JANUARY 2022 – NEWSLETTER #42 | Breaking news at IBL News |  Noticias en Español 2U + Open edX • Three 2U Executives Will Be Part of the Technical Committee of Open edX • The Open edX Organization Prepares the Launch of Maple, the 13th Version of the Platform • The New Open edX Organization Sets a Technical Committee to Govern the Project • The Former edX Discloses Its New Name: The Center for Reimagining Learning, Inc. Open edX Platforms • Latin American Learning Platform Griky Raises $5 Million • Docebo and EdCast Announce an Integrated Learning Solution • EdTech Esme Learning Acquires a Firm Founded by a Former edX Executive Initiatives • MIT Press Makes Its Spring 2022 Monograph List Openly Available • Q&A Discussion Platform Piazza Launches New Training Program for Universities • Google Upgrades Its Tool to Search and Add Citations on Documents Learning Platforms • Skillsoft Pays $525 Million for SaaS Learning Platform Codecademy • Course Hero Achieves a Valuation of $3.6 Billion After Raising $380 Million • An Outage at AWS Causes Errors and Slow-Loading Pages at Canvas LMS 2022 Events | All of the Key Conferences Listed! • Education Calendar – 2022 |  Conferences in Latin America & Spain This newsletter was created in collaboration with IBL Education, a New York City-based company specializing in AI-driven learning platforms. We also film and produce courses for universities and business organizations. Read the latest IBL Newsletter  |  Archive of Open edX Newsletters
MIT Press, one of the largest university presses, announced that it will publish its full list of spring 2022 monographs and edited collections on an open-access model through June 30, 2022. The list includes titles from across the arts, humanities, and sciences, such as Treacherous Play by Marcus Carter, From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis by Marco Grasso, Power of Position: Classification and the Biodiversity Sciences by Robert D. Montoya, and Cognitive Robotics edited by Angelo Cangelosi and Minoru Asada. "The goal is to be of use to as many readers as possible—across the world, rich or poor," said Georg F. Striedter, Professor, Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, and MIT Press author. "I am thrilled that the MIT Press and a consortium of libraries are making it possible for the electronic version of my forthcoming book to be open access. I believe this is the future of academic book publishing, or at least it’s bleeding edge." The move came after MIT Press reached the 50% threshold for participation in its Direct to Open (D2O) initiative. D2O moves professional and scholarly books from a solely market-based purchase model, where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. Instead of purchasing a title once for a single collection, libraries now have the opportunity to fund them one time for the world through participant fees. Over 160 libraries and consortia support the D2O initiative, including Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna; Bryn Mawr College Libraries; Caltech Library; Carnegie Mellon University Libraries; The Claremont Colleges; Emory Libraries; George Mason University; Gettysburg College Library; Grand Valley State University; Johns Hopkins University Libraries; KU Leuven; Loyola Notre Dame Library; Loyola University Chicago; Michigan State University Libraries; MIT Libraries; NYU Libraries; Rockefeller University; Southern Methodist University; Texas A&M University-San Antonio University Library; University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign Library; University of Iowa Libraries; University of Maryland Libraries; University of Massachusetts Boston; Healey Library, University of Michigan Libraries; University of Redlands; Armacost Library; the University of Tennessee at Martin; University of Toronto Libraries; University of Washington Libraries; and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. .
Harvard College — the undergraduate college of Harvard University — will allow students to apply for admission without requiring SAT or ACT scores for upcoming classes of ’27, ’28, ’29, and ’30, according to a report on The Harvard Gazette. The current admission for the Class of 2026 is the second for which students have applied without requiring standardized testing. Harvard is making this decision due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, causing many students to have limited access to testing sites. "Students who do not submit standardized test scores will not be disadvantaged in their application process," said William R. Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. Accomplishments in and out of the classroom during the high school year, including extracurricular activities, community involvement, employment, and family responsibilities, are still being considered as part of the admission process. In this regard, Harvard College announced this week that it accepted 740 students to the Class of 2026 from a pool of 9,406 who applied under the early action program. Last year, 743 students were selected from the 10,087 who submitted applications. African Americans constitute 13.9 percent of those admitted (16.6 percent last year), Asian Americans 25.9 percent (23.4 percent last year), Latinx 10.5 percent (10.4 percent last year), and Native Americans and Native Hawaiians 3.7 percent (1.3 percent last year). International citizens comprise 12.6 percent of the admitted students this year, compared with 12.2 percent last year. .
Course Hero Inc announced yesterday it raised $380 million in Series C funding achieving a valuation of $3.6 billion. The round was led by Wellington Management with participation from new investors Sequoia Capital Global Equities, OMERS Growth Equity, and D1 Capital Partners, and includes existing investors such as GSV Ventures, NewView Capital, SuRo Capital, TPG, and Valiant Peregrine Fund. "With these funds, the company plans to accelerate its goal of building a rich and dynamic learning ecosystem to meet the evolving range of study needs for today's learners," said Andrew Grauer, CEO and Co-Founder of Course Hero. The U.S. education market is estimated to grow to $2 trillion by 2025 and $10 trillion internationally by 2030. "We believe online learning platforms will continue to play an essential role in supplementing the student learning and educator teaching experience in today's learning economy," said Aneesh Venkat, Partner at Sequoia Capital Global Equities. Founded in 2006, the Redwood City, California-based company plans to grow from 2 million to 50 million annual subscribers by 2030. It will also expand to new verticals. Over the past year, Course Hero Inc. expanded its portfolio of companies through a series of acquisitions, such as: CliffsNotes, the creator of iconic study guides used by high school and college students for more than 60 years LitCharts, the creator of literature resources used by more than 50 million students and teachers to develop and support a better understanding of literary texts QuillBot, an AI-powered writing platform used by 12 million people every month to check for grammar, make citations, and improve their writing skills Symbolab, the creator of an AI-based mathematics solver . Today marks a special milestone for Course Hero Inc., and our community of learners and educators, as we announce our Series C funding to build a rich and dynamic learning ecosystem to meet the evolving range of study and teaching needs. Learn more: https://t.co/ApNkk7ypZI pic.twitter.com/IzEA2pmL3b — Course Hero (@CourseHero) December 14, 2021
Falling stocks are provoking a huge correction — over 10% — in the value of SaaS companies, many of them in the EdTech area. Instructure/Canvas LMS and Duolingo are notorious examples of this crash. "Since 2016, public software has witnessed four corrections, and today we're in the midst of the fifth," said Tomasz Tunguz, Venture Capitalist at Redpoint. These corrections have reduced valuations by between 30% and 60%. However, cloud companies' fast growth has pushed valuations higher since 2014. The 75th percentile multiple has appreciated 25% annually since 2016, and the median has increased by approximately 20%. "These undulations are short-lived; the market recorded new highs often within four to six quarters after the nadir," he wrote. Some analysts like Jim Cramer are forecasting a rebound. .
