A recent spending spree saw John Wiley & Sons
purchase Deltak.edu LLC, which develops online degree and certificate programs,
and Blackboard increase its investment in its own online course-development and
management services continued with the acquisition of Sapling Learning by
Macmillan New Ventures.
Sapling Learning provides interactive homework and
learning software in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) fields. At the time of the purchase in early November, the Sapling
system had been adopted in more than 800 schools and universities after peer reviews
showed that students who use its solution improve their letter grade by at
least one half.
“Macmillan New Ventures’ mission is to find and
accelerate proven technology solutions in education that are making a real
difference in the core mission of the education endeavor: helping students
learn more and learn faster,” said Troy Williams, president of Macmillan New
Ventures, in a press release.
“Sapling has a product that demonstrably increases student achievement in
contrast to a lot of what we see in edtech: companies with attractive features
and software but no clear data that student outcomes are improving.”
New Ventures bought EBIMAP-works, a student success and
retention platform, earlier this year and also owns i>clicker, a student
response system, and PrepU, an adaptive learning platform.