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2U

2U, a company providing educational services in the era of online learning.

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2U is an American company founded in 2008 for providing educational services. The founders of the company are John Katzman, Jeremy Johnson, and Christopher J. Paucek. The main idea behind founding 2U is to provide proper online degree and non-degree programs. Its headquarters is based in Lanham, Maryland, US and it is currently serving users on a global scale. 2U mainly provided a SaaS platform to its clients (educational institutions) and along with coursework design and infrastructure support. 

About 2U

2U has always focussed on providing top-quality online education and services by establishing contracts with top-tier partners. Recently, the company has acquired edX (an American MOOCs provider that was created by Harvard and MIT) which has led to its exposure to a broader audience base and hence more opportunity for growth. 2U to date has collaborated with more than 230 top-class universities to create approximately 3,500 digital programs. The company has more than 40 million global learners who are benefiting from the services of 2U. Recently, the company has also announced a partnership with the University of Singapore intending to expand online professional education. 

Early Days

In 2008, the co-founder of The Princeton Review, John Katzman founded 2U originally naming it 2tor after his pet dog. He decided to bring two other important members on board who were Christopher Paucek who was the former CEO of Hooked on Phonics and Jeremy Johnson, a tech entrepreneur. These three together became the co-founders of 2U. 

When they started the company, Paucek became the CEO of the business and he is continuing to be so even today. The co-founders saw this business sector as a good opportunity and during that time there were very few top-tier universities that provided online instruction. In 2009, the company rolled out its first online teaching degree in collaboration with the University of Southern California (USC). Later, the company again collaborated with USC to launch an online degree in social work. 

In 2011 two new universities partnered with 2U, namely, Georgetown University’s School of Nursing and Health and Kenan-Flagler Business School (University of North Carolina). The latter started offering an online MBA degree through 2U. In 2012, John Katzman left the 2U team to launch Noodle Partners (a company in the education management sector). 

2U
Image source: media.bizj.us

Success and Growth

As the number of universities partnered with 2U kept increasing every day, the company became more famous. This eventually led the company to raise $10 million in venture capital in 2013 and went public in the next year by offering 9.2 million shares. In the same year, two new members joined the board of the company, Sallie Krawcheck, and Earl Lewis. By the end of 2014 schools like Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley signed up with 2U for offering online degrees. In 2015, Yale University partnered with 2U to offer a full-time, online master of medical science degree.  By the end of the year, more than 12,000 students enrolled in the 2U platform.

In 2017, as a part of 2U’s strategy, it started acquiring education companies. It included GetSmarter and Trilogy Education. In 2018, the company partnered with Harvard University to offer the Harvard Business Analytics Program (HBAP) for experienced professionals. It also tied up with the University of London to offer its first undergraduate program. The company witnessed a large growth in its gross revenue during 2020 because of the shifting of education to online learning. To expand 2U more in the online marketplace, it acquired edX in June 2021 for $800 million in cash. 

About the Founders

John Katzman is a famous personality in the American EdTech sector who has established many companies to assist students with their careers. He attended Princeton University and later co-founded The Princeton Review and served as its CEO until 2007. He is currently the CEO of The Noodle Companies. 

Jeremy Johnson apart from co-founding 2U also co-founded Andela and currently serving as its CEO. He was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 for two years consecutively. 

Christopher Paucek is the co-founder and current CEO of 2U. He received several highly-rated CEO awards from Glassdoor. In 1993, he co-founded his first company, Cerebellum Corporation, and also served as the CEO of Smarterville Inc before co-founding 2U. 

Google Search

New tools get added in Google Search for improving online learning facilities especially in Maths and Science

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Online learning has witnessed a new escalating demand from students, teachers, and parents especially with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. To unleash all the potential of E-Learning and providing students with the best learning resources, Google has revealed some new features for Google Search. The company will be adding five new tools in Google Search for enhancing online learning quality through the same. Currently, Google is working to provide better answers for STEM concepts, complex equations, representing 3D graphics of chemical molecules, etc. This will help both students and teachers to teach and understand the concepts of science and mathematics in a much better way.

Since the classes are conducted online for both school and college students, the teachers can use these tools to enhance their presentations and study modules. Google has added these new five features as a part of the company’s L.E.A.R.N initiative. Currently, the added features will be available in the English language only but in the future, other languages are expected to be added. The Google Search will have educational overviews, examples, practice problems, learning resources from many websites, and more. So, let’s have a look at the new features for Google Search.

Abundant resources for STEM concepts.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) concepts are specifically focussed on newly added features in Google Search. A student or a teacher or any individual can find many useful examples, videos, and overviews to learn any STEM concept they want to. Science and maths are two very crucial subjects and with the right foundation basis, students can have a lot of choices in their future. With the advent of e-learning, we can access study materials from anywhere and Google is making the journey easier and much interesting.

Google Search
Image Source: learndigital.withgoogle.com

Practice, Practice, and Practice

After learning, they can also practice a set of questions to evaluate themselves. This will especially help the students who are preparing for some entrance exam like NEET or JEE. They can solve plenty of problems in Physics, Chemistry, and Maths. Google will also provide learning resources from top learning websites like Byju’s, Chegg, Education Quizzes, Gradeup, Toppr, Careers360, Vedantu, OpenStax, etc. One can also search a specific topic of any subject to find related problems and resources. So, the learning resources are unlimited for whoever wants to take a step forward and enhance their skills.

Implementation of Augmented Reality (AG)

What can be better if a student can have a lab-like experience from their home? Practical lessons are always much more exciting than theory classes and that’s the reason why we used to wait for our practical days in school. Google with the help of AG will show 3D views of several models covering the chemistry, biology, and physics concept. From the simple 3D view of a double bond to a 3D view of the human skeleton, everything is feasible via Google Search. After you search a topic in Google, an option will come “View in 3D” and then you can visualize by clicking on it.

Solving mathematics problems

While some of us find mathematics as a cakewalk, many of us really struggled or still struggle while solving mathematics problems. Google Search can now provide you a step-by-step solution to a math problem. You can go on the search bar and type the equation or you can click a picture using Lens in the Google App. Google Search is working to add more variety of mathematics problems in the search as it has established partnerships with Symbolab, Mathway, etc. These explanations will be provided in 70 different languages. This feature is of great advantage to parents as they can help their kids solve complex math problems after they get a better hold of them.

Navigating Complex Questions

Apart from helping you find resources for understanding the basic concepts of STEM subjects, Google Search is also working to advance the search. In the upcoming weeks, the company claims that it can also provide you solutions to complex questions and not just any STEM concepts. For example, you type an entire question of organic chemistry in the search bar and the tool will show you the related concept to that question as well.

vedantu-logo

Vedantu: An Online Learning Platform Created by IITians for Changing Education System

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We have noticed significant changes in many things throughout the 21st century and so, in the Education system. In fact, it is a need of the present era to change the way of education with a changing world. Also, 21st-century schools need an education system that maintains and cultivate the interest of students. It is the need to show them how to apply knowledge in the real world. Here comes the role of the ed-tech industry. Vedantu is a well-known ed-tech startup. It is set up by four entrepreneurs & IIT Students.

Vedantu- An Ultimate Ed-tech platform

It is an online platform dedicated to live coaching. Basically, it offers live coaching classes for 6 to 12 students. Also, a dedicated platform for the training of several exams like IIT foundation. In addition, online teaching sessions are available for exams like JEE, IMO NTSE, as well as many other entrance exams. To support the 21st century’s education system, it enabled online learning between pupils and educators. In fact, it uses advanced technology for an excellent experience. Also, students can select the tutors of their choice.

Backstory

In 2006, Vasmi Krishna set up Lakshya with his other three IITian friends Pulkit, Saurabh, and Anand. The main purpose of the company to train students for different tests. That time, they noticed that the Indian education system needs talented and motivated teachers. So, they create such a platform with the help of Lakshaya. In 2012, their first start-up that lately handover to MTEducare. After that, they set up another ed-tech start-up called Vedantu and launched for the public in 2014. Today, Vedantu has the vision to improve the education system with its superior online ed-tech platform. 

Founders of Vedantu

Vedantu Founders
Image Source : Google Images

Vamsi Krishna

He is the present CEO of Vedantu. However, he is well-known as a Tech Enthusiast, Edupreneur, and a Tutor. Before founding Vedantu, he also co-founded Lakshya with his college mates. They all have a teaching experience of over 13 years. Also, he served as a Management trainee at L&T for about one year. 

Vasmi Krishna earned his degree in B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Also, he went to St Pauls Senior Secondary School at Indore.

Pulkit Jain

He is another co-founder of well-known Ed-tech start-ups Vedantu and Lakshya. Before joining that, he served at EvalueServe until 2006. Pulkit is also an IITian who graduated from IIT Roorkee. From the beginning, he is extremely passionate about entrepreneurship. Now, he is an inspiration for many young entrepreneurs for his entrepreneurial journey. 

Anand Prakash

He has studied Pulp and Paper Technology from IIT, Roorkee. Also, he studied primary education at Delhi Public School. 

Anand also helped in the establishment of Vedantu and Lakshya. Presently, he is an account academic head at Vedantu. Earlier, he was Manager at Abhishek Industries.

Saurabh Saxena

Another milestone of Vedantu, Mr. Saurabh Saxena. He has studied Chemical engineering from IIT Roorkee. He also helped in the foundation of Vedantu in 2014. Apart from that, he co-founded many such Ed-tech start-ups. Presently, he is the founder and CEO of Uable, an ed-tech company that changed the learning experience. Also, he is the director of Ekya Schools.

Triumph of Vedantu

In 2016, Vedantu won the DNA Innovative Education Award for the Best Organization to Develop Technology for Education. Also, in the same year, it won KINSES2016 EduAwards. In addition, Vedantu was among the 100 startups by SutraHR. 

In 2015, it was the Online Education Start-up of the year. Also, the Praxis media awarded Vedantu as the ‘Most Promising and Innovative Live Online Tutoring Platform in India’. 

Current Achievements

Over the years, Vedantu trained more than 10K students. Also, it launched many scalable web products that reached millions of users. Presently, it is aiming to make the Vedantu platform more student eccentric.

duolingo

Duolingo : The Biggest Free Language Learning Platform

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Even though there are thousands of languages in the world, English has become the main medium of communication. But still, many of the people are struggling with finding a better institute, where they can learn the language at a cheaper price.

Some people want to learn different languages as a hobby, and some need to learn a different language to get a better job. But getting admission into a good college or institution is not easy for everyone.

Thinking of this obstacle, the professor and student duo, Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker, thought of developing an online platform that could help the people around the world learn different languages for free.

Duolingo Founders
Image Source: inc.com

Luis von Ahn is the Carnegie Mellon University professor, who is also the developer of reCAPTCHA. And, Severin Hacker was a graduate and Ahn’s student from the same university.

Ahn is a native of Guatemala, a place where the scope of getting a basic education is only 30 per cent. Ahn was a bright student and wanted to study Mathematics. But unfortunately, there were no resources for studying Maths in the whole country. But if a person is working hard, no obstacles can stop him/her from achieving their dreams. Ahn’s determination brought him to the U.S., and he joined the Duke University.

Ahn completed a BS degree in Mathematics from the university in 2000. In 2005, he received a PhD degree in Computer Science from the Carnegie Mellon University. The next year, he joined the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University as the faculty member.

Ahn is recognised for his researches on CAPTCHAs and human computation. He has won many awards for his work including acclaim as the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover and one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science Magazine.

Severin Hacker was born in 1984 in Zug and was brought up in Zurich. He completed a B.S. from Zurich and then moved to Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, he joined the alumni of Carnegie Mellon University and received a PhD degree in Computer Science. Hacker met Ahn at the university, where Ahn was his graduate advisor.

Being from a place where people struggle with the English language, Ahn and Hacker wanted to create a system, that could translate the website language from English to the other languages. This way, the people who did not understand English could access the website in their own language. But the two were not convinced about this idea completely and decided to develop a program that could do two things at a time, i.e., translate sentences into foreign languages and translate simple phrases in documents.

At the time, another language teaching app, Rosetta Stone, was getting famous. But the paid subscription of the app could not get more subscribers, and it was limited to the ones who could really afford it. But as the two co-founders had come from a place that where not all were economically well, they knew that not all can afford to pay for studies. The two knew that there is a larger population that require to learn a new language, especially English, and if they get a chance, it would be great for them. This led the two co-founders to build a simple and free language learning platform Duolingo.

The two started working on Duolingo in 2009, at the time when Ahn had just sold his startup reCAPTCHA to Google. In November 2011, the two started the beta testing of their product. In the beginning, they used the approach of crowdsourced translations. This gave birth to the early premise of the company, “learn a new language while translating the web”.

A National Science Foundation grant and the Ahn’s MacArthur fellowship sponsored the project initially. Later, Duolingo raised $3.3 million investments from Union Square Ventures and actor Ashton Kutcher’s firm, A-Grade Investments in a private Series A funding.

Ahn talked about Duolingo at his TED Talk in the same year, where he got a chance to reach a bigger number of audience. Though it was not a sales pitch, Ahn talked about the broken education system in underdeveloped countries and the benefits of using Duolingo. The speech received 1 million views, and this way, 300,000 users entered the waiting list for Duolingo signup.

The next year, with much improvements, Duolingo was released for the general public, and the platform included four languages, i.e. English, Spanish, French and German.

The company reported that not only the job seekers and students but the English teachers across the world were also using Duolingo. In late 2012, the company released an iOS app for its users, and the next year, the company also launched the Duolingo Android app. The Android app became an instant hit and had over 1 million downloads within the first three weeks of its launch.

In 2013, Duolingo partnered with BuzzFeed and CNN. The company raised $15 million in series C funding. By 2017, the company had received a total $108.3 million investment.

Though the service is completely free and does not support ads. To generate a certain revenue, the company uses periodic advertising. If the users do not want to see those ads as well, they can pay a subscription fee. The platform offers support for over 25 languages and 30 different courses. On the advice of Hacker, gamification was added to the platform.

The Duoliongo app was named as the number one app on Play Store and App of the Year on Apple Store in 2013. As of 2014, Ahn is serving the company as the CEO. Hacker and Luis von Ahn received the Tech 50 award in 2015.

Kahoot!: A Platform, Where You Learn While You Play

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How many of you really enjoyed the last lecture you attended, or you literally dozed off and lost track of time? I guess most of the answers won’t be in assertive. Well, that is true. Every one of us gets tired of listening to a monotonous speech for several hours, which also make us lose our interest to learn something new. At times to really grow our curiosity and to really nurture the young minds, we should find innovative ways to learn. We should also discover more ways to teach that crosses the boundaries of the four walls of our classroom.

The learning platform Kahoot has already made it possible. Kahoot is a game-based learning app, which allows you to learn new things through many intellectual games. You can create your own games, and especially, if you are a teacher you can make your students learn by playing over this platform. It makes students put their minds together, which also help improve their communication skills and will help them get better overall. Now, before we learn more about how this app works let us delve deeper into its history.

Kahoot Founders
Image Source: medium.com

The history behind the success of Kahoot!

The five great minds that were mainly behind the development of this application are Johan Brand, Jamie Brooker, Morten Versvik, Prof. Alf Inge Wang and Âsmund Furuseth, a Norwegian entrepreneur. The entire idea of transforming the tiresome methods of teaching to eye-catchy fun games came from Prof. Alf Inge Wang, who was from the Department of Computer Science at the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology.

At first, multiple tests were carried out on the prototypes of the app, and the first one tested successfully was named Lecture Quiz 1.0, which was developed in 2006. The first experiment was carried out with 20 students in a classroom, where they concluded that Lecture Quiz is easy to use and entertaining. This way, the regularity of the students in the class was started to increase. Since then, four new versions of Lecture Quiz were developed, and as new updates were implemented to each one of them.

The prototype of Lecture Quiz 2.0 was much user-friendly, which implied in an increased number of students using it. On the other hand, the latest version of Kahoot, i.e. Lecture Quiz 3.0, has got a much better user-interface, helping the students in better understanding as well as help in increasing the motivation and enthusiasm to learn. This prototype was tested both inside and outside the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and received appreciation for its features.

The app was first launched in private beta in March 2013, which later was publicly released the same year in the month of September. Since then, a lot of experiments have been carried out among different groups of students, to see how it affects the majority. One of the experiments revealed that the students put more effort and concentration when it comes to learning through games than giving just a dull pen-paper test. Though a few students reported that this application is very time consuming, but overall, Kahoot became a grand success. Many such experiments were carried out to check whether the students lose motivation after a particular point or not, whether it is having a negative impact on their concentration but every outcome of these experiments was clearly in favour of Kahoot, and hence, today it has reached the apex.

The entire idea of launching this app proved advantageous to both students and teachers because it became less laborious for the teachers. This time, the students would actually put their brain together to win the learning games on Kahoot, which ultimately, meant learning new topics. The audio effects, later added to the platform, made the app even more attractive and alluring.

Where Kahoot! stands today

Johan Brand, the co-founder and the CEO of Kahoot, played a major role in converting this project to massive success. Kahoot started growing very rapidly, especially, among the young students and teachers. It, especially, captured the attention of U.S. K12 classrooms. By May 2017, the company showed statistics of 50 million active users, and currently, Kahoot! is worth $300million.

Thus, from checking the prototypes of this application among a handful of students to currently having more than 70 billion active users in 200+ countries, narrates the grand success story of Kahoot. With the help of this very platform, people are only a few clicks away from learning in a better way. Also, the idea of learning anytime, anywhere, has helped Kahoot grow at a faster pace.

In a nutshell, this application helps you learn a topic, play a Kahoot, practice and get through with it. You can also try helping out your peers, by creating your own Kahoot and sharing the link. Since the app is free, the number of users seems to increase exponentially. These small tactics on how to approach the users in a much better way have provoked the growth of Kahoot to many extents.

Growth of e-Learning Industry & Why Moodle is still the best LMS?

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E-learning is an electronic learning which involves delivering either part or a complete course using a computer in schools, universities  or delivering important technical and business training in companies. Earlier, e-learning growth was hindered by the thought that it would essentially inhibit the human element that some learners need, however with time there has been a variety of technological developments leading to many people embracing the use of smartphones, tablets and computers in classrooms and offices. The growth of interactive designs have made e-learning engaging and a good medium for course delivery. Moreover, most learning and business organizations have enhanced their e-learning through the partnership with course or training providers together with building their own technical team to ensure a smooth learning experience for their learners.

E-learning is widely used in many companies for employees’ effective and efficient training. Over the years, the use of e-learning in companies has increasingly grown. Companies have practically discovered that every money spent on online employee training increases the employee productivity and efficiency. In last decade E-learning has seen tremendous growth worldwide. According to a new survey, by 2020 the global market of corporate e-learning will be worth more than 31 billion US dollars. Recently, many traditional schools around the world have adopted eLearning.

The growth of e-learning has been effectively necessitated by its benefits to both the individual users and the organizations- Cost effectiveness,  24/7 learning that can be done anywhere without necessarily attending specific classrooms, tracking of course progress for learners and its discreet nature which allows each individual learner to learn at their own preferred pace.

The Moodle LMS and reasons why it is still relevant
Moodle Learning Managemnet System(LMS) can be defined as not only the world’s most popular but also the  most used LMS which was developed back in 2002 by Martin Dougiamas. The reason for its global popularity is the user-friendly nature of its e-learning platform. Moodle LMS is open source & free to download with full liberty to customize and develop further. Since its inception, Moodle LMS has strongly remained the educator’s relevant platform for providing online learning in more personal environment that easily boosts interaction and collaboration-

  • Moodle is free open source technology that enables its users to personally choose their own perfect LMS schedule so as to achieve their organizational goals
  • Its certification and gamification features and tools help many organizations to meet the increasingly common requirement of offering the course certification
  • The ability to centralize multiple course providers and systems, has always been the reason why Moodle has been persistently relevant and the best option to many organizations
  • Support for SCORM and third party plugins makes it obvious choice for educators and admins

Moodle features, customization and development options.
With the aim of organizations to working in specific and efficient ways, Moodle LMS has various customization and configuration features to cater to organizational needs and demands. It offers lot of freedom in custom development and design customization. As a Moodle admin you can build an amazing learning environment by adding a variety of your personal favorite plugins which can be either individually developed or from the community. You can also opt for Moodle development services offered by different Moodle experts.

Today’s Moodle is none less than any paid or custom LMSs being offered by different EdTech firms. Moodle have features that efficiently and effectively serve both the students and the administration. The open source learning management system offers excellent web support tools to ensure effective collaborative learning. Moodle has the ability to integrate with a good number of enterprise system to facilitate continuous integration flows.