Thought Leaders in Online Education: Paul Kellenberger, CEO of zSpace (Part 1)

AR/VR is changing education. In our TLOE series, this interview delves into the trends and the white spaces.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and to zSpace.

Paul Kellenberger: I’m the CEO of zSpace. zSpace is a very innovative technology company that has been in the market and focused on education for the last six and a half years. We’re a unique combination of augmented reality and virtual reality.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Tim Broom, CEO of ITProTV (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You have 100,000 users and 50,000 paying subscribers. What is the size of the IT learner market? What percentage of that is learning on your platform in this mode?

Tim Broom: That’s the great news of this business. About $50 billion a year is spent in the learning space. Pluralsight does $400 million and Lynda does $200 million. We’re going to do $12.5 million this year.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Tim Broom, CEO of ITProTV (Part 1)

Online learning has produced some unicorns and a plethora of niche businesses. Tim talks about one that focuses on the IT learner.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to ITProTV. 

Tim Broom: I am the CEO of ITProTV. We’re an online learning provider for people who are interested in information technology, security, and networking. The easiest way to describe it is, it is the Netflix of IT learning where someone may pay us a subscription price to have an entire library.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Gregory Marino, CEO of Kaplan Higher Education (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about technology – all this data and analytics? What is the mix there?

Gregory Marino: Everything is on a digital platform. We ensure that when we put a process in place or a course online, there is a mechanism to measure the effects. We’ll get down to the clickstream data and understand where students are getting the best learning outcomes, what materials are being used more frequently, and what is helping to lead to better results.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Gregory Marino, CEO of Kaplan Higher Education (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Break it down for me a little bit. Talk about departments within Purdue that are using this. How is it getting rolled out to the broader Purdue community? You said it went to 30,000 people because of the Purdue partnership and acquisition. Talk a but more about that.

Gregory Marino: The first part of the strategy was just to acquire Kaplan University. That was a fully-functioning, accredited institution integrated with Purdue.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Gregory Marino, CEO of Kaplan Higher Education (Part 1)

Purdue University has recently acquired Kaplan University to create Purdue University Global, one of the pioneers in online learning. Read on to understand why.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you as well as to Kaplan.

Gregory Marino: I just celebrated my 26th year with Kaplan. My resume reads newspaper boy and then Kaplan. I’ve been in education my entire professional career. Over those 26 years, I’ve been pretty much involved in each one of our major divisions.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Niall McKinney, President of Avado (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: On the language learning front, I have been learning two languages in parallel. I did personal tutors. Then I did online learning. I’ve watched a ton of films. I’m learning French and Spanish. I’ve done apps.

I watch a tremendous number of French films. I’m married to a French-speaking man. It’s all very helpful. My housekeeper is Spanish-speaking, so I get to speak Spanish with her. All that is great.

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Niall McKinney, President of Avado (Part 3)

Niall McKinney: The higher level of that is, they get specific group assignments. In Google Squared Online, at the end of three of the modules, they will be assigned a group. We give them a group work.

For example, it might be a brand which is not very digital. They might have to come up with a new integrated marketing plan for that. The output is a white paper on how they would change that brand approach.