What's next for Instructure (INST)? That's the question that comes to investors' minds, especially after the third quarter performance report, which represented an earnings surprise of 42.11%. Since the beginning of the year, Instructure shares have added about 15.8% versus the S&P 500's gain of 20.6%, while the estimated revision trend for the company is mixed. In this context, New York-based Sachem Head, which has been buying Instructure’s shares over time, announced yesterday that it wants Instructure to pursue a full sale process, Reuters disclosed. Now, the notorious hedge fund plans to push the Salt Lake City-based company in this direction. The activist fund, that invests $3.2 billion on behalf of clients, recently called on Whitbread PLC to sell its Costa Coffee business before it was spun off to Coca-Cola Co. It also pushed Eagle Materials Inc to split its core businesses, before the company’s board agreed to spin off its heavy materials and light materials businesses into two publicly traded entities. On the news of Sachem Head's stake, Instructure's stock prices jumped as much as 6% this week, ending at $46.52. With a market capitalization of $1.8 billion, Instructure's Canvas is the market leader in the LMS segment –and according to its own data continues to add customers. However, its employee development platform Bridge is not working that well, failing to generate considerable market share, analysts think –and that'd be the reason why Instructure has underperformed the market so far this year. In this regard, Instructure's CEO Dan Goldsmith didn't reject the idea of a sale or spinoff of Bridge, which launched in 2015. “Nothing is off the table,” he told investors on the mentioned Q3 2019 earnings call on October 28. “But the focus for us is really making Bridge successful, making Bridge financially beneficial and accretive and healthy and then continuing to grow over time.” Dan Goldsmith promised to provide more details at an analyst day on Dec. 3.
IEEE's Learning with MOOCS awarded Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, for his "meritorious service for outstanding contribution". Meanwhile, Dr. Russ Meier, professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), received recognition as Chair of the conference. Both scholars were awarded during the sixth edition of the Learning with MOOCs Conference this week in Milwaukee, WI. [In the picture above, Manuel Castro, IEEE fellow and organizer of the conference, with Anant Agarwal on the left] Two universities were honored for the Best Paper Award: Improving MOOC quality using learning analytics tools, Jeffrey S. Cross, Tokio Tech, Japan F-Lingo: Integrating lexical feature identification into MOOC platforms for learning professional and academic English, Alannah Fitzgerald, The University of Waikato, New Zeland "There is a vibrant community of investigators researching and the future is very bright," said Russ Meier, who read the 37 papers presented at the conference. He summarized his conclusions of the event in the video below. The 2020 Learning with MOOCS event will be celebrated in Antigua, Guatemala, from September 30 to October 2. Universidad Galileo will host the gathering. [Disclosure: IBL was one of the sponsors of the conference, along with Future Learn, edX, Class Central and the Milwaukee School of Engineering]
PowerSchool, an ed-tech provider on K-12, announced yesterday an agreement to acquire Schoology, a leading learning management system used by 60.000 schools and 20 million students, with a 17% percent market share. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. This acquisition, if approved, will result in a dominant company among K-12 schools and districts, which will leave behind competitors such as Google Classroom, Canvas, and Moodle. PowerSchool, roughly used by 45 million learners, has acquired eight companies since 2015. Schoology would be PowerSchool’s second purchase of a learning management system (LMS) after it acquired Haiku Learning in 2016.  “Teachers have shared that they need more time and tools to provide individual learning paths for every student," said Hardeep Gulati, CEO of PowerSchool. "With the scale and investment we will get being part of PowerSchool, we can further advance what is possible in education, and take Schoology to a whole new level,” said Schoology CEO and Co-Founder, Jeremy Friedman.
The annual edX Global Forum partners conference, that scheduled this year in Hong Kong for November 11-13, was canceled due to "safety concerns related to local circumstances", organizers say. The anti-government protests that have rocked Hong Kong for months show no sign of dying down and given this situation edX prioritized the safety of attendants. "We want to keep people safe," an edX representative said to IBL News. The edX organization and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), who was the host of the event, mutually made the decision. The 2019 Global Forum won't take place in any other place. Instead, the MOOC platform is planning to celebrate a Town Hall-style event with its CEO, Anant Agarwal, along with other virtual events. Finally, the edX organization announced that the 2020 Global Forum will take place in the Fall at Columbia University in New York City.
The combination of flexible online classes with the discipline of real-work experience has proven to be successful for many learners. Over 3,000 Starbucks employees have earned their bachelor's degree at Arizona State University (ASU) while working, the institution announced on the fifth anniversary of its partnership with the coffee giant. These graduates enrolled in the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, that offers more than 80 undergraduate programs through ASU Online. Employees, called "partners" at Starbucks, are reimbursed for tuition every semester. The first classes began in mid-October 2014, and today, more than 13,000 Starbucks partners are in this plan. “Our partnership with Starbucks is the exemplar of how corporations and universities may come together to create real impact at the individual, community and macroeconomic level,” said Philip Regier, University Dean for Educational Initiatives and CEO of EdPlus at ASU. In addition to Starbucks, ASU has partnered with Uber and Adidas to provide tuition assistance to their employees.
