Flush With $80M, Desire2Learn Buys ‘Anti-Sharepoint For Students’ Platform Wiggio, Its 2nd Acquisition In 2 Months

Desire2Learn, the online learning platform based out of Waterloo, Ontario in Canada that raised $80 million in September 2012, is stepping up to the M&A plate. Today, we’ve learned, and confirmed, that the company is making its second acquisition in as many months by buying Wiggio, a collaboration platform for students.

The companies are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal, but what we do know is that the ten-plus-year-old Canadian learning company is looking to expand its foothold in the U.S. higher-ed market. Wiggio is based in Boston, which is a key hub for the e-learning market, but not because it’s a big college town or anything. (Just kidding, it has 35+ colleges and universities, more than one of which is a Desire2Learn customer.)

Acquiring Wiggio means that Desire2Learn doesn’t have to start from scratch in the market and allows it to open a Boston office. Accordingly, employment offers are being made to all six Wiggio employees, who (for those who accept) will remain in Beantown and help to open Desire2Learn’s new office.

We’re also hearing that the company is building itself up south of Canadian border also because it is eyeing up an eventual IPO in the U.S.

Exits in the ed-tech market are also significant for another reason: A ton of ed-tech startups, some with great ideas but pre- meaningful revenue, have received seed funding, but it’s been a struggle for many of them to raise Series A and B rounds — an amplification of the larger issue for many startups. In many cases, investors just aren’t that interested in putting big money in these companies right now, so in most cases the best (or only) option for them is to get acquired.

A final decision has yet to be made on whether Desire2Learn will integrate Wiggio’s technology into its platform and begin offering it to schools. For those unfamiliar, as Sarah wrote last April, Wiggio set out to build the “anti-SharePoint,” providing schools with a social and collaboration network for groups associated with educational institutions, which can range from math clubs to sports teams and sororities.

In other words, Wiggio aims to provide schools with the same kind of easy-to-use collaboration tools that services like Box, Yammer, WebEx and Basecamp offer to businesses — like the ability to hold virtual meetings through web conferencing, share calendars and files, create documents and study plans, or chat and video message fellow students about tonight’s homework assignments, for example.

While plans for integrating Wiggio are still up in the air, Desire2Learn Market Development VP Jeff McDowell tells us that Wiggio’s platform will continue to operate as a stand-alone service for the foreseeable future, which means that Wiggio’s 1.1 million users and 100,000 collaboration groups won’t be forced to begin looking for a new home next week. No imminent shut down.

Wiggio has raised $2.55 million from New Atlantic Ventures, Bob Doyle and angels. It was founded in 2008 by Dana Lampert, just after he graduated from Cornell, and influenced by all the enterprise collaboration tools he’d come acros while during a past Wall Street internship. Lampert is currently the CEO.

Degree Compass

The Wiggio deal is Desire2Learn’s second acquisition in as many months, following on the heels of its purchase of Degree Compass in late January. Backed by The Gates Foundation, Degree Compass offers a predictive analytics tool, which, like Netflix’s recommendation engine for movies, helps students find classes, courses and subjects that fit their interests, skills and grade level and help them move towards their degree.

The service also allows schools to get a better sense of how well their students will perform in particular subjects through its grade prediction system, which, in early testing at several pilot schools, has been able to predict whether a student will pass the class with 90 percent accuracy based on their prior performance. And not only that, but can distinguish whether or not a student will get an A, B, C, D or F grade — with 92 percent accuracy.

McDowell tells us that Desire2Learn will be going to market with Degree Compass in the next month, with a version that’s very close to the one it acquired.

So, whereas Degree Compass solves an immediate market need for Desire2Learn and its institutional customers and is being implemented right away, Wiggio’s technology isn’t in as high demand given the company’s current services, which makes its long-term future a little more uncertain.

It is clear, however, that, since its $80 million raise in September from New Enterprise Associates and Omers Ventures, Desire2Learn has been looking to become an acquirer in EdTech, and its hiring of McDowell, who previously helped lead platform marketing and business development at fellow Waterloo resident BlackBerry, is another demonstration of that.

The $80 million round, the largest to date for a Canadian tech company (and one of the largest ever made by NEA), was raised to help Desire2Learn invest in customer service and cloud infrastructure, platform development and global growth, i.e. acquisitions. Since launching in 1999, Desire2Learn has bootstrapped its way to a Learning Management System (LMS) that competes with the bigs (and incumbents) in the space like Blackboard and Moodle.

In fact, the company spent the first three or so years of its life mired in patent-related litigation with Blackboard. At the time, using litigation was not an unfamiliar approach for Blackboard in dealing with competitors. Although the battles dragged out for years, Desire2Learn was able to come out the other side with just enough capital and steam to begin building. Today, Desire2Learn has over 700 clients and over 8 million learners across higher education, K-12, healthcare and the corporate sector.

And it has over 600 employees worldwide, which it hopes to expand to 750 by the year’s end (partly inorganically, it seems). Although the company does not disclose financial information, we’ve been hearing that its institutional contracts with its customers are translating into millions of dollars of revenue — a relatively rare thing in EdTech.

Engaging Students in Higher Order Thinking (Nova: Rise of the Drones)

 

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” – Fran Lebowitz

Perhaps you’ve been lurking in the shadows reading my blog posts on Higher Order Thinking? If so, you’ve done nothing wrong even though the verb sounds creepy. Lurking is a perfectly good thing to do while you way the merits of an online dialog. So we all do it! But there comes a time when you have to fish or cut bait. Here is an idea you might wish to try when are ready to go fishing.

The PBS series Nova provides an ocean of timely science programming but their latest release Rise of the Drones is one of the best. It is packed with over fifty minutes of facts pertaining to military drones. It is sure to be of interest to students because it involves flying and the military but it also raises some ethical dilemmas. Have a look!

It think you’ll find it useful in engaging your students in a higher order thinking project especially if you require further reading on the topic. I suggest setting a minimum limit on the number of sources even for video presentations.

 

 

Watch Rise of the Drones on PBS. See more from NOVA.

 

 

As you know there are three levels of higher order thinking. Assignments can be given for each one.

 

Analysis

“In analysis we break information into parts by identifying motives or causes, make inferences and find evidence to support generalizations.” At this level your students can report of the various components of a drone and how they interact with one another. They can describe a drone’s;

• input devices,
• output devices,
• processing unit(s),
• propulsion,
• navigation,
• memory unit(s), and
• control mechanism(s).

 

Synthesis

“Synthesis involves compiling information in a different way by combining elements in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions.” At this level you could ask the student to identify one or more technical flaws with the system and recommend an alternate solution. How might drones be improved? How might they be repurposed?

 

Evaluation

“Evaluation occurs when we present and defend opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas or quality of work based on a set of criteria.” Students at this level might discuss the ethical dilemmas associated with drones along with their recommendation for continuance or discontinuance of the project.

 

Anyway, you decide if this is a viable project to engage your students in higher order thinking. I suggest watching it through before deciding. You might also want to share the idea with your Principal or Dean first. People can be unreasonable at times and you wouldn’t want him or her caught off guard.

Nova is a PBS program. You can watch it on television, buy the DVD from PBS, or watch it online with your computer, tablet, or smartphone. The PBS app is free and available the Apple App Store.

Flipping Tips: Select technology wisely (Part 2)

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of the chosen field of endeavor. ” – Vince Lombardi

Let’s assume you identified your objective and decided how you will measure your progress in meeting it. Now it’s time to gather and assess candidate technologies to help you meet that objective.

What criteria should you use? Here’s a short list to get you started.

Function first!

Does the candidate product perform the function(s) you need to achieve your objective(s)? Expert opinions are useful in identifying candidates but take a test drive and decide for yourself. If the product fails to function as needed discard it otherwise continue onto the next question. 

Is it user-friendly? 

Technology today ought to be intuitively obvious. When necessary, software should guide you through complex procedures. Is there internal documentation? Is it easy to understand? Is the documentation context sensitive? Does it will take you directly to the information you need when you need it? You can assess user-friendliness during your test drive. 

How accessible is it? 

How do you want your students and/or employees to access this technology? For instance, Google Drive provides word processing on the cloud which is usually good but not if your policies prohibit Internet access or you have no Internet access. On the otherhand, your team may be “road warriors” armed with a vast array of mobile devices and starved for cloud computing. Decide where you are, or want to be, between these two points. Does your candidate meet your accessibility needs?

Portability?

Computing environments are more diverse than ever. Today’s applications need to be able to run at each point on a two-dimensional matrix of diverse operating systems and hardware platforms. This is what we call “portability” and a good way to get there is to use applications designed to be run on the web (AKA the cloud). Many developers like Blackboard write special user interfaces or “front-ends” for tablets and smartphones too. Portability is a critical factor if you are teaching in a BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) environment.

Function, user-friendliness, accessibility, and portability are good measures of quality but sometimes unexpected issues arise and it’s good to have an idea of how vendors deal with them. Do they provide free tech support? When is it available? You might skip these questions for free personal use apps but not when you plan to ask employees or students to use them.

If you are lucky you’ll still have multiple candidates to choose from. You still need to select the best alternative but at least you have a choice! We’ll discuss making a final selection in our next installment.