others will too. Substance needs to win over self-preservation and ignorance. We need to summon enough courage to recognize that attacking individual weaknesses and playing to individual strengths is nothing short of necessary.

Andrew Smith Lewis heads Cerego’s US operations and runs Cerego’s Advisory Board, which is an international group of experts and practitioners in scientific, technological, and commercial areas directly relevant to the company’s activities.

Currently based in Palo Alto, Andrew lived in Japan for 25 years and is fluent in Japanese.

Top image via Shutterstock

Andrew D’Souza is COO of Top Hat Monocle

Two years ago, most top-tier VCs would not have touched an education technology company with a 10-foot pole. That’s all about to change – in fact, it’s already changing.

Take a look at some of the recent bets placed by big-name firms on exciting education companies over the past 12 months: Accel with Lynda, NEA with Desire2Learn and Edmodo, Emergence with Top Hat, a16z with Udacity, Benchmark with Minerva and the list goes on.

The education space is massive, very broken, barely touched by technology and has been largely underserved by entrepreneurs and investors. The opportunity for disruption, significant value creation and outsized returns is huge.

Companies that are focused on the education space right now have arguable advantages over their consumer and enterprise technology peers:

Advantage #1: Ability to attract high-caliber talent

With consumer web falling out of favor, top talent is beginning to look elsewhere for career opportunities.

Horizontal SaaS companies may be lucrative in the short-term, but those companies always run the risk of being commoditized by lower-cost providers or outsold by more focused vertical players. More importantly, horizontal SaaS providers can have trouble articulating a compelling vision, which is what the most passionate talent needs to perform their best and why consumer web companies often have an advantage attracting high-profile talent.

Passionate employees can see themselves working for a company out to “make the world more open and connected” than one trying to “transform how businesses operate so they can achieve their business vision”.

Vertical SaaS companies, on the other hand, can present a vision for a particular industry that resonates deeply with those who care about that space. There are fewer industries that draw a more passionate response from a broader swath of the population than education. Almost everybody has a view and almost everybody would jump at the opportunity to have a significant positive impact on the space.

Historically, executives have thought about “getting involved” in education through board affiliations or philanthropy in the twilight of their careers. That perspective is changing as more talented individuals earlier in their careers are realizing that they can build successful, highly lucrative careers while impacting a space they care deeply about (vs. say, hawking daily deals).

Advantage #2: Public interest

Education stories are mainstream. The challenges surrounding student debt, international competitiveness, unemployment and equality are problems that affect everyone, not just those in the education space. If you’re building a company to address these problems in an innovative way, the world wants to know about it and you will get noticed. Outside of Silicon Valley (maybe even inside), I’m willing to bet that more people have heard of Salman Khan than Peter Thiel.

This is a huge advantage ed-tech companies have over every other kind of tech startup.

Like it or not, access to capital, talent, customers and partners is directly affected by the public perception of you and your company in the media. Those who know how to tell their stories appropriately have access to an unlimited amount of public interest coverage and a passionate audience who can’t get enough.

Advantage #3: Market timing

The education system is under attack from all angles. Education outcomes aren’t keeping pace with the requirements of today’s job market. Budgets are continually slashed. Higher education institutions are struggling to remain relevant and justify rising tuition fees in the face of open, free educational resources. The last industry that experienced these kinds of pressures was traditional media, when technology companies who were on the winning side of the disruption turned into billion-dollar businesses seemingly overnight.

If those within the established institutions are smart (and we would hope they are), they will embrace technology as the catalyst for much-needed change. If they ignore the disruption, they’ll face a similar fate to newspapers and radio. Either way, it’s a good sign for those starting companies in the space.

Advantage #4: Word of mouth spread through the industry

Unlike vertical SaaS providers, EdTech companies’ customers don’t compete with each other. Universities are certainly rivals in athletics and are always looking to improve their brand among prospective students, but for the most part, education institutions are collaborative and cooperative. This is even more true in K-12.

If an instructor or an institution discovers a product that improves learning outcomes, they want to spread the word to their colleagues and peer institutions. At the most, they’ll want to be identified as the forward-thinking school which “pioneered” this technology, but overall they’re happy to share their knowledge with others. This is a unique dynamic which exists in education that other enterprise tech companies can’t really benefit from.

Advantage #5: Competitive advantage of outside perspective

Right now, education technology is much less competitive than consumer or enterprise tech. The bar to build better products, execute better and displace incumbents is relatively low.

Historically, many EdTech companies have been started by passionate educators, but haven’t always had business or technical leaders on the founding teams. Their competitive advantages were institutional lock-in and long-term contracts. These structural barriers are disappearing in education, in the same way that the cloud and consumerization of enterprise technology shook the foundation of enterprise software incumbents.

These startups need perspectives from outside the education industry if they’re going to be truly disruptive. Many of the VCs who made great returns on “old world” education companies are too focused on pattern recognition, and they end up chasing after (or worse, forcing their newer companies to adopt) broken business models. Companies rely on their board for outside perspective.

Rather than looking in the rear view mirror to see what worked in education in the past, they should be checking their blind spots to see what tactics worked in other industries which may work for us. Having Gordon Ritter from Emergence on our board has allowed us to learn from what worked at Salesforce, Yammer, Box, and Veeva as they scaled their businesses, and that gives us a competitive advantage over education incumbents who are steeped in their ways.

The investors who get significant exposure to this space in the coming years will see some big wins, while those who continue to shy away will miss one of the biggest opportunities of the decade.

photo credit: sciencesque via photopin cc

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The founders of Silicon Valley-based accelerator Imagine K12 believe we are amid a radical transformation in education.

Rather than teaching in batches, educators are looking for ways to help individual students learn. Imagine K12 believes one of its startups will produce the next great innovation in instruction.

And if the opportunity to resolve some of the U.S. educational system’s biggest problems isn’t enough, startups in the upcoming class will receive $100,000 in initial funding (up from $20,000).

I caught up with ImagineK12′s founders Tim Brady and Geoff Ralstan in the hours prior to the announcement of the accelerator’s funding boost and the establishment of a new “Start Fund” backed by big shots like LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Y Combinator founder Paul Graham.

Here’s what they had to say about the challenges of bringing disruptive new tech to American kindergartens and high schools — and how they answered one pretty big claim.

Imagine K12 founder Tim Brady

VentureBeat: Why did you decide to increase the initial investment? 

Tim Brady: We need more great hackers and entrepreneurs in the space. Now we can give them more runway so they can get the traction they need to really be attractive to seed capital investors. The funds will give entrepreneurs enough time to get the right market fit so it can take root in the educational system.

VentureBeat: The media has accused ed-tech accelerators of failing to communicate with their real customers: teachers. Do you agree? 

Brady: We take that kind of criticism extremely seriously. We haven’t heard it that often from our about our companies. We have a teacher in residence position and an educator day event. If teachers don’t like the product, they won’t download it from the Internet. We have products that are used in hundreds of thousands of classrooms, which is replacing bad software sold by big sales forces to a superintendents’ office.

VentureBeat: Charter schools have a reputation for being early adopters for tech. Is this still the case?

Imagine K12′s Geoff Ralstan is the former chief product officer for Yahoo.

Geoff Ralston: The charter schools have been great partners to sit down and talk to us. But they aren’t the only folk we are talking to, and not the only ones using our products. Even a few years ago, it was much more likely that a charter school would be more interested. But there has been a shift. Public schools are highly motivated to try new things — at least in the Bay Area.

VentureBeat: Are teachers increasingly the early adopters? 

Ralston: In the past it’s been top-down — teachers haven’t had a say in what’s being developed. But the educators are increasingly adopting these products first. So we’ve gone to great lengths to educate them on what that means. And now, 10 percent of teachers are using our startups’ products.

VentureBeat: But what these startups fail? The fallout must be far worse when it comes to ed-tech. Are teachers going to be disillusioned when startups like Alleyoop don’t deliver?

Brady: It happens — even to the larger players. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt declared bankruptcy. Of course, continuity is an issue. But we are very upfront with our teachers and our companies. We are also careful with the startups we select so we can avoid the big flameouts.

VentureBeat: And now you claim the Imagine K12 graduates have developed tech used by 10 percent of U.S. teachers. That number seems shockingly high. 

Brady: The really cool thing about our space is that teachers talk to each other. They’ll say, “This is awesome, you should try it!” The same goes with parents, and kids who view these new tools as a key part of their academic success.

VentureBeat: Yes, many of us can attest to the flaws with the current education system. We’ve all been students at some point.

Brady: Absolutely, but that doesn’t necessary make you an expert. If you understand a pain-point, it’s just the starting point. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t fall into the trap of using personal experience as a guide to evolving the product. For this reason, we’re looking for unique backgrounds — a teacher who is also a coder, for instance. That’s one of our big recent changes; we are trying to bring the hackers into the space.

VentureBeat: Is the resurgence of interest in ed-tech bringing in the “wantreprenerus”? Or is it a good thing? 

Ralston: There is a lot more capital available, that’s for sure. And capital is a natural incentive to convince more great entrepreneurs to get into the space. But we are not creating throwaway consumer internet tools here — the end goal is to create better outcomes for children around the world.

VentureBeat: How about the competition? Are there too many ed-tech accelerators?

Brady: Whether there are too few or two many accelerators, the long-term goal remains unchanged. Technology can help us with some of the biggest problems in the current system. We designed our school system in the age of the industrial revolution; we need to move to more individualized instruction.

VentureBeat: On that note, what’s the big goal? What gets you up in the morning? 

Brady: We are at the beginning of a 20-year transformational period in education. Sixty-five percent of our kids only graduate from high school and don’t get the education they ought to get. The world is going to change radically — and we get to invent the great innovation that will make that happen.

Read the full news story on Imagine K12′s new fund.

Imagine K12 meetup image via @Photo.

Ed-tech accelerator Imagine K12 announced that it will increase its initial funding for startups from $20,000 to $100,000.

This additional funding is available from the newly established “Start Fund,” backed by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, Yahoo co-founder David Filo, Angela Filo, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, NewSchools Venture Fund, and GSV Asset Management.

Imagine K12 is focused on helping entrepreneurs develop technology for students from kindergarten to high school.

In just two years, Imagine K12 has established itself as one of the most well-respected programs in part because of its efforts to reach teachers. Thirty-nine startups have graduated from it, and these have gone on to raise approximately $30 million in funding.

Each startup accepted into the program will receive a $20,000 check from Imagine K12 and $80,000 from the Start Fund.

“The funds will give entrepreneurs enough time to get the right market fit so [they] can take root in the educational system,” said Imagine K12 founder Tim Brady by phone. ”And our startups have built products that are used in hundreds of thousands of classrooms.”

Brady claims that the accelerator’s alumni have launched products deployed by 10 percent of teachers. Some of the most well-known graduates from previous batches include behavior management software ClassDojo and open-data startup LearnSprout.

Interested in applying? Applications are now open for the official program, which begins in September in Palo Alto, Calif.

photo credit: @Photo. via photopin cc

Edtech startup LearnZillion just received $7 million to help teachers implement the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which define what students need to know at each grade level.

Adopted by 46 states, the Common Core State Standards communicate what students should know in subjects like mathematics, languages, and the arts. LearnZillion is a keen supporter of Common Core State Standards, and it is developing an online and offline community for teachers [above, at LearnZillion's TeachFest conference]. The website also offers a digital curriculum dubbed “By Teachers, For Teachers” as well as professional development tools for teachers, schools, and districts.

LearnZillion makes money by charging schools for access to its “premium” features, including personalized teaching insights and data analytics.

The company claims it has 120,000 registered teachers and reaches approximately 1.4 million students and claims it’s adding about 5,000 new teachers every week. In future, CEO Eric Westendorf told me that the company will release a mobile application for teachers to help them transition to the Common Core.

“Teachers are very busy so new products must save them time,” he said in an interview. “We are working hard to make sure teachers can engage without a huge up-front commitment of time [but] we need to do even better.”

Common Core Standards have been heralded by some teachers and policy makers as a means to standardize tests and boost student achievement. However, The Bookings Institute recently issued a report arguing that they will not help with student performance. The Washington Policy Center argues that this “one size fits all” approach to education will stifle innovation. But for now, it’s the accepted wisdom.

The funding was led by DCM with participation from O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund, Calvert Social Investment Fund, and D.C. Community Ventures.

Apple doesn’t really talk much about iTunes U, its educational content service powered by iTunes on iOS devices. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a success.

Apple announced today that iTunes U has reached 1 billion content downloads, a sign that schools around the world are embracing Apple’s edtech model. Educators can use iTunes U to collect course materials and make them easily available to students.

Apple released a new version of the iTunes U iOS app in early 2012, along with its new iBooks digital textbook initiative. The company’s approach to edtech still isn’t foolproof — it depends on students having expensive iPads, which makes it impractical for schools and students without money to burn. Still, for those with access to Apple’s ecosystem, it’s an easy way to easily offer course materials to students. (It’s definitely simpler than photocopying large packets of material, forcing students to buy plenty of expensive books, and making students keep track of a wide variety of physical course material.)

Apple says 60 percent of iTunes U app downloads (which I’m reading as just the app), originate from outside the U.S. — it’ll be interesting to see if that gap continues to grow for international educators.

Back in August 2010, when iTunes U was still something accessed through iTunes on Macs and PCs, Apple announced it reached 300 million content downloads. It looks like the move towards iOS devices has made iTunes U even more popular with educators.

Apple is competing with traditional education content services like BlackBoard, as well as digital textbook companies like Inkling, but it remains the only company that offers both a home for course materials and a way to build digital textbooks.

Kickboard, a web-based school analytics platform, has closed a $2 million funding deal, the startup announced today.

Kickboard allows teachers to collect, analyze, and share student information in one centralized place. This eliminates a lot of the switching between other document software, databases, and test grade collection databases. The end result is hopefully a better picture of what each student needs in terms of teaching and nurturing. A tool like this actually makes a lot of sense, especially for teachers of younger students who don’t always learn the same way and may need different teaching styles. (And as someone who grew up as an ADHD child in Tennessee, I can attest to learning a hell of a lot differently than other students.)

The startup is the latest in a growing number of companies using big data for positive change. In this case, Kickboard can help individual students as well as improve the teaching methods of an entire school by pooling data to show broad analytics. Over 200 schools across the country are currently using Kickboard’s platform.

“In a performance-based culture, it is imperative that teachers, students, and families have greater visibility into all elements of student performance so that they can take informed, decisive action and improve student outcomes,” said Kickboard founder and CEO Jennifer Medbery in a statement.

New Markets Venture Partners and Two Sigma Ventures led the funding round. The company said it plans to use the additional capital to hire more employees and increase product development. Founded in 2009, the New Orleans-based startup has raised a total of $2.8 million in funding to date.

Textbooks image via  Shutterstock

Ed-tech startup Coursera has announced that 29 more schools will offer courses on its online platform, bringing its total to 62 schools.

This latest round of expansion clearly demonstrates that the interest in open access education is a very global phenomenon,” said cofounder Daphne Coller (pictured, top left at a meetup) in an interview with VentureBeat. “We are excited about the opportunity to offer a much more international educational experience to Coursera students.”

The latest colleges and universities to sign up include Northwestern University, City University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, IE Business School in Spain, and New York’s Rochester University. Sixteen of the 29 are outside the U.S.

Santiago Iñiguez, dean of IE Business School, said the institution will offer courses on Coursera in a few short weeks. “The blended programs and multimedia materials of IE Business School provided an ideal synergy with Coursera’s portfolio of MOOCs [massive open online courses] and related online programs, which are irreversibly transforming the landscape of higher education,” he said in a statement.

Over the next few months, Coursera will offer about 90 new courses taught in a variety of languages, including French, Spanish, and Chinese.

The company has seen nearly 2.8 million students enroll in its video courses from 33 institutions. But public confidence in MOOCs has not been consistent. Last week, Coursera had to suspend one of its online courses due to technical glitches and complaints.

However, the Silicon Valley-based company announced that students can now apply credit to their college degree for five of its free courses. The company was the first to gain a recommendation from the American Council on Education (ACE), ahead of such competitors as Udacity.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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A big step forward for online education: Coursera has announced that students can now apply credit to their college degree for five of its free courses. 

Public confidence in massive open online courses (“MOOC’s”) was hit hard this week when Coursera suspended one its online courses due to technical glitches and complaints. A bit ironically, as GigaOm points out, the course in question was intended to teach students how to optimize online education. 

Coursera competitor Udacity recently announced a pilot program in conjunction with San Jose State University to offer online courses for college credit. But Coursera claims to be the first to gain a recommendation from American Council on Education (ACE). About 2000 colleges and universities in the U.S. currently accept this form of ACE approved credit.

The five courses approved today are four undergraduate credit courses:

• Pre-calculus from the University of California, Irvine.
• Introduction to Genetics and Evolution from Duke University.
• Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach from Duke University.
• Calculus: Single Variable from the University of Pennsylvania.
• Algebra from the University of California, Irvine (but only as a vocational credit).

Students that complete one of these classes can request a transcript with credit recommendations. Credit is granted at the discretion of the institution. 

“We are excited by this opportunity to experiment with new ways of using our MOOC [massive open online] courses to extend our educational reach and provide credit for students who would not otherwise have access to our faculty,” said Duke Provost Peter Lange in a statement.

The company revealed that it will continue to push for more of its courses to be transferrable as college credit. Daphne Koller, Coursera’s cofounder, said that by adding these credential options, they hope to “increase the rate of degree completion and reduce the burden of college debt.”

Coursera’s founders — former Stanford professors — expect to experience their fair share of ups and downs as the technology evolves. In a recent interview with VentureBeat, Coursera’s founder Andrew Ng said it has been a “slow road”, but the company’s success proves online education is “no passing fad.” Universities like Brown and Duke currently offer free courses on Coursera.

Coursera has raised over $22 million in funding to date from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates, among others.

This is a guest post by Dale Stephens, founder of the “UnCollege” movement 

When I look back at my education, I am struck by how little I was taught. This is the opposite experience of Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, who dismissed the idea of self-directed education, in the article, “Education is the work of teachers, not hackers.“

My experience is fairly unique — I left school at the age of twelve — but I’m not the only 20-something to forgo traditional higher-education. One need only look at the rise of massive open online courses (MOOC) over the course of the past year. Stanford’s experiment in the Fall of 2011 gave birth to two companies: Udacity and Coursera. Not be outdone, Harvard and MIT created Edx, a partnership to bring online learning to millions of people. Other universities across the country and around the world are following suit.

Wieseltier argues that this is merely “information”, meaning that the course isn’t accredited and there’s no physical forum for discussion and debate. This is true, but once the Ivy League relinquishes its hold on information, anything is possible. And people are already doing amazing things after completing free, online courses — this African teen built his own DJ set using knowledge he learned online.

This is just one example of what can happen once you set content free. The impact will be even more powerful once we unbundle the other parts of school that are currently packed together — namely the community and accreditation.

Learning communities outside school are already being created. Around the world, there are more than 1,200 “Hackerspaces” that have created in the last four years, places where people come together to work on projects and share knowledge. Companies like General Assembly and TechShop are creating real-world spaces for people to learn in formal environments outside school.

The prestige of a college degree — that guarantee of a job if you spend four years in lectures — is a fallacy. Wieseltier would point out that the BLS statistics show that college graduates are less likely to be unemployed than those without degree. That is true, for those over twenty-five.

For those under twenty-five with college degree, 22.5 precent are unemployed and another 22 percent are working jobs that don’t require their degree. In other words, even if you go to college, odds are that only 50 percent of the time your degree will yield you a job. Even if you get employed, you’ll likely be saddled with $27,000 in debt.

The picture of youth in America is not pretty. We need to make some changes when it comes to education. Wieseltier critiques my book, Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will as a “campaign against allegedly useless study”. I believe I am on a crusade for honest, rational thinking.

The problem is not that people are reading useless books, but rather that they are doing so without thinking, and doing so while spending exorbitant amounts of money. If you think about education as an investment, which I feel we must do in this economy, then how can you justify spending four years and $100,000 to end up right where you started?

If you’re looking for a return on investment (and to learn skills that are required in today’s job market), some startups may have the answer. DevBootCamp, for example, offers a 10-week apprenticeship-like training program for people who want to be professional software developers. 88 percent of their graduates have job offers starting at an average of $79,000 a year after their program. The program costs $12,200. That is a much better investment than college.

The ways that I describe technology impacting education are not far-flung hypothetical scenarios. They are happening right now. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking university courses on the internet. Those people are using sites like Meetup.com to form real-world study ground and exchanging knowledge. They are finding mentors. They are building online portfolios to showcase their work. They are using sites like StackExchange to connect that work to the needs of employers.

I don’t wish universities to disappear, but if academics like Wieseltier don’t take note of the rapid changes in education, they will soon be out of jobs. And that, I think we can all agree, would be a tragedy.

Dale Stephens is the founder of UnCollege.org, author of Hacking Your Education to be published on March 5th from Penguin, and 2011 Thiel Fellow. 

Image credit: jocic // Shutterstock 

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Our memories are seemingly random. Why do we retain certain facts and not others?

For centuries, neuroscientists and academics have struggled to pinpoint the “optimal moment of review,” the moment in which we’re most likely to memorize information. As it turns out, the best time to review a fact is the second or two before we’re bound to forget it.

The problem is that calculating this moment for a vast stream of information that we encounter at different times is impossible for the human brain. But a computer can do it.

Launching in beta to consumers today, Cerego is a memory management company that spun out of a privately-funded think tank. The cloud-based technology was developed over the course of a decade by a team of neuroscientists and tech entrepreneurs with a mission to improve the efficiency of the human learning process.

“Our system speaks to the semantic memory: how to store information and take it out,” said Andrew Smith Lewis, Cerego co-founder and executive chairman, in a phone interview. “We can figure out precisely what you know and don’t know.”

Lewis said the long-term goal is for the technology to be ubiquitously used in school and our professional lives, and it’s available to consumers for free. To that end, Cerego competes with Mindsnacks, a San Francisco-based company that makes popular mobile learning games.

The system works by constantly measuring your memory on factual items from French verbs to art history. It will predict your optimal review time with each item, and the system improves as you use it.

The company has received a total of $28 million in funding from private individuals. Advisors include Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy and Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab.

Cerego has been in business since 2000. With today’s beta launch, its founders are positioning it as an ed-tech company — it’s a business-to-consumer play. However, thus far, they have received the bulk of their revenues from businesses. In Japan, businesses have been using an earlier version of the technology for years to help employees learn English. Yahoo Japan is a partner, and Softbank is the largest client, with 20,000 employees on-boarded to the system.

Cerego makes money by charging corporate users for access to its tool, which is effective for the purposes of professional development. Lewis said the company is experimenting with new revenue models like a subscription-based system (users will be charged to access premium “power-content” on the site), and by inviting third party publishers to contribute to Cerego’s database for a small fee.

Keen to pick up a new skill?  Click here for immediate beta access, then sign in with Facebook or Twitter, and sample some of these cool courses:

• Wine Tasting Terminology: http://cerego.com/goals/720304
• American Sign Language: http://cerego.com/goals/719993
• Espresso Brewing Terminology: http://cerego.com/goals/720258
• Brain Anatomy: http://cerego.com/goals/720155

Check out the video on how it works here.

Brain image via VLADGRIN // Shutterstock

Udemy, the online learning platform that offers videos and live lectures from hundreds of expert instructors, has closed its second round of venture capital funding.

The company website features over 5,000 courses on technology and business, as well as lifestyle, the arts, and sports. In the month of October alone, Udemy added 400 courses.

The courses are diverse: On Udemy, you can learn how to develop mobile applications, build pivot tables on Excel, or master the basics of photography. Simply type in a subject you’re interested in, and surf the results. As you might expect, the most popular courses are taught by renowned business leaders, such as Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer or Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

There are both free and paid courses, so teachers can earn money. In 2011, the top 10 instructors garnered $1.65 million in combined sales. Last week, the company announced that one in four of its instructors will close out the year with over $10,000.

In an interview, Udemy CEO Eren Bali said the goal is to “democratize education.” For Bali, this means enabling the top experts to teach any student anywhere in the world and reduce the price point so anyone can receive high-quality education.

Related: Read our summary of a panel where Udacity and Khan Academy’s CEOs called for disruption in higher ed.

“To do this, though, we need to be big,” said Bali. The company will use the funds to drive its marketing efforts so more instructors and students sign up. They will also use the funds to build out the course catalog to include more adult education classes as well as add accredited and certified content. To accelerate the development of the mobile product, Bali brought on a new COO and President, Dennis Yang. Previously, he was the senior vice president of operations at 4INFO and has been an executive advisor to Flipboard.

The founding team does not intend to replace higher education, but Bali hopes Udemy’s inexpensive courses will “force traditional educational institutions [to] lower their prices.” On Udemy, prices typically hover at a few hundred dollars, and most of the popular courses are free.

Bali explained that education-technology startups like Coursera and Khan Academy have stimulated investors’ interest in this space. However, Udemy is doing it a little differently by enabling anyone with expertise in a subject area to moonlight as a teacher. “In 10 years, we believe every expert in the world will be teaching online,” said Bali.

The Series B round was led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from Lightbank, MHS Capital, and Learn Capital, bringing the company’s total funding to $16 million.

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This is a guest post by entrepreneur Miro Kazakoff

Somewhere, this year, a university hired its last tenured professor. That’s because of the economic pressures on higher education. Next year, a university will hire its last faculty member expected to teach in a classroom. And that’s because of the technological pressures on higher education.

Technology won’t kill university education any more than television killed radio, but it will transform it. While your kids will still go to college, and it will still cost a fortune, their study time will look radically different than it does today. Even though our university classroom teachers may be replaced with robots, websites or direct-to-brain Ethernet jacks, on-campus higher education will still have a place that no Massive Open Online Course will supplant in our lifetime.

To understand why the future won’t kill college, it helps to remember how technology has already transformed education.

Content is approaching free, and we don’t need armies of faculty to curate it

In the middle ages, getting “access to content” was a physical ordeal. Books had to be copied by hand and gathering knowledge required physically getting your hands on one of those precious tomes. Then came the printing press, broadcast media, and then the Internet. With each wave, creating and distributing content has gotten cheaper and more democratic.

The first European universities were created in those same middle-ages and still act as physical repositories of knowledge. I remember a time when even a textbook was hard to get your hands on outside of a University Bookstore. One way professors contributed to learning was simply to curate their syllabi and point students at the right books. There was no path to one of those syllabi with out buying a semester of tuition.

Now you can combine a course list with a couple of searches for syllabi and assemble your own do-it-yourself Biomedical Engineering curriculum at home.

Teaching is quickly following content towards free

The signs came slowly at first: mail order classes that moved to email, YouTube videos of every cooking technique imaginable, community college and online schools experimenting with distance learning for busy professionals.

Then Bill Gates wrangled a Ted Talk for an unlikely YouTube star and the power of education technology to transform the classroom was on the lips of every venture capitalist I know. Salman Khan’s short math videos were already getting millions of hits, and since then the pace of growth in the ed-tech space has been exploding.

Now we’re seeing some big bets on how we can leverage technology to distribute classroom teaching in the same massive way the Internet distributes other content. The $37 million poured into Massive Online Open Courses like Coursera, and Udacity, as well as the non-profit collaboration of Harvard and MIT on edX may or may not mean that big money will be made, but it does mean that a bunch of smart people are going to be working on cracking the code to delivering better teaching online to more people at lower cost.

History provides a pretty reliable guide that cheaper access to better information that helps people improve their economic outlook in life is likely to have widespread appeal.

Universities have changed focus before

Delivering content, even via exceptional teaching, has never been all (or even most) of a university’s value proposition. No university cites its mission as: “efficiently transmitting knowledge to barely post-pubescent walking balls of hormones with ferocious intellects.” Universities seem themselves as creating people and citizens.

They provide students a social environment to form connections with other students. The bonds formed between students are part of what makes a university education so valuable and are hard to replicate online.

Delivering experiences has become a larger focus of schools. You see this as graduate MBA programs shift away from classroom teaching. Top schools like Harvard Business School, MIT and Wharton have moved their curriculum towards personalized coaching, group projects and experiential learning that overlaps the classroom and the outside world. That’s what has kept these programs relevant (or at least desirable) long after anyone can buy an HBS case study online, and that’s what will we’ll see filter down to the undergrad level.

So, the new job of universities will be the same as the old job: to primarily credential students rather than just teach them. Teaching won’t die, it will just morph into individualized instruction and experiences that prepare students for the world. Professors will become coaches and gateways to those experiences. And that great teaching you heard about on the campus tour? Forget about it. You can get it cheaper online.

 Miro Kazakoff is the CEO of Testive, a Techstars education technology company focused on adaptive technologies and personalized learning.

Their test prep tool, SAT Habit, generates customized student plans that help students improve their SAT scores faster. He lectures at MIT Sloan School of Management where he received his MBA.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

This is a guest post by Troy Williams, President of Macmillan New Ventures

The past five years have seen a tremendous boom in education technology (“ed-tech”) startups that are pushing the boundaries of online and hybrid content delivery and learning experiences.

Unsurprisingly, investments in education technology have more than quadrupled from the time I founded my first edtech startup in 1998.

The result has been the emergence of a new teaching model, one that shifts content delivery beyond the walls of the classroom. We’re seeing big advances in adaptive learning platforms from established players like Knewton and upstarts like Brainscape and Cerego; YouTube and Sal Kahn are looking for ways to produce more instructional videos; and online course builders like Udacity, Coursera, and Peer2Peer University are democratizing instruction by way of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).

The development of online, offline and hybrid learning environments, along with the spread of the flipped-classroom model, all fueled by the tremendous growth in ed-tech dedicated capital forces us to reevaluate student and instructor interactions when they are physically in the classroom.

The question now is: Considering all the recent advancements that push learning outside classrooms, what new innovations are being developed to help teachers engage students from within classrooms?

Embedding real-time data into the classroom

While the flipped-classroom has its advantages, it requires knowledge of what students have learned or accomplished in their time outside of class.

A common solution is to give a quick poll or quiz at the beginning of class to focus students’ attention on the material at hand and provide teachers with a sense of what the class understands, instantly, before in-class activity begins.

Devices take this one step further. Student Response Systems encourage engagement and provide instant feedback about learning and understanding. Instructors can ask a question at any time during a presentation or activity and students now have the ability to key in their response. Results can then quickly be displayed immediately to the instructor or the entire class.

Classic examples of these systems are Turning Technologies and Promethean ActiveExpression2, while newer companies like Class Dojo and Clever are doing some innovative work to make it easier to share data and record real-time feedback.

Devices and response systems are just one application of real time data applied in classroom. For example, a statistics class at UCLA used a response system to create an active learning environment by turning student responses into a data set for students to experience statistical concepts of distribution and variability. Real time data created in classroom, in this case, made the lesson more tangible for students while providing detailed engagement data back to the instructor.

New devices in the classroom give both student and instructor data to enrich the activity at hand. As devices permeate the classroom, students are primed to having more meaningful peer-to-peer interactions.

Classroom devices encourage peer learning

Teachers that leverage new classroom devices, such as an iPad or other tablets, can foster greater student-to-student interactions. These devices can be shared and passed around the classroom easily—they don’t require a keyboard or mouse ‘driver’ and keep students focused on the discussion and not the device itself.

We know that active inquiry, authentic debates and peer conversations are some of the best drivers for increasing student understanding. Even though hybrid and online learning environments do their best to build peer interaction and learning, nothing can quite replace the benefits of having students collaborating in a room together.

For example, question and answer services like Piazza allow both students and instructors to ask and answer questions, capturing and preserving the buzz around an in-class activity on smartphones and tablets. Digital textbooks from Inkling now can let students share notes and highlights from within their experience, and polling students [there’s a drafting bust here] during a lesson can serve as a jumping off point for small group debates or prompt discussions.

A summer program in North Carolina aimed at preventing student drop out is a standout example I’ve seen recently. Administrators equipped students with tablets and video production apps and tasked the students with creating a visual story over seven weeks. Devices combined with innovative curriculum help students improve their writing skills and reduces the risk of students leaving the program. Check out students using ShowMe to create lessons to share with their peers, or Storyrobe to create digital stories.

In addition to driving peer interactions and learning, devices can be used to virtualize activities and simulate demonstrations.

Simulations and interactive demonstrations can help

Typically, physical in-classroom demonstrations are too cost- and time-intensive to happen very often. Alternatively, many computer based simulations relegate students to a keyboard, mouse and screen, limiting peer interaction.

However, devices like 3D projectors and motion capture technology are becoming more widely assessable and can bring simulations and demonstrations to life by making them interactive and accessible to the entire class. For example, instructors can use 3D projectors to demonstrate a biology lesson by explaining anatomical structures and demonstrate physiological functions of organs, such as the heart. Students and instructors can revolve the image of the organ and expose cross sections to reveal different blood flows.

Probably the most well known example of these technologies becoming mainstream is the Xbox Kinect. Real Illusion’s iClone is used by teachers and students to simulate scientific principles like planetary motion, physics and machinery dynamics.

In another example, a teacher could set up an intentionally incorrect simulation of a chemical, mechanical, or biological process and ask students to manipulate it with their hands (using motion capture devices) until they corrected the error.

One high school in Cardiff, Wales has students use motion capture to conduct a virtual orchestra by waving a conductor’s baton, and learn foreign languages by moving parts of the body. Not only are the concepts brought to life in front of the entire class, but students can use the devices to put their skills to practice in a way that engages tactile and visual learners.

3D motion and video capture can also change the way distance learning is delivered and experienced. Check out this video of students attending a 3D virtual class where they can control their virtual images with gestures and their natural body motion.

How can we maximise classroom interaction?

Today’s classrooms are becoming truly interactive; in fact, they’re keeping pace right alongside the shift toward the flipped classroom. The list of examples goes on—and I encourage you to include other strategies in the comments.

Of course, none of this works without teachers, nor do these examples replace good teaching. But as it turns out, teachers aren’t as averse to using digital devices like tablets, clickers, and smartphones as you might think.

But this is more than just a “back to the classroom” call.

It’s about addressing the opportunities of the physical classroom and taking advantage of the invaluable time students and teachers have together. Imagine how powerful this can be: Empowering our students when they are in and out of the classroom to accelerate learning. We need is both of these learning models to address the real-world needs of our students and schools.

Troy Williams is President of Macmillan New Ventures, where he is responsible for identifying emerging technologies and trends that will have a major impact on student performance and outcomes. From 1998 to 2007, Troy was President and CEO of Questia Media, Inc., an early online electronic book offering that he founded and sold to Cengage Learning. 

Troy is an adjunct professor at NYU, where he teaches the capstone thesis course on starting new businesses in the Masters of Publishing program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He currently resides in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Top image courtesy of Kiselev Andrey Valerevich, Shutterstock

This is a guest post by professor, Reynol Junco

We’re in the middle of an Educational Technology (“ed-tech”) startup boom.

Research by GSV Advisors shows a sharp increase in investments in education companies almost doubling between 2007 and 2011 to $930 million. Data from the National Venture Capital Association shows that investment in ed-tech companies has almost tripled between 2002 and 2011.

It’s no surprise that the number of ed-tech startup companies has grown exponentially and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

The market is flooded with these startups and clearly, there is a great deal of interest from venture capital firms.

Many ed-tech startups typically build their product because one of the founders had a particular issue in college that they think can be addressed with a new technology or by building an education version of an existing technology.

For instance, a founder might think “I used to forget to bring my chemistry book to class so why don’t I develop a cool app that automatically texts students right before a class where they need a book?” (Please note that I did not base this example on a real startup; however, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a product existed). Other ed-tech startups have an idea they think should result in improved student outcomes and they run with it.

I hate to break it to you…

This may come as a surprise to ed-tech companies, but you’re not going to invent the next big thing by shooting in the dark. Without knowing the research on how students learn and develop as well as the literature on how technology affects student outcomes, the chances of your startup magically creating student success are almost nonexistent.

Indeed, it’s not the technology that generates learning, but the ways in which the technology are used.

Ed-tech startups rarely, if ever, talk with educators about designing their product. You’d be surprised at the number of emails I get asking me to comment on a product after it has been conceptualized, built, and tested. I have dubbed these messages “tell us how cool our product is” emails.

Startups in other fields don’t behave this way. Imagine a genomics startup that didn’t talk to medical researchers and/or didn’t base their products on research in the biotech field. Such a company would never exist, let alone be funded by a venture capital firm.

Yet, in this new boom investors are more than happy to fund an ed-tech startup whose employees have never bothered to read a single piece of educational research. My fellow academic rebel Audrey Watters famously commented about a $2.5 million investment in Codecademy, “Wow, bullshit badging and shitty pedagogy wins the day in ed-tech investing.”

Educators and researchers who know about how students learn know that there is nothing special about Codecademy. The flashing lights and pretty buttons fool the venture capital firms and foundations that invest in these kinds of startups. Since funders also know next to nothing about how students learn, of course these ideas sound amazing.

Where’s the data?

Lastly, there is the issue of adoption of new technologies by educational institutions. Higher education faculty and administrators are already distrustful of startups because there is inherent skepticism about for-profit ventures. Ed-Tech companies have no data showing that their product does what they say it does. Indeed, in their Unleashing the Potential of Educational Technology report the U.S.’s Council of Economic Advisers politely wrote, “It is difficult for producers of these technologies to demonstrate the effectiveness of their products.”

It’s actually not that difficult to demonstrate effectiveness, it’s just that startups have been unwilling and/or do not have the expertise to do so. Having evidence is crucial in convincing educators to adopt a new technology — don’t tell them that your new technology is effective in improving student learning, show them.

Here are some suggestions for getting it right:

1.  Collaborate with an academic when developing your product. You don’t have to have an educator or a researcher directing what you do, but at least get some input so that you know you are building a product that might have some utility.
2. Assess your outcomes. In business-speak this usually means “provide financial figures to show you are being successful;” however, what you must provide to educators are data that show that using your product does what you say it does. Did you develop an app that’s supposed to increase student lecture attendance? Then design a study with your academic collaborator to evaluate differences in attendance rates between app users and nonusers. Remember, data are the lingua franca of academic circles.
3. Refine your technology based on assessment data. This goes beyond bug fixes and UI design. In collaboration with your academic collaborator, you’ll likely discover ways to make your product more robust in doing what you want it to do. Recently, my colleagues and I published a paper showing that using Twitter to continue discussions outside of class was positively related to student engagement and learning; however, using Twitter as a back channel for in-class discussions was not. If your outcome studies don’t yield a positive effect, at least you’ll have some great data with which to refine your product.
4. Publish what you find. No matter what you believe about the current academic publishing process, the academic culture values results presented through peer-reviewed academic publications more than blog posts, presentations, and “white papers” (a phrase I absolutely despise, but that’s a topic for another day). Not only will you have clout in academic circles when you publish data, your academic collaborator will have an additional benefit of working with you (another publication) that will help them in their tenure and promotion process.
5. Learn about the culture of academia and help academia learn about the culture of startups. This will help you understand institutional resistance to new technologies in education as well as help you understand how to best approach your new academic partners.

Reynol Junco is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He researches the impact of social technologies on college students. Follow Rey on Twitter and read about his research on his blog.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not reflect in any way those of the institutions to which he is affiliated.

[Top image credit: wavebreakmedia ltd/Shutterstock]

A new nonprofit search engine dubbed “Gooru“ announced today an ambitious plan to bring personalized learning to K12 education.

Gooru, a Silicon Valley company, was founded by Yahoo India’s former CTO (think education-focused Google without the ads). It is teaming up with Silverback Learning, a Boise, Idaho-based tech startup founded by teachers, to identify students’ needs and offer them relevant online learning materials.

Silverback is the developer of Mileposts, a cloud-based management system that allows teachers and administrators to organize and access student data. It will integrate with Gooru’s search engine to pinpoint the educational areas where students are struggling, and suggest the most appropriate free learning materials.

“Teachers are focused on maximizing student education in the classroom, and therefore are commonly time-challenged to search for and select the best matched educational materials for each and every student based on their individually assessed needs,” said CEO Prasad Ram, who relocated to Palo Alto, Calif. to develop the company.

Prior to founding Gooru, Ram worked in senior-level research roles at Yahoo, Google, and Xerox Parc.

“Now more than ever, the educational industry is in need of knowledge and talent to innovate and create new technologies,” Silverback CEO Jim Lewis told VentureBeat.

What’s particularly interesting is that through Gooru, students and teachers can access resources that are aligned with Common Core State Standards, the initiative to bring diverse state-by-state curricula into alignment by 2014/15.

Gooru is still in beta and currently focuses on online resources for learning, such as teacher videos, digital textbooks, quizzes, and games. Its search engine taps into the growing proliferation of digital learning resources (primarily 5th-12th grade math, science, and social science topics). In the future, it will expand to K12 reading, language arts, and additional subjects.

Image via Shutterstock

Busuu, a startup with a free tool for you to master a new language, has pulled in about $5 million in its first round funding.

The company describes itself as a “social network for language learning” — it offers free and paid-for audio-visual courses in 12 languages, including Spanish and French. There is a free web version, as well as a well-designed mobile and tablet application.

What’s unique about this technology is that every user is a both tutor and a tutee. Using the video tool, anyone can converse with a native speaker, and practice their budding language skills. The company competes with a variety of online language learning tools that help users circumvent the textbook — popular choices are Mango Languages, TellMeMore (which caters to business users) and Living Language.

It makes money through its business English and Spanish courses that helps employees learn typical phrases used in professional situations. The startup plans to release more of these business language courses in the coming months.

The company is showing signs of impressive growth — it has more than 25 million users in over 200 countries and is gaining 40,000 new members per day. It is relocating from Madrid to London as it scales up its operations.

It will use the funding to invest in building out its core product, and to hire more people.

Brent Hoberman, Lastminute.com’s cofounder, will join the board of advisors. “We are looking forward to supporting the company in its future growth plans and shaking up the global language learning market,” said the travel entrepreneur in a statement.

The series A round was led by PROfounders Capital with participation from angel investors.

To keep their employees happy, companies are taking more of an active role in professional development and training.

Learn27 is an e-learning startup for the enterprise. Instead of targeting students and consumers like the majority of education technology, or “ed-tech,” companies (Coursera, Course Hero, Udemy, and so on), it’s targeting businesses that already spend vast sums on employee education, with the intent of serving as a better way to for large companies to inform their extensive workforce about new products and services.

Currently in beta, Learn27 is the newest product from Redmond, Wash.-based Social27, an events management service that launched in 2007. Parent company Social27 has pulled in $750,000 in funding, and it has some high-profile customers, including Microsoft and Dell. The founders, brothers Ike and Bally Singh, tell me that some of these large-scale companies are already signed up to use the new product.

The Singhs Learn27′s cofounders, relocated to the U.S. from India and worked at Microsoft for seven years before branching out to form their own company.

“[We] came upon the realization in 2007 that most enterprise apps will need to have social features built in to be effective and relevant,” Bally told me.

On Learn27, any organization can create a virtual learning center and offer relevant professional courses. Employees, partners, and customers can collaborate on courses and training sessions and upload text-based information or instructional videos. On the website, companies can also provide feedback and regular tests for their employees.

Similarly to companies like Badgeville, Learn27 employs basic gamification techniques like badges and points to keep employees motivated.

“Some of the elements of gamification around learning seem forced,” said Jason Krikorian, a General Partner at DCM. “The motivation is learning, it doesn’t need more around it.”

According to the founders, the major benefit for customers is that they will save time and money. This is a similar pitch that their competitors, such as Saba, Skillsoft, and Cornerstone OnDemand, make in the learning management systems (LMS) sector. Learn 27 also competes with established HR software providers SuccessFactors, acquired by SAP, and Oracle-owned Taleo, which have an LMS component.

Furthermore, it makes online education a more social experience.

“Learning online is usually in isolation, sitting at desk, with talking head in front of you,” said Bally. “But human beings have been learning in a collaborative fashion for centuries. We are taking e-learning from islotion to collaboration.”

Interested to learn more? Check out the video to learn more about how it works!

Learn27 is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Top Image via Shutterstock

First music, and now online education. Inspired by the success of Spotify, education technology startup, BenchPrep, has transformed into a subscription-based service.

Now, for $30 a month, you can access test prep (GRE, LSAT, SAT, and more) and a variety of courses on your laptop, smartphone or tablet device. The Chicago-based company, which launched in 2011, differs from a free online course service like Coursera, as its curriculum-based courses and test prep are supplemented by licensed textbook content from publishers, including McGraw Hill, O’Reilly Media, and Pearson.

BenchPrep will continue to offer its professional and certification courses on a per-course basis but has shifted to a subscription model for its courses tailored to high school, college, and grad students. As opposed to paying up to $100 for lifetime access to a single course, students can pay $30 a month to access hundreds of courses.

“This is more aligned to the education-as-a-service model,” said cofounder Ashish Rangnekar, meaning that users can dip in and out of learning at any time. Rangekar uses the example of a corporate finance student, who can go back and brush up on introductory finance in a few clicks.

According to Rangnekar, this has disruptive potential and may be an alternative to traditional higher education. “But in the near term, we see this as a complementary tool.” BenchPrep says it wants to replace basic entry-level college courses, so universities can focus on advanced or research-driven courses.

In the future, BenchPrep will expand its focus to tuition so students can get the extra help they need. It’s no surprise given that the competition, Course Hero, recently acquired Cardinal Scholars, a tutoring service. The startup is also investigating ways to use data and analytics to pinpoint gaps in users’ education and bring personalization to the learning experience. Read more about this trend here.

BenchPrep is used by 275,000 students. After raising a $6 million round from NEA and Revolution Ventures, it entered the lucrative textbook market and expanded its range of courses to include information technology, medicine, healthcare, finance, and insurance education. By the end of the year, it will add another 500 courses.

Clipping/bookmarking startup Citelighter is introducing a pro version of its service today that academics and anyone who does long-form written research will want to pay attention to.

Citelighter’s free version lets you save snippets of information from different websites while keeping a record of where it came from for future reference. You can then organize the auto-cited information into specific topics or share it with a community. Citelighter enables this through a browser addon available on Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

The new pro version brings the same functionality to a more research-oriented library of content, including millions of credible academic articles (from journals, magazines, newspapers, and transcripts) from about 6,500 sources over the last 25 years. That includes curated research topics and recommendations based on your search habits.

The company is partnering with Cengage Learning’s Questia writing resource for the pro version, which costs $10 per month.

“This move makes research a snappier and more natural process for students — we’re replacing the cumbersome method of back-and-forth multi-tab browsing and eliminating the necessity for multiple log-ins with one simple, integrated experience,” said Citelighter CEO Saad Alam in a statement.

The startup said it plans to add information capturing and citation support for PDFs in the near future. Founded in 2011, New York-based Citeligher is used by students in more than 1,400 schools in 50 countries, the company says.

Check out the demo video below to get a better understanding of how the service works.

Ed-tech is on fire! Desire2Learn, a startup that has bootstrapped for over a decade, has raised its first round of venture capital funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and OMERS Ventures, the venture arm of one of Canada’s largest pension fund managers.

The startup hails from Waterloo, Ontario, the birthplace of Research In Motion (RIM). With this announcement, the region is hitting the headlines for far more than its gadgets — according to Thompson Reuters, this is the largest ever investment in a Canadian software company.

Desire2learn (“D2L”), which specializes in cloud-based teaching tools, plans to use the funding to hire more staff and step up its marketing efforts. Since it launched in 2009, it has expanded to 700 customers and 8 million students, according to John Baker, Desire2Learn’s founder and chief executive officer.

In an interview with Reuters, Baker stressed that the company has been profitable for years, and had already approved plans to fill 170 open positions before the financing deal was completed.

“We have built a high-growth profitable organization over the years and we want to continue to see that continuing to grow,” he said.

NEA, the Menlo Park-based firm that specializes in early stage information technology companies, has bet big on education technology. In recent months, the venture firm recently poured millions into fast-growing online education site, Coursera, and educational social network, Edmodo. It recently raised a $2.6 billion fund, one of the biggest in venture capital history.

NEA partner Jon Sakoda said in a statement that with its software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, Desire2Learn is uniquely suited to meet the needs of the largest educational institutions in the world. ”As the $1 trillion-plus education market shifts from older legacy products to best-of-breed cloud solutions,” Sakoda said, “Desire2Learn is the clear market leader.”

Still, the startup faces strong competition from Blackboard Inc., an educational tools provider which sold to private investment group, Providence Equity Partners for $1.64 billion. In 2009, the companies resolved a heated three-and-a-half year legal suit over an e-learning patent. Moodle, an open source competitor, launched in 2002, claims to serve over 50 million users.

Read more here about the next multibillion dollar ed-tech company. 

Its headquarters will remain in Canada, but Desire2Learn has already extended its suite of tools to schools and colleges across the U.S..

E-Learning Image via Shutterstock

Hallway, a startup created by high-school students for high-school students, is launching to the public today with seed funding from Fortify.vc.

The founders view their technology as the next logical step in education, and this summer, they’ve been testing the private beta at schools across the Greater Washington region.

Hallway is a website where students submit questions about subjects, such as algebra or political science, that their peers can answer. The site uses a Reddit-style system to rate the most useful questions and answers, which then rise to the top.

The idea for the website originated when 17-year-old cofounder Sean McElrath created Facebook groups so students could chat about specific assignments. In just one of these groups, membership soared to more than 300 students and a single question garnered hundreds of responses.

McElrath said teenage founders have a competitive edge. “Every day we get to talk to students and get their feedback on how they’re using and what they like and don’t like about Hallway,” he told me. “That kind of perspective is rare in business and we don’t take it for granted.”

This summer, McElrath and his team shared office space at the Fort, a co-working spot in D.C. that is manned by Fortify.vc, an early stage investment fund. The Fort requires you to be 18 or older to have a key, so each morning, they would pop open their laptops and wait for the adults to arrive.

“Most of our days over the summer started with the team coding in the building’s stairwell,” said McElrath.

The rising seniors behind Hallway (McElrath, Cyrus Malekpour, Michael Chan, Darren Bolduc, Dennis Lysenko, and Allison Chou) met at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a selective public magnet school in Alexandra, Va.

To recruit this all-star team of “hackers, hustlers, and designers”, McElrath said he started an after-school club for students with business ideas, known as Invent Team. At the club, they connected with alumni and the wider entrepreneurial community in D.C., including mentor (and now cofounder) Evan Burfield, chairman of StartupDC, and Jonathon Perrelli, founding partner and seed-stage investor at Fortify.vc.

Read more about DC’s budding startup scene.

Hallway isn’t the first ed-tech startup to focus on community-building and homework help for students. Lore, a competitor, recently launched its own educational social network, and Edmodo recently pulled in $25 million in funding to bring social media to classrooms. However, the vast majority of competing sites begin by targeting college students — K-12 is merely an afterthought.

Hallway is available for free and connects with Facebook’s Open Graph, so students can answer questions posed by teens across the world.

Inspired by Khan Academy, the next wave of education technology startups are seeing opportunity in video.

At Y Combinator’s Demo Day today, two of the most seasoned entrepreneurs who presented were Ariel Braunstein, a member of the founding team behind Flip video cameras, and Scott Kabat, a marketing executive. “Video will do well in education,” Braunstein explained to the crowd of investors. “We can build a business out of it.”

Their new project, Knowmia, lets students watch thousands of educational videos to supplement traditional learning in the classroom.

We covered the company’s launch last week. Read more about Knowmia, a crowdsourced education service.

Scott Kabat, Knowmia’s cofounder at the YC Demo Day

Knowmia is taking a page out of Khan Academy’s book by offering video lectures, but embraces a more diverse range of subjects. Featured lessons on the website’s homepage include a run-down of the electoral college system and the basics of micro-evolution. Similar to Codecademy and Hacker School, Knowmia encourages its users to develop skills in mobile design, programming, and web development.

The site launched last week, and Braunstein reeled off some impressive figures to demonstrate signs of traction: The site has a growing library of 7,000 lessons from 900 teachers. At this early stage, Knowmia is experiencing 26 percent growth week over week.

Knowmia is geared toward high school kids, but Kabat told me at Demo Day that they plan to expand to K-12 education.

The startup AfterCollege is relaunching with a new matching algorithm to help seniors at 2,300 colleges and universities find the perfect entry-level job or internship. The company claims its technology was developed for graduating students to stand out in this fiercely competitive job market.

The new website is far more technical than the original, which was a simple online job board for college students that competed with sites like Indeed and CollegeBuilder. With its relaunch, the site is rebranding itself as a “LinkedIn for college students,” and users are encouraged to build out their professional profiles.

AfterCollege has a tough road ahead if it aims to take on LinkedIn and career networking startups like BranchOut that have spent years developing a presence at college campuses and marketing to students.

Most interesting is the built-in job search tools (a resume and cover-letter builder) and the patented-machine learning technology that matches seniors and recent grads with opportunities, based on their skill-sets, personal and academic interests.

The algorithm works by inputting a user’s academic affiliations (school, educational program, department, groups) and searching the database for relevant opportunities. AfterCollege has been around since 1999 and has been used by 3 million students, so it has access to a wealth of insider information.

For instance, the algorithm would know if the computer science department at San Francisco State has a different focus than the program at Stanford University. At Stanford, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) might be a strong interest for many students, while at SF State, students are skilled at Java or social applications — useful information for engineering recruiters and tech companies.

“The algorithm is also smart enough to distinguish between different programs that may be perceived to be similar,” explained AfterCollege CEO and founder Roberto Angulo. He started the company as a junior at Stanford. In 13 years, AfterCollege has connected students with some half a million jobs and internships.

AfterCollege also optimizes chances for student applicants as they can view jobs that graduates with similar skill-sets have succeeded in landing.

AfterCollege’s algorithm is a useful tool for employers, who fear they’ll miss out on the best candidates. No doubt, this will be a major money-making opportunity for AfterCollege; the site will likely begin selling targeted advertising to employers.

The startup raised its most recent round of funding in 2011, a sub-million-dollar sum from Flywheel Ventures.

Top Image via Shutterstock

These programs are attractive because they allow students to access higher education in a more affordable, convenient way. Online learning makes it possible for professors and students to share information and work together via collaborative workspaces, chat features, social networking, and mobile devices.

In the last decade, the online education market has grown significantly and actually outpaced university enrollment. The Babson survey found 6.1 million students—or 31 percent of total post-secondary enrollment—were taking at least one online college course in Fall 2010. In addition, data from Eduventures suggests that in 2010, nearly 14 percent of college students took more than 80 percent of their college courses online, and nearly 30 percent of graduate students are enrolled in online classes.

These numbers show the growing popularity of school-as-a-service programs. But which companies are leading the pack? While some have been offering online educational services for years, most have sprung up only recently. Check out a few of the top organizations making waves in SaaS:

1. 2tor

This startup is the first of its kind to offer full degree programs online at top-tier universities, and it comes highly funded. In April, 2tor’s total investments were just under $97 million. The service partners with universities to help them build, market, and manage their own online degree programs.

2tor creates programs only for top-tier universities and has partnered with just four universities to date — the University of Southern California, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Washington University in St. Louis, and Georgetown University. So far, 2tor has built six online master’s degree programs in business, nursing, social work, law, public administration, and education. 2tor’s exclusivity is allowing it to lead the way as a top-tier SaaS provider.

2. Academic Partnerships

Academic Partnerships works with post-secondary institutions to develop and market online programs, much like other SaaS startups. But this company is distinguished by the fact that it focuses exclusively on public institutions. In the past, public universities weren’t apt to adopt the online model, but in recent years, they’ve been using SaaS to reach a higher number of learners.

Since 2008, Academic Partnerships has partnered with nearly 25 public universities across the country, including Arkansas State University and Ohio University. Its web-based, public model stands to play a significant role in increasing access to higher education for all in the coming years.

3. Altius Education

Many American students enrolled at community colleges intend to transfer eventually to a larger institution to earn a bachelor’s degree, but only 20 percent ever actually do. Altius Education serves to address this problem. The institution is the co-owner (with Tiffin University) of a for-profit online degree program, Ivy Bridge College, which grants associate degrees in the hope that students will ultimately complete their education.

The company is filling the gaps in the community college model and was designed specifically to provide the necessary support structures to help students meet their goal of completing a four-year program. Altius currently graduates or transfers about 60 percent of its students, significantly higher than levels at community colleges. The organization’s online model, along with its counseling and support services, are allowing it to truly stand out in the SaaS space.

4. Deltak Edu

Founded 15 years ago, Deltak remains a long-standing provider of online education. The company offers its services to both public and private nonprofit universities. It uses market research to identify programs with a strong student demand that also meet the goals of partner institutions.

Since its founding, Deltak has partnered with 24 institutions and developed more than 90 online programs. The company has recently employed social media marketing tactics to draw in students, who then work with Deltak program managers to make an informed decision about which program fits their needs. The company’s 24-hour support services and overall commitment to efficiency show this SaaS company will likely enjoy continued growth in the years to come.

As higher education becomes increasingly expensive, school-as-a-service opportunities are projected to grow significantly. Though they were scarce only a decade ago, these online opportunities are transforming the way students learn and progress.

Would you consider earning a degree online? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in a comment below.

Zev Gotkin is an entrepreneur and founder of L’Mala, a writing firm specializing in website content development, blogs, branding and social media promotion. He can be reached at wgotkin@gmail.com.

[Top image credit: jcjgphotography/Shutterstock]

It’s a fortunate man who can blow through $35 million one week, only to be offered $12 million the next.

For serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, this story sums up the ethos of Silicon Valley. The day he experienced the most monumental failure of his career, upon the demise of Rocket Science Games back in 1997, Blank bumped into an old friend at a Palo Alto coffee shop.

“His first words to me were, ‘Steve, when do you start your next company?’” Chuckling, he added, “Where else do you hear that?”

Instead of going into hiding to nurse his bruised ego, Blank did what he usually does. He started another company. Epiphany, an enterprise software tool for marketers. He took Epiphany to an initial public offering in the height of the dotcom boom, then netted $329 million for the company in 2005, when it was acquired.

“Here in Silicon Valley, a failed entrepreneur is called experienced,” said Blank.

In all, Blank has founded eight companies. He told me he would have kept going if it weren’t for his wife and kids: “You get plenty of chances in your career, but only one with your family.” Through multiple business cycles, he has watched the technology industry thrive, perish, and thrive again.

I caught up with Blank, now retired, for a 30-minute chat the day after Marissa Mayer was named CEO, to talk about the real Silicon Valley, warts and all.

Launching the Lean Launchpad Movement

The story of Blank’s comeback is also one of his favorites to share with students. These days, he teaches a class at Stanford, Berkeley, and Columbia on how to build companies with a small budget, and quick and dirty engineering skills. This kind of thinking, which he describes as his “contribution of the last five years”, was coined “Lean startup” by his most promising student from Berkeley, Eric Ries.

Read more about the top classes for entrepreneurship in the U.S. 

Blank has always believed that there is something fundamentally different about the culture of a startup. Most people still believe they are just smaller versions of corporations. That’s not the right way to think about startups.

“Large, established companies execute business models, startups search for them,” he explained. Blank told me this search is where the real fun begins.

Steve Blank with graduates of Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program

Credited as one of the founders of the “lean” startup movement, Blank’s star has risen. He has traveled the world to espouse his method for discovering and marketing to customers in a startup’s early stage.

Shortly after wrapping up our interview, I was cautiously approached by a bright-eyed engineer in a startup T-shirt. “Was that Steve Blank?” he asked. In Silicon Valley, my coffee companion — a white-haired man in horn rimmed glasses and jeans – is treated with the reverence that teenage boys ordinarily reserve for Jessica Alba.

For budding entrepreneurs, the barriers to entry are toppling down and that’s inspiring. Technology is enabling the lean-startup process by driving down the cost and talent required to develop new products.

Silicon Valley: no longer an old boys club

Silicon Valley has transformed itself during Blank’s career as an entrepreneur. In a region that prides itself on constant innovation, it’s not often enough that we take the time to reflect. According to Blank, the “old boys club of venture capital” has evolved to become a meritocracy. No investor worth their salt would turn down a meeting with a promising entrepreneur, regardless or their age, gender, or race.

“There were no sit-ins or strikes,” said Blank. “Society became equal because we realized we could make more money by investing in the brightest.”

Still, Blank said Silicon Valley is not gender-blind yet. Grimacing, he said the venture capital community has recently become embarrassed by its treatment of women, although he did not mention the recent Ellen Pao – Kleiner Perkins case.

According to Blank, his female role models, “Marissa, Meg, and Carly,” are changing the rules of the game. “I’ve always liked smart women, they have to be twice as smart as the men in the room,” he said. With a twinkle in his eye, he added, “luckily, I have two daughters.”

The rise of ed-tech

As an investor and board member, Blank has dipped his finger in the proverbial honey pot. Currently, he sits on the board of IMVU, an online entertainment site. He gets most animated, however, on the topic of education technology.

“We have been hacking at this online education problem for over 50 years,” he said.

Blank explained that we are seeing the intersection of three trends that will make this click: the emergence of online classes on sites like Udacity (in which he’s an investor) and Khan Academy, the surge in venture capital investment in this space, and finally, the adoption of tablet computers that provide a mobile platform for learning.

This brings him back to a favorite topic, the ubiquity of the tools for entrepreneurship. Blank told me has traveled the world and been stunned by the passion for starting companies. He joked that in his twenties, the majority funneled their energies into rioting against the establishment. “On a college campus, the word business could have got you hung a decade ago,” he said.

To support the global movement for online education, Blank plans to make his Lean Launchpad curriculum, which teaches agile engineering and rapid customer acquisition, available online by the end of the year.

“There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who know what we know in Silicon Valley in cities all over the world like Santiago, Helsinki and St. Petersburg,” he said. “This is the real big idea: the democratization of entrepreneurship.”

College campuses are becoming incubators for startups, offering encouragement in the form of classes to nurture young dreamers. This explains the influx of 21-year-olds making millions of dollars in investment before they can legally pop a beer.

Given the amount of preparation and forethought it takes to start a company, you may think it ludicrous to expect entrepreneurial success in a semester or two.

Yet, a handful of programs across the country have produced their fair share of fresh-faced CEOs. The lesson here? If they can do it in 10 weeks on a shoestring budget, you can too. The nationwide frenzy for entrepreneurship can in large part be attributed to a select group of college classes that train and mould lazy co-eds into fully-fledged business leaders.

Here is my run-down of the leading college classes that serve as launchpads for startups.

Stanford University 

Launchpad: Design and Launch your Product or Service is not for the fainthearted. As the course description warns, you better have a burning desire to start a company. Those who are merely interested in becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg need not apply.

In just 10 weeks, students apply the values of design thinking, including protoyping, testing and iterating, marketing, distribution and presentation, to launch a successful startup. Do not expect to sleep. In return, the course directors (Perry Klebahn, former CEO of Timbuk2, and Michael Dearing, former eBay SVP) promise to change your life.

Brainstorming startup ideas at Stanford’s d.school

I believe it. The course is one of the most over-subscribed of all the classes at the “d.school”, Stanford’s illustrious design program founded by David Kelley, IDEO’s CEO. IDEO has already achieved iconic status as the firm that designed Apple’s first mouse.

Success story? Pulse News, an app that has raised over $10 million in funding to date. Cofounder Akshay Kothari’s reflections on the class: “The instructors force you to sign a paper which says you won’t get a grade for the class until you have publicly launched your product in the 11 weeks of class. Just build your product, and get it out the door. My cofounder and I built Pulse from scratch in five weeks.”

Stanford is a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. Other options include Digital Media Entrepreneurship (for fellow new media enthusiasts), The Graduate School of Business’ startup class S356, and the d.school’s Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability.

MIT
MIT’s New Enterprises is far more quant-heavy than Stanford’s free-thinking, post-it loving design school. Students are led through a rigorous and analytical step-by-step process on developing a team, forming a business plan, raising funds, and combating any potential legal issues that may arise. It’s like bootcamp for nerds.

As you are reminded before enrolling, alumni have subsequently made billions of dollars in shareholder value and have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. Lark (a silent alarm clock and sleep sensor) and Hubspot (marketing software for small and mid-sized businesses) are a tough act to follow.

The class has been around for several decades and is currently taught by the co-founder of Battery Ventures, Howard Anderson. Anderson is not looking for “cute little nonprofits”, he explains on the explanatory video, so bring your fair trade eco-clothing line elsewhere.

Success stories? A123 Systems (high-performing battery maker for electric vehicles), Hubspot, and Lark.

Washington University
Hatchery, the capstone class at the school’s center for entrepreneurship, boasts an unbeatable track record. Each year, roughly 65 percent of the class fulfills the American dream by launching a company. Ken Harrington, the course’s director, tells me here are 34 interns working this summer at ventures launched during the class.

How does it work? Entrepreneurs bounce ideas on a site for review by the students, who sign up to become team members. The fee for an outside entrepreneur in a commercial venture to participate is $3,500; it’s free for nonprofits. The students are expected to devote at least 150 hours to the class on coding, marketing, business development, and design.

The class has spawned a number of successful Internet companies in its tenure, including Rare Genomics Institute and Answers.com. It is unique in the variety of companies it produces, spanning social entrepreneurship, community projects, games, life sciences, and more.

Northwestern
NUvention, the flagship course at the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation in the engineering department, is one of the only classes that segments students based on their interests. In this case, students can select from tech, medical innovation, or energy. In the first quarter, the students develop their ideas and build a prototype, which is launched into the market during the second quarter.

Teaching a class at NUvention Energy

Previous speakers? Groupon’s founder, Andrew Mason, and Google’s feedburners founders, Dick Costolo, Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, and Matt Shobe. The class is taught by Todd Warren, an alum who rose to the position of VP at Microsoft.

The biggest success story from the web track is Adaptly, a social media ad server and analytics platform that is generating over $10 million a year for its founders, Nikhil Sethi, 24, and Garrett Ullom, 22. Click here to review the teams from the graduating class of 2011.

Worthy of honorable mention
Check out Harvard Business School‘s Building a Successful Enterprise and the University of Michigan‘s suite of classes in the entrepreneurship track, which produced HandyLab, Inc., a diagnostics company started by Jeff Williams, which was sold to BD for $275 million. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business offers “experiential” classes, including Ventures Lab, where students are paired with startups to gain real-world experience.

(Full disclosure: The Stanford d.school has a special place in my heart. As a humble journalist enrolled in d.garage, a program that rivals “launchpad” in its intensity, I picked up key skills like prototyping, forming a business plan, and of course, brainstorming with the trademark multi-colored post-its.)

Images courtesy of Northwestern and Stanford Universities.