2019-08-02 09.06.44

| August 2, 2019

Normally I wouldn't cover stock market news, not even when a leading Online Program Management (OPM) company's stock drops 65% in one day. But this followed a frank assessment of the OPM market, and that is worth covering. " Online program management is a difficult business to be in. Online education is increasingly competitive, student acquisition and marketing costs are going up, and the regulatory landscape is becoming more complex... attracting large numbers of students to a particular online program is more challenging and more expensive than it was just a few years ago." Those who watch the technology space in general will recognize this as a familiar pattern - when you tie yourself to a platform, whether it's Facebook or the university system, your fortunes are tied to that platform, and that platform will eventually turn on you.

Direct link: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/08/01/bad-day-2u-highlights-vulnerability-online-program-management

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daveymoloney

| May 2, 2019

Read "Rethinking the purpose of online learning: 2. Using online learning to reduce the costs of higher education" by Tony Bates (tonybates.ca)

This is the second of three posts examining the purpose of online and digital learning. In the first post I looked at the government of Ontario’s strategy to require high school students to take four of their 30 credits online. In this post I examine Kevin Carey’s claim in the Huffington Post that online learning could dramatically reduce the cost of higher education but hasn’t done so yet because of the commercialization of online learning.

📜 Read “Rethinking the purpose of online learning: 2. Using online learning to reduce the costs of higher education”

by Tony Bates