UMUC Takes Privatization to Another Level

The concept of third-party vendors leasing campus services is all too familiar to college store professionals. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) is taking that a step further, spinning off it’s own units into start-up companies offering their own services to others, all in an effort to grow endowments and keep tuition rates down.

“We believe that if you look at higher education, there is a core—what you teach, who teaches it, and how we teach it,” UMUC President Javier Miyares said in an interview for Inside Higher Education. “That is the existential, essential core of the university. Everything else are business processes that do not have to be run in the traditional way within the university.”

In 2015, the UMUC office of analytics was converted into a data-analytics service and there are plans to spin off the IT department into a company to be known as AccelerEd. UMUC Ventures was formed as a holding company to help the university realize some financial benefit when these new firms sell their services.

“UMUC recognizes that higher-education institutions have an obligation to students to reimagine how they achieve their missions,” said Ryan Craig, managing director of the investment firm University Ventures. “Too much of college and university spending is currently allocated to functions that do not directly serve the interests of tuition-paying students.”

However, there are critics of UMUC’s unbundling tactics.

“As a taxpayer of Maryland, I think of UMUC as a state treasure,” said former UMUC employee George Kroner. “The university has a special academic mission, and I hate seeing it put on the back burner. I don’t want to see the great work of UMUC privatized.”

Investors See Opportunity in-Class Social Networking

The New York Times reports that Coursekit, a higher-education social networking company, just raised $5 million in venture investments to expand the company and wider distribution.

According to its co-founder, Coursekit wants “to build what Facebook has done for your personal life, but for your school.”  Coursekit’s software allows faculty to upload homework assignments, answer questions, grade work and facilitate discussions with their students, according to the story.  Coursekit is free for now but the company says its main focus is attracting users, not making money.  Coursekit hopes to gain enough momentum and become one of the “go-to services” that faculty and students use on campuses that is when the company perhaps can have a successful business as a storefront for books and other education-related materials.

Soundtracks for EBooks?

Yes, that is correct. Just as sound and music enhances the emotional impact of movies and television shows, New York City-based startup Booktrack is trying to do the same for ebooks. With an iOS app already in the market and an Adroid app on the way, Booktrack allows ebook readers to listen to ambient background noise relevant to the book's current setting, specific sound effects synchronized to the text as it is read. 

Will this new twist on audiobooks entice people to read more in digital formats?   Probably unlikely.  However, it is another step in the slow transition or evolution of digital reading materials, and the technology is likely to find a usage.  More power to it if it does. On a side note Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, is the lead investor of Booktrack.

My Modern Tech

An interesting message went out to a range of different institutions this week. We have not found or received additional information on this new company yet. The concept is "Microbooks" by a company called My Modern Tech. From the description, the technology does not seem that different from other entrants in this space -- like CafeScribe, NookStudy, or VitalSource. What is interesting is some insight into where Amazon is headed next with textbooks.

Do you like seeing your students in the history books? How about putting your campus there? We're inviting your campus to be one of the first. Partner with us and industry giant Amazon Inc. to be one of the first campuses in the country to start offering microbooks, the newest online tool in student learning. This is not only going to change your campus, but change education around the entire country. Partner with us and Amazon Inc.to put your college in the history books.

Microbooks are the same textbooks you currently use, only made available online for the ease of use of students to access them via their smart phones through android, iPhone, and iPad apps or even via a computer. The power comes in the convenience, but also the state of the art features such as the ability for teachers to make notes, highlight text, and have everything reflected to students books, as well as give quizzes, and even see the last time their students read their books. The main point behind this project is that since it's made available in an electronic format the cost of the books are up to 50% cheaper for students than the same physical textbooks. By utilizing these state of the art books you make the books more accessible to all your students including low income students. With the backing of Amazon Inc. we're getting ready to push this new program to colleges and universities across the country and we're exclusively inviting your campus to be one of the first to start using it.

Give your campus and your students the opportunity to make history and be one of the few exclusively invited campuses to change the world of education across the country.

Thank You and we look forward to your acceptance of our invitation and to discuss with us any questions that you may have."

We do not yet know how many campuses received this invitation, or the diversity of the campuses invited. We are interested in learning more if anyone has more information to share.

E-Book Revolution More of an Evolution on Campus

Sales figures of Kindles and iPads, along with exploding numbers of e-book titles over the last year, suggest the long-predicted e-book revolution is finally here. But this Campus Technology article says the digital textbook market may be more of an evolution, with students, teachers, and publishers working on solutions to combine value, convenience, and low cost.

Matt MacInnis, co-founder and CEO of e-book publisher Inkling, says digital course materials lag behind because the current model replicates a print book rather than integrating all of the available technology, such as audio, video, and animation. Others view high-tech gadgetry as a bonus, while firms such as CourseSmart and Flat World Knowledge—also featured in the article—provide solutions that can work now.

Studies by NACS and others have shown that while digital book sales are on the rise, a large majority of college students continue to prefer the printed textbook so the tipping point isn’t here yet. In the meantime, publishers have to decipher the best way to deliver course content at a price point acceptable to students.

Mag Rack Entertainment buys on-demand television network

Mag Rack Entertainment is an interesting new company to take note of. The company was formed this year by two entertainment and technology entrepreneurs and in October they announced the purchase of Lifeskool on-demand television from Cablevision’s Rainbow Media Holdings. According to Lifeskool’s website,

“Lifeskool is the only FREE On Demand television network dedicated to helping you make the most of your life with exclusive content that inspires and informs.”

The on-demand service is offered on the web and also on TV through certain cable providers. Currently the shows are updated each week with 13 categories to choose from including: Cooking, Health & Fitness, Music, and Video Gaming. However, we may see enhancements to these offerings soon as the network develops under its new owners.

New startups

I always find start-up companies interesting. The thrill of innovation and entrepreneurship. The birth of an idea foist upon the market that may or may not yet be ready. I have worked with a fair number of startups over the years, helping them evaluate their business plans or providing feedback on their direction. Some have made it, and made it big. Others, well, let's just say they had ideas whose time had not yet come.

I commented in this blog recently about one startup, Flat World Knowledge. The founders of that company were nice enough to come to Albany to meet with me, and I have to say, I came away impressed. The more I came to understand the company and their aims, the more it helped some of my thinking about what open access and the future of stores and textbook content could be. They are a company I hope to keep in contact with going forward and I am looking forward to their product releases over the next year.

Recently I have had the opportunity to see two other start-ups that are also interesting in their own way. The first is Polar Mobile. They have an interesting technology for taking publisher content and moving it onto mobile devices. They plan to focus on the higher education market and I see some real promise in their technology. I am not convinced that mobile technology is the solution for all kinds of content, but there is certainly some types of content we could (and perhaps should) be delivering via this format. Since a story months ago about how Starbucks and Apple are working together for downloading music through the stores, I have been interested in how we might use similar technologies. Having seen their product demonstrated, this could be a company to work with and explore further some possibilities. It would be very interesting to see them connect with the right partners.

Another company I have met with a couple times now is Intellidemia, which was founded by some RPI alums. Intellidemia hopes to address some of the shortcomings they see in the traditional course management systems by starting from a fresh angle... the syllabus, and a desire for ease of use. They are also heavily focused on integrating calendars that cross boundaries in educational institutions, so that students, faculty, and institutions can manage time and calendars more effectively. Administrative concerns like accreditation activities and other analytics are high on the watch list. With the current players in the course management system market Intellidemia will have a tough row to till... however, they do have some interesting ideas about the technology design. I am curious to watch the company and its development going forward.