Few companies have performed as well as Chegg (NYSE:CHGG) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the potential for and necessity of online education became apparent. Its stock didn't fall very far at the outset and shares have more than doubled since, but investors should hold off on jumping into this hot stock.

The pandemic has likely been a transformational event for digital education, but there are variables that still need to be sorted out. Chegg has come very far, very fast and the near term carries downside risk, even if the long-term looks bright.

Image source: Getty Images.

Higher education is in need of an overhaul, not least because of the cost involved in getting a college degree. Student loan debt stands at $1.6 trillion and is second to only mortgage debt in weighing down American consumers, but the sheepskin that graduates receive isn't nearly as valuable as it once was and will take a lifetime for many students to pay off.

The shutting down of educational institutions during the crisis showed how distance learning can change the system, and this might be the first stages of what becomes a structural shift that benefits Chegg, which provides tutoring, work skills, and more.

Many people first learned of Chegg when they rented textbooks to do an end run around another exorbitantly overpriced portion of higher education, but the company is now making its mark with direct-to-student learning.

Chegg's textbook rentals began in 2007, but it has since transitioned to offering a full suite of services mostly for college students, but also high school students, and even a few middle school offerings, too.

Among the services available are online classes, tutoring, video problem-solving, error and and plagiarism check software, as well as study materials on virtually any subject. It also offers career information and job placement assistance for entry-level positions. The online, always available tools provide the one-on-one assistance students need to master writing, math, and more.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of students at all levels to adapt to a new, alternative way of receiving an education. With in-person, one-on-one assistance shuttered along with school, Chegg was one of those services that enabled students to adapt to this new reality, one that could continue long after this crisis passes.

Chegg reported last month that first-quarter subscriptions to services such as Chegg Study, Chegg Writing, Math Solver, and Tutors surged 35% to 2.9 million students, generating 235 million total views of coursework and boosting revenue by 35% to $131.6 million.

While that's a remarkable increase on its own, the fact is that students were already moving toward virtual learning through Chegg in greater numbers before schools were required to change over to online education.

Chegg said subscriber growth was up 33% for the first two months of the quarter and accelerated from those levels in the middle of March, coinciding with COVID-19 being declared a pandemic and businesses and institutions being forced to shut down. It now expects second-quarter subscriber growth to exceed 45%, with a similar percentage increase in revenue to as much as $137 million.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) is also forecast to leap forward, coming in between $40 million and $48 million, a 50% to 57% increase over the year-ago period.

Like many businesses, it is not comfortable looking too far out into the future because of the pandemic, so it has not provided full-year guidance.

Chegg's stock hit a 52-week low of just under $26 a share in March and has soared 126% since then as investors caught on to the potential for this virtual teaching assistant. While shares have eased back from the highs they hit following its earnings report, they remain elevated. That's why, although Chegg looks like a great long-term pick, it might not be the best investment now.

There remains a lot of uncertainty about how fall semester classes will be held, whether students will be allowed to enroll and return to class in person beginning in September. As much as a transformation is necessary for higher education, it won't happen overnight. The economy's return to normalcy could be signal of a resumption of the established ways for schooling, too.

That doesn't mean Chegg won't still grow. The company continues to expand its offerings to new students at earlier stages of education, such as middle school and even elementary school, while expanding internationally.

Analysts forecast Chegg will grow earnings 25% annually, but the stock trades at over 40 times estimated profits for the coming year. And though free cash flow jumped to $8 million in the first quarter from $3.9 million last year, the stock goes for over 65 times FCF, an exceptionally high valuation.

Chegg remains a good, long-term stock pick that will benefit from changes that are desperately needed to break the cycle of high-cost education, but not at just any price. Chegg doesn't deserve to go to the head of the class just yet.

Original post:
This Online Education Stock Has Great Long-Term Potential, but Is It a Buy Right Now? - Motley Fool

Gregg Coccari feels torn. Its early June, and the coronavirus pandemic has thrown tens of millions of people out of work. But the company he runs, online learning platform Udemy, is thriving. Of course were very excited about that, he says. But were also watching people get laid off, and we see them struggling.

A lot of those people are flocking to Udemys selection of 150,000 online classes, most of which sell for from $10 to $20. In May alone, the company logged 25 million new enrollments, compared to 9 million the previous May. Its Udemy for Business division, which sells annual subscriptions for $360 per user to companies including Adidas and Toyota, is booming, too. Among the most popular classes: best practices for Zoom videoconferencing and how to manage a virtual team.

Udemy CEO Gregg Coccari

From March through May, Udemys sales were double the total for the same period in 2019, says Coccari. Surging demand will likely drive revenue above $400 million this year, according to two sources with knowledge of Udemys finances. (Coccari says that number is in the ballpark.) He says Udemy would be profitable if it werent planning to hire 200 people this year and investing in overseas expansion. It already has courses in 65 languages and customers in 190 countries.

Clad in a roomy grey T-shirt, Coccari, 67, is running things from a bedroom in his 1920s Spanish colonial home in Santa Monica, California. Starting in early 2019, when he became CEO, most Mondays he caught a 6:30 am flight to San Francisco, where the ten-year-old company is based, or he headed to one of its branch offices in Denver, Dublin, Ankara, So Paulo or Gurgaon, India. Now his life imitates a Udemy course, and hes not thrilled about it. Yesterday I had ten hours of Zoom meetings, he says. Id like to break my laptop. I prefer human interaction.

But Udemy is benefiting from worldwide social isolation. While K-12 schools and colleges struggle to teach online, Udemy is simply opening the spigot on a business model it pioneered. Its platform hosts unaccredited courses taught by instructors who independently create videotaped lessons and answer email questions from students on a Udemy message board. The company collects a share, usually 50%, of the course fees. Users determine which courses get the most traffic by posting star ratings and reviews.

LEFT Udemy Founder Eren Bali. RIGHT Bali in Udemy's first office in 2013.

Founder Eren Bali, 35, who chairs Udemys board, got the idea for the company after growing up in an impoverished village in southeastern Turkey where he pursued his math obsession by researching problems on the Web. He believed that great online instructors didnt need fancy degrees. We wanted to create a marketplace-based education company where any expert in the world could teach their own course, he says. He tried launching a livestreamed version of the site in Turkey in 2007. It flopped but SpeedDate, a live online dating site based in Silicon Valley, recruited him as an engineer.

He and two cofounders bootstrapped Udemys U.S. launch (the name is a portmanteau of you and academy) in 2010 after more than 200 funders turned them down. Edtech investor Daniel Pianko of New York-based University Ventures regrets passing on the opportunity. I thought the idea was too crazy, he says. Online education at the time was dominated by accredited for-profit giants like University of Phoenix. It was a totally revolutionary concept, that someone unaffiliated with a university could teach a course, he says.

While K-12 schools and colleges struggle to teach online, Udemy is simply opening the spigot on a business model it pioneered.

The first Udemy courses included how to make money playing poker online and how to pick up women. But the founders soon realized that coding and business skills like data science and team-building were more in demand. Those courses make up two thirds of Udemys selection. But the platform is still open to anyone who wants to teach. Portrait drawing and Reiki massage courses have been popular during the pandemic.

Competing online education sites including LinkedIn Learning and Coursera work with university professors (Coursera) or they heavily screen would-be instructors (LinkedIn Learning) and reject most applicants. By contrast, Udemy instructors just have to satisfy six items on a checklist of minimum requirements like posting at least 30 minutes of video content per course. All subject matter is welcome aside from a shortlist of no-nos like porn, firearms and hate speech. A handful of top Udemy instructors earn as much as $1 million a year. Read about one here.

Coccari says several hundred instructors make at least six figures annually, and that number will likely double this year. They include Teresa Greenway, 61, who earned $12,400 this May from her bread-baking courses. A high school dropout who married at 21, she had 10 children including a son with autism before she escaped her abusive marriage a decade ago. I had no degree, no work history and I was pretty battered emotionally, she says. In 2015, she stumbled on Udemy and put together a three-hour sourdough course.

After escaping an abusive marriage, Teresa Greenway discovered Udemy, where demand for her sourdough bread baking courses is spiking.

She now has 13 courses, which feed several other income streams, including eight self-published books, which she sells on Amazon. She records all her Udemy videos in advance. Once posted, they run on autopilot. Her only interaction with students is through a Udemy message board where students post questions. She spends 20 minutes a day writing answers. Last year Udemy accounted for the biggest chunk of the $78,000 she earned. This year she expects her income to double.

Bali left as CEO in 2014 and the company churned through two more bosses before Coccari took over last year. (In 2014 Bali cofounded a San Francisco startup, Carbon Health, where he is CEO.) A Wharton grad and serial startup CEO, Coccaris last job was heading Milwaukee-based premium pet food purveyor Stella & Chewys. One of that companys backers, Ken Fox of New York-based venture firm Stripes, is a Udemy investor and board member. He asked Coccari to take the CEO job and manage Udemys expansion.

In February Coccari closed a $50 million investment from Benesse Holdings, the publicly traded Tokyo-based education and senior care conglomerate that owns the Berlitz language schools. The deal brought Udemys total capital invested to more than $200 million and vaulted its valuation from a reported $710 million to $2 billion. Though Japans pandemic lockdowns were less restrictive than other countries, Udemys Japanese revenue in the first five months of 2020 tripled sales for the same period in 2019, according to Benesse CEO Tamotsu Adachi.

Udemy welcomes all subject matter aside from a shortlist of no-nos like porn, firearms and hate speech.

Coccari is cautious about predicting how the pandemic will shape the future of education. But online learning cheerleaders like Chicago edtech investor Deborah Quazzo of GSV Ventures believes the virtual education market will hit $1 trillion in 2026, more than double what she expected before the pandemic. She says Udemy is poised to balloon in size and regrets that she didnt fund the company. I was stupid, she says.

Coccari says hes concentrating on the present. Were just really focused on making sure we can handle these massive spikes in traffic, he says. We dont know what the world is going to look like at the end of all this.

Visit link:
Anyone Can Teach Anything On This Education SiteAnd Thats Why Its Worth Billions - Forbes

GERMANTOWN, Md., June 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- With the increase in remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for online education resources has skyrocketed. In response, Hughes Network Systems, LLC(HUGHES), the company behind America's No. 1 satellite Internet serviceHughesNet,joins with National 4-H Council to empower kids through online access to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education.

The new 4-H at Home platform, developed with the support of HughesNet,combines innovative resources like the 4-H STEM Lab with curriculum and activities from America's Cooperative Extension System. From February to March, the 4-H STEM Lab saw a 419 percent increase in traffica reflection of the increased need for online educational content. Building on the momentum of the HughesNet-sponsored STEM Lab, this new 4-H at Home online destination helps families discover even more activities in areas such as STEM and healthy living, enhancing their at-home learning experience.

"With so many students learning at home due to COVID-19, there is an urgent need for online access to educational resources," said Peter Gulla, senior vice president of marketing at Hughes. "We are pleased that through our support of 4-H STEM content we are able to help bring quality educational materials to more children and their families during this unprecedented time."

"Across the country, communities are facing unforeseen challenges due to the impact of the coronavirus," said Jennifer Sirangelo, president and CEO, National 4-H Council. "We recognize it can be stressful for parents and families to maintain a sense of normalcy and make sure kids stay on track in their daily development. We are excited to launch the 4-H at Home resource with the support of important partners like HughesNet and the innovation of America's Cooperative Extension System to help ensure young people have the resources to stay connected and engaged during this uncertain time."

Recently, the Peer Awards for Excellencerecognized Hughes for its work with 4-H promoting STEM education. The company was shortlisted for a Peer Award in Corporate Responsibility in Educating Young People and honored with an Award for Innovation in the category. In 2018, Hughes earned a Peer Award in Corporate Responsibilityfor innovative hands-on learning resources developed with 4-H, including STEM Lab. Peer Award recipients undergo a meticulous evaluation process by fellow professionals across criteria such as impact and innovation.

Since 2014, HughesNet has supported 4-H's efforts to bring STEM learning opportunities to young people across the country. For more information, visithttps://www.hughesnet.com/about/4-h-sponsorship

About Hughes Network Systems

Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES) is the global leader in broadband satellite technology and services for home and office. Its flagship high-speed satellite Internet service is HughesNet, the world's largest satellite network with over 1.5 million residential and business customers across the Americas. For large enterprises and governments, the company's HughesON managed network services provide complete connectivity solutions employing an optimized mix of satellite and terrestrial technologies. The JUPITER System is the world's most widely deployed High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) platform, operating on more than 40 satellites by leading service providers, delivering a wide range of broadband enterprise, mobility and cellular backhaul applications. To date, Hughes has shipped more than 7 million terminals of all types to customers in over 100 countries, representing approximately 50 percent market share, and its technology is powering broadband services to aircraft around the world.

Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., in Germantown, Maryland, USA, Hughes operates sales and support offices worldwide, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), a premier global provider of satellite operations. For additional information about Hughes, please visitwww.hughes.comand follow@HughesConnectson Twitter.

About EchoStar

EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS) is a premier global provider of satellite communication solutions. Headquartered in Englewood, Colo., and conducting business around the globe, EchoStar is a pioneer in secure communications technologies through its Hughes Network Systems and EchoStar Satellite Services business segments. For more information, visit echostar.com. Follow @EchoStaron Twitter.

About 4H

4H, the nation's largest youth development organization, grows confident young people who are empowered for life today and prepared for career tomorrow. 4H programs empower nearly 6 million young people across the U.S. through experiences that develop critical life skills. 4H is the youth development program of our nation's Cooperative Extension System and USDA, and serves every county and parish in the U.S. through a network of 110 public universities and more than 3000 local Extension offices. The research-backed 4H experience grows young people who are four times more likely to contribute to their communities; two times more likely to make healthier choices; two times more likely to be civically active; and two times more likely to participate in STEM programs.

2020 Hughes Network Systems, LLC, an EchoStar company. Hughes and HughesNet are registered trademarks and JUPITER is a trademark of Hughes Network Systems, LLC.

See the article here:
Hughes Joins with 4-H to Champion Online STEM Education amid Increased Demand for Virtual Learning - Herald-Mail Media

Campus leaders need a willingness to make a substantial in the online program and give its directors autonomy

Richard Price, Clayton Christensen Institute

The coronavirus campus closures and the wholesale shift to online learning have taken higher education to a turning point that could result in greater access and lower tuition.

Online learning will be transformative when college and universitiesif they havent alreadymake substantial investments in creating a robust online education program, saysRichard Price,a higher education research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, which studies disruptive innovations.

And that investment will be essential as more students, in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, demand alternatives to the high fixed cost, high-tuition model of higher education, Price says.

Even though well eventually see a full-scale return to the on-campus experience, colleges and universities no longer have the option to dabble in online, Price says. Colleges and universities will start to notice the investment is pretty worthwhile in expanding revenue and lowering costs.

More from UB: How the line between online and face-to-face instruction is blurring

Well-developed online education programs can now offer instruction that is equal toor in some cases better thanface-to-face courses. To start, campus administrators hoping to create a robust online initiative should be prepared for substantial up-front costs.

Leaders also should give the programs directors a high level of autonomy in designing the initiative, which should prevent the online model from simply becoming a virtual duplicate of the in-person program, Price says.

Disruption theory suggests creating a buffer from the main institutional model, Price says. This gives innovative models space to breathe and keeps the main model from suffocating or smothering it.

The traditional campus model continues to inhibit access because its too costly for some and, for otherssuch as working parentsit doesnt offer enough flexibility of schedule, Price says.

The model has also been unable to achieve equity, Price adds.

If I were a hiring manager filtering out anyone who didnt have a bachelors degree, Id be filtering out 68% of the black community and 79% of the Latinx community, Price says. Clearly, were not seeing proportionate outcomes at the university level.

More from UB: Is this competency-based learnings big moment?

Despite the cost to produce, Price encourages administrators to resist the temptation to charge the same tuition for online courses as they do for in-person instruction.

For example, the University of Flordias tuition for online is about 60% of the in-person cost while tuition at the fully-online Western Governors University remains around $7,000 a year, Price says.

Online learning must also offer students more than streaming or recorded video of a lecture. More mature programs employ instructional designers that can give an online course a film studio effect, Price says.

Administrators and faculty must leverage online learnings advantages over in-person instruction. Usage data, for instance, can show an instructoreven in a large lecture course of several hundredwhich students are actively participating.

However, designers of online learning should also figure out how to incorporate the best components of face-to-face learning, such as student study groups and one-on-one tutoring sessions.

Its a matter of optimizing for online strengths instead of replicating, point by point, what instructors are doing in person, Price says.

UBs coronavirus page offers complete coverage of the impacts on higher ed.

Interested in technology? Keep up with the UB Tech conference.

Originally posted here:
Online learning could lead to lower tuition, more access | - University Business

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Wednesday, June 17, announced plans to open this fall with both in-person and online classes.

According to a news release, face masks will be required, and university buildings are being modified to encourage social distancing and install plexiglass barriers in high-traffic areas.

University residence halls will be open, and student services and activities will be provided online and in person.

We have given very careful consideration to what is best for our students educationally and to address the health needs of our students, faculty and staff, and our community, Chancellor Mark Mone said. We know students and families have been waiting for this announcement, but it was important for us to take the time to get it right. We knew from surveys that our students wanted to be back on campus, but we needed to make sure that we could bring them back in as safe a manner as possible.

UWM will follow itsoriginal academic calendar, with classes beginning Sept. 2.

Many classes this fall will be offered with a hybrid approach that involves a mix of face-to-face and online instruction. For example, in a Tuesday/Thursday class, half of the students would attend in person on Tuesday and have online instruction on Thursday, while the other half would have the opposite schedule. This approach reduces the number of students present at one time to 50 or fewer and allows for more efficient implementation of social distancing in classrooms. Students with health concerns may request accommodations to complete their coursework online.

Some classes, such as labs and studios, are being structured to meet entirely or almost entirely in person while maintaining social distancing standards. Instructors will be prepared to move the classes online should public health conditions require it.

And, as usual, UWM will offer hundreds of courses entirely online, including all classes with more than 100 students.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, UWM was already home to Wisconsins largest online education program with over 850 online classes and more than 40 fully online degrees and certificates. It has beenrated Wisconsins best online college by TheBestSchools.organdranked among the nations50 best online bachelors programs by U.S. News & World Report.

Preparations for the fall semester have already begun with modifications to university buildings that include the installation of signage and floor markings that indicate where to line up and enter and exit in order to maintain social distance. High-traffic areas, such as the Bursars and Registrars Offices, will have plexiglass installed at their service counters.

Classrooms will be professionally cleaned at least once per day and stocked with hand sanitizer and disinfectants that students and instructors can use.

Single and double rooms will be available in UWM residence halls, which are suite-style, with two or three bedrooms connected to a bathroom. UWM does not have group showers or large communal restrooms like some other universities.

Dining services in the residence halls and the UWM Student Union are being adapted so meals can be ordered and paid for using a cellphone or other mobile device. Service will be contactless.

Employees and students will be required to wear masks unless they are in a private office or their own residence hall room. Masks also must be worn outside when six feet of distance cant be maintained.

COVID-19 testing will be available for students with COVID-19 symptoms at UWMs Norris Health Center, but widespread on-campus testing of people without symptoms is not planned at this time. Students and employees are expected to monitor their health, watch for possible symptoms and stay home if they are sick.

Read the full COVID-19 planning report from UWM below:

See the original post:
UW-Milwaukee to resume in-person, online classes this fall - WDJT

Finding a balance

To adjust to the new landscape of digital classrooms, faculty in the College of Natural Resources and Environment and all across campus have had to find new ways to keep their students engaged and on task while being adaptive to the challenges of moving classes online.

Ive worked to engage with students, but Ive also tried not to stress them out, explained Assistant ProfessorJ.P. Gannon, who teaches environmental informatics in theDepartment of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation. My approach has been to work on the challenges in a direct way, trying to get my students to talk with me.

To facilitate that conversation, Gannon conducted multiple surveys to gauge how the adjustments to video lectures and labs have gone for his students and where he could make improvements. When youre up in front of the class, you can adjust on the fly if you get the sense that something isnt connecting, he noted. You cant get that same sense lecturing online, so its important to have ways to get feedback that you can use to make adjustments.

Gannon also used class surveys to lighten things up for students, creating avenues for students to brainstorm ideas for staying busy in this uncertain moment.

I did a survey asking students what they were doing to take their mind off things, and asked if I could share their answers with classmates so wed have a list of ideas. I made a slideshow with some of the strategies the students mentioned, from exercising and dancing, to playing Animal Crossing, or building forts. I even put in slides of what Ive been doing, whether its riding my bike or playing with my dogs. I think they appreciated knowing were all in this together.

From hands-on to learning at a distance

Much of the learning that takes place in the college is hands-on and outdoors, and professors are striving to make sure that students can still access some of the resources that are on campus or nearby.

Our forest resources field experience course entails field labs taught by several faculty members, said Associate Professor Eric Wiseman, who teaches urban forestry. The lab that I teach each year is our first opportunity to expose students to the professions of urban forestry and arboriculture. In the past Ive arranged to bring four or five arborists and urban foresters to the Hahn Horticulture Garden and set up field stations where they teach and demonstrate techniques of the professions.

To give current sophomores a chance to learn about the professions, Wiseman conducted a virtual urban forestry day, inviting arborists and urban foresters with a variety of backgrounds to participate in a Zoom class and round-robin discussion about the field and how students can prepare for careers in forestry.

We had a municipal forester, a commercial arborist, a consulting arborist, and a utility forester participate in the session, Wiseman said. They talked to the students about some of the things they do in their sectors of the field, and it was an opportunity for our students to ask questions of professionals.

For his wildlife fire ecology lab, Assistant ProfessorAdam Coatestook his students to the field virtually. I visited outdoor field locations in Fishburn Forest and the Jefferson National Forest where the students would have observed potential fire effects and prepared videos of what those labs would have entailed, he said.

Social science research in a changing world

In addition to being more innovative in the virtual classroom, researchers in the college are also adapting to the changing circumstances. For social scientists especially, who rely on face-to-face interviews with individuals or groups, the coronavirus pandemic has forced radical rethinking about how to safely conduct research.

To help them adjust, Assistant ProfessorAshley Dayer,of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, has been hosting virtual seminars through theSociety for Conservation Biologys Social Science Working Group to develop new solutions for the specific challenges that social scientists are facing.

Read the original:
VA Tech Faculty Use Innovation / Engagement to Adapt to New Online Education Space - The Roanoke Star

Solar panels will be set up in unelectrified tribal settlements in the eastern suburbs of the district for ensuring seamless access to online education for students there.

The District Education Department is trying to solicit sponsorship for setting up as much panels as possible.

Currently, volunteers trained under the Samagra Shiksha Kerala in association with the Scheduled Tribes Development Department are reaching out to students in tribal settlements after getting laptops charged from the nearest centres with power connectivity, which is an arduous task.

The idea is to set up solar panels in public spaces like anganwadis near to the settlements, said Honey G. Alexander, Deputy Director of Education, Ernakulam.

This is one of the many initiatives being adopted by the department to ensure universal accessibility to online education.

Having claimed to have covered the student community as a group, the authorities are now focusing on enhancing individual accessibility to online education.

As per an initial estimate, about 7,000 students out of the 2.62 lakh students in the district didnt have access to online classes either owing to lack of smart phones or television sets.

We covered all of them by this week through multiple modes, including 89 community study centres, by arranging television sets in easily accessible public spaces like libraries and anganwadis. We are now planning to increase the number of such centres depending on the availability of television sets, said Ms. Alexander.

Around 300 students who were found to be outside the ambit of such centres were being personally visited by teachers with downloaded lessons once in two or three days.

Another 500 students were given laptops belonging to schools while some others with data connectivity issues were given lessons in pen drives.

We are expecting donation of around 200 television sets shortly, in which case we plan to distribute them to the most needy among the 250-odd students who are now dependent on their neighbours for access to television, said Ms. Alexander.

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Thank you to all the educators who heroically pivoted to online learning.

ParentsCAN would like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of the Napa Valley Unified School District to provide online education for their students through this pandemic. While we recognize that results have been mixed, we also know that many educational systems around the country refused to try and simply did not offer any specialized services to students.

The Special Education Department at NVUSD completed 700 Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings with families via virtual meetings by June 5. In March, NVUSD reached out to ParentsCAN to help parents cope with the changes to the special education system wrought by the pandemic.

NVUSD has been referring families to ParentsCAN who needed additional help navigating virtual meetings for their children with special needs. Our bilingual advocates worked with parents to log onto the technology, get comfortable using it and finally to use Docu-sign technology to complete the process. This service is especially critical for Spanish-speaking families as all the online IEP materials are in English only.

At ParentsCAN we believe that in partnership with our local school districts we can and must build individual learning experiences for all students. Our local educators have done an exceptional job of trying out a variety of different activities that align to each childs own unique interests and strengths. Packets for some children, virtual therapy sessions and Zoom classes for others. Some of these activities engaged children in new and exciting ways, some did not, a lot was learned on both sides of the screen.

Excerpt from:
Not as easy as it seems | Letters to the Editor - Napa Valley Register

This report focuses on the global Online Education status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the Online Education development in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and Central & South America.

Access the PDF sample of the report @https://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/request-sample/4571318

The key players covered in this study K12 Inc Pearson White Hat Managemen Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. K Bettermarks Scoyo Languagenut Beness Holding, Inc New Oriental Education & Technology XUEDA AMBO XRS CDEL Ifdoo YINGDING YY Inc

Market segment by Type, the product can be split into Elementary Education(Grades 1-5) Junior High Education(Grades 6-8) Senior High Education(Grades 9-12)

Make an enquiry of this report @https://www.orbisresearch.com/contacts/enquiry-before-buying/4571318

Market segment by Application, split into Teacher Student Parents

Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers North America Europe China Japan Southeast Asia India Central & South America

The study objectives of this report are: To analyze global Online Education status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. To present the Online Education development in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and Central & South America. To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies. To define, describe and forecast the market by type, market and key regions.

Browse the complete report @https://www.orbisresearch.com/reports/index/global-online-education-market-size-status-and-forecast-2020-2026

In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Online Education are as follows: History Year: 2015-2019 Base Year: 2019 Estimated Year: 2020 Forecast Year 2020 to 2026 For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2019 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Report Overview

1.1 Study Scope

1.2 Key Market Segments

1.3 Players Covered: Ranking by Online Education Revenue

1.4 Market Analysis by Type

1.4.1 Global Online Education Market Size Growth Rate by Type: 2020 VS 2026

1.4.2 Elementary Education(Grades 1-5)

1.4.3 Junior High Education(Grades 6-8)

1.4.4 Senior High Education(Grades 9-12)

1.5 Market by Application

1.5.1 Global Online Education Market Share by Application: 2020 VS 2026

1.5.2 Teacher

1.5.3 Student

1.5.4 Parents

1.6 Study Objectives

1.7 Years Considered

Chapter Two: Global Growth Trends by Regions

2.1 Online Education Market Perspective (2015-2026)

2.2 Online Education Growth Trends by Regions

2.2.1 Online Education Market Size by Regions: 2015 VS 2020 VS 2026

2.2.2 Online Education Historic Market Share by Regions (2015-2020)

2.2.3 Online Education Forecasted Market Size by Regions (2021-2026)

2.3 Industry Trends and Growth Strategy

2.3.1 Market Top Trends

2.3.2 Market Drivers

2.3.3 Market Challenges

2.3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis

2.3.5 Online Education Market Growth Strategy

2.3.6 Primary Interviews with Key Online Education Players (Opinion Leaders)

Chapter Three: Competition Landscape by Key Players

3.1 Global Top Online Education Players by Market Size <

Continued.

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Online Education Market 2020: Industry, Size, Share, Demands, Growth, Opportunities, Trends Analysis And Forecast Till 2026 - 3rd Watch News

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, universities have been operating in emergency mode. Because online education had not been a priority in the past, the pandemic forced universities to find a quick fix. Et voil the Zoom lecture was born.

But effective online education is more than a few videos and chats. Universities are now discovering that those quick fixes will not be enough in the long term. With only a few months before the beginning of the new academic year, universities need to come up with more effective solutions.

However, quality online education requires some substantive upfront investments, both in infrastructure and, more importantly, in pedagogical expertise for building engaging learning experiences. Add to that the time it takes for teachers and instructional designers to work together on course design and the thought of being able to teach fully online at high quality standards this autumn quickly becomes wishful thinking for many (if not most) universities.

Looking at the situation in Europe, some universities have been slowly building their online learning capacity in recent years, but this has by no means been mainstreamed. On the contrary, the differences among universities in different countries and even within the same country are substantial, and attitudes towards online learning vary greatly.

In such an unbalanced landscape and with the current time constraints, one obvious solution would be inter-university collaboration. By pooling existing resources, both in terms of infrastructure and pedagogical support, universities can ensure their students access to quality online learning.

This does not have to mean a unified curriculum, so the diversity of the academic offer is not endangered in any way. The main idea is to join forces on the aspects of instruction that are too resource- and time-intensive to be tackled independently at the moment, particularly the expertise and support for designing and delivering online courses.

It sounds like a no-brainer but, unfortunately, this is not the way universities operate. Collaboration is not really in their DNA, and the academic landscape has become more and more competitive in the past decades. Each university is keen to preserve its identity and would rather stress its individual character than see the similarities and potential cooperation with other institutions.

In Europe, the variety of national education systems also erects unnecessary barriers to cooperative endeavours. When collaboration happens, it mainly concerns research rather than education. This is also partly due to the fact that teaching is still seen as an individual activity. While informal exchanges on teaching take place, they are seldom formalised as inter-institutional programmes.

Yet away from the spotlight, innovative e-learning initiatives have been developed around Europe for the past two decades. Some of them can provide inspiration for universities to choose a different, more effective path in the current situation. For instance, the Virtual University of Bavaria (VHB) is a network of 31 universities that provides its members with funding and pedagogical support for developing online courses.

There are a few key aspects that make this initiative sustainable. First, collaboration is the default option: in order to get funding and support, each course proposal has to come from a team of at least two professors from different universities. Second, quality assurance plays an important role: the network provides numerous professional development opportunities on technology-enhanced learning, and the courses are evaluated by a team of external experts. Last but not least, online learning is an integral part of the institutional strategy for all participating universities, carried through with the funding support of VHB.

The result, after two decades of operation, is a mature network that has developed a culture of online learning, a growing portfolio of courses accessible to students from all participating universities and a centralised support system covering all practical aspects of the course design process. For the post-Covid reality, this configuration would bring about obvious advantages by consolidating the existing pockets of expertise into an efficient and sustainable system.

While such models work well at regional and national level, there is also potential for cooperation across borders, at the European level. There are several EU-funded initiatives, such as the European Universities Initiative, that bring together universities from across the continent. European universities traditionally have many bilateral cooperation agreements, so the infrastructure exists, but, at the moment, it is used either for research or student mobility. The next step should be to scale up and consolidate these cooperation models by adding a strong focus on online education; a good starting point could be to develop joint introductory courses for different disciplines.

Such collaboration is not a quick fix: networks like this take time to cultivate. But it could be a short cut. It could offer a way to build a culture of cooperation and openness to online learning that will increase both the quality and the accessibility of the learning experience in the post-Covid world.

Alexandra Mihai is a researcher in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and an associate researcher at the Institute for European StudiesatVrije Universiteit Brussel. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on her blog.

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European universities should cooperate on online teaching - Times Higher Education (THE)