Inside Higher Ed
Pearson, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on learning management systems, is leaving the market as the company seeks to restructure itself and boost its profits.
The company, whose operations touch nearly every segment of K-12 and higher education, last fall said it will stop supporting OpenClass, one of its learning management systems, on Jan. 1, 2018. Recently the company told colleges using LearningStudio that it, too, will meet the same fate, leaving Pearson without a traditional learning management system in its portfolio. The news was first reported by the blog e-Literate.
“While the LMS will endure as an important piece of academic infrastructure, we believe our learning applications and services are truly ‘where the learning happens,’” the OpenClass website reads. “In short, withdrawing from the crowded LMS market allows us to concentrate on areas where we can make the biggest measurable impact on student learning outcomes.”
The news follows an announcement last month that Pearson would cut 4,000 jobs worlwide in an effort to simplify what the company does, but Curtiss Barnes, managing director for higher education technology products, said the plan to leave the market predates the restructuring.
“We realized that we need to make some specific decisions around what we want to attach our brand to, where we can create value for customers and where we can compete effectively,” Barnes said in an interview. That means Pearson is less interested in administrative software, he said, and more likely to pour resources into course materials and other products that have a “direct impact” on students and faculty members. Courseware is also the product category where Pearson generates most of its revenue, Barnes said.
Pearson’s restructuring efforts so far show the company divesting itself of products unrelated to education. Last fall, it sold the media company that owns the Financial Times and its stake in The Economist, worth about $2 billion in total.
In higher education, Pearson will likely find savings by eliminating redundancies. The company’s operations are a patchwork of products and services that -- because of previous acquisitions -- in some cases overlap.
Take LearningStudio, for example. The platform, which launched in 2009, is a product of two acquisitions, eCollege (acquired in 2007 for $477 million) and Fronter. But eCollege also powers OpenClass, the platform Pearson unveiled two years later. To further complicate matters, eCollege originally launched to help colleges take their programs online. Pearson in 2012 then spent $650 million to acquire another company EmbanetCompass, for that purpose.
Pearson, after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on learning management systems, is leaving the market as the company seeks to restructure itself and boost its profits.
The company, whose operations touch nearly every segment of K-12 and higher education, last fall said it will stop supporting OpenClass, one of its learning management systems, on Jan. 1, 2018. Recently the company told colleges using LearningStudio that it, too, will meet the same fate, leaving Pearson without a traditional learning management system in its portfolio. The news was first reported by the blog e-Literate.
“While the LMS will endure as an important piece of academic infrastructure, we believe our learning applications and services are truly ‘where the learning happens,’” the OpenClass website reads. “In short, withdrawing from the crowded LMS market allows us to concentrate on areas where we can make the biggest measurable impact on student learning outcomes.”
The news follows an announcement last month that Pearson would cut 4,000 jobs worlwide in an effort to simplify what the company does, but Curtiss Barnes, managing director for higher education technology products, said the plan to leave the market predates the restructuring.
“We realized that we need to make some specific decisions around what we want to attach our brand to, where we can create value for customers and where we can compete effectively,” Barnes said in an interview. That means Pearson is less interested in administrative software, he said, and more likely to pour resources into course materials and other products that have a “direct impact” on students and faculty members. Courseware is also the product category where Pearson generates most of its revenue, Barnes said.
Pearson’s restructuring efforts so far show the company divesting itself of products unrelated to education. Last fall, it sold the media company that owns the Financial Times and its stake in The Economist, worth about $2 billion in total.
In higher education, Pearson will likely find savings by eliminating redundancies. The company’s operations are a patchwork of products and services that -- because of previous acquisitions -- in some cases overlap.
Take LearningStudio, for example. The platform, which launched in 2009, is a product of two acquisitions, eCollege (acquired in 2007 for $477 million) and Fronter. But eCollege also powers OpenClass, the platform Pearson unveiled two years later. To further complicate matters, eCollege originally launched to help colleges take their programs online. Pearson in 2012 then spent $650 million to acquire another company EmbanetCompass, for that purpose.
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6 comments:
I was a UTB-TSC adjunct faculty in early 2002 to 2005. After teaching all day in high school, at a time where there were no EARLY COLLEGE High Schools, and after teaching over 180 teens in one day, I would go twice a week in the evenings to teach students ranging from 18 to 60 years old. The traditional way meant lecture, read, write, assign and grade. We had a textbook and all suplemental materials we had to get on our own. Each professor was allowed to teach his/her own way as long as the objectives of the course were met. The first year, I remember filling out computer printouts with the grades, after that, the grading system was computerized and we could submit grades via computer gradebook that went directly to the Registar's office. A couple of friends still work there and tell me they cannot teach without using the computer programs, the Pearson's lessons and activities and that EVERYONE should be teaching the same thing, the same way and at the same level. THAT IS RIDICULOUS! There is no real learning or discussion, the professor is just the one who is responsible for the group and posts a grade and not everyone learns at the same pace, people function at different levels even with the focus of the same result. A computer is a tool, the same as a regular text, the actual interaction between a student and a teacher is lost. One of my friends told me that their boss (TSC president) gave the order to follow such teaching model. Whatever happen to the TSC from the 1980's?
That article is unclear about just what the effect would be on TSC. It is not the Learning Managment System that is the big issue there, it is the canned courses that Pearson furnishes through Open Classrooms. There is almost universal dislike of these canned classes by students and most faculty.
If the canned classes were discarded it would be a big challenge to TSC. It has built itself around hiring faculty for the very bottom dollar whose job is just to open up the can and guide the students through the material. It teachers really had to know their subject matter and know how to teach it on their own hook, many of the TSC faculty would be up shit creek in a chicken wire canoe. Of course the students would benefit with a much better quality education.
Here we go again......the first comment....guess what? This is UNIVERSITY!!!! SINK OR SWIM and nobody cares if you do or don't. It's not BISD. Welcome to the real world sweetheart.
Help me to return TSC to its former glory! At one time TSC had one of the best group of faculty in the state. What happened? Bring it back for our kids!
Anonymous said...
Here we go again......the first comment....guess what? This is UNIVERSITY!!!! SINK OR SWIM and nobody cares if you do or don't. It's not BISD. Welcome to the real world sweetheart.
February 12, 2016 at 1:24 PM
Sir or Madam: Your comment is really uncalled for. The fact that I worked for BISD (not it that system anymore) does not give you the right to say that to someone you don't know and ASUME you are correct in your misinterpreted perception. The fact that I mention the loss of teacher-student interaction is exactly my point AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL. As far as I know, TSC IS A JUNIOR COLLEGE, NOT a major university. Preparing the students for college should be done since high school (preparatory=preparation for higher learning), reality check, BISD DOES NOT do that, BUT, if BISD doesn't do that and you are "teaching" a subject at a Junior College 90% of the time with a computer program, that is why NATIONWIDE many millenials don't function in the REAL WORLD that you so much mention. They don't know how to interact with people when everything is done with machines.
Thanks you for your misiterpreted observation. Bless you and have a great month.
You worked for BISD?!!! Oralle!!!!! It's ASSUME!!! NOT ASUME!!!!!
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