Ex Google Play Marketing Chief Hired to Help Students Enter "Workplace of the Future"

Consider this: Bill Gates has poured billions of dollars into what he calls the “future of learning” - and Mark Zuckerberg just announced a new $50M ed-tech investment. Both with a big push towards personalized learning.

Course Hero, now led by a new CMO - former Google Play Marketing chief, Patrick Mork - wants to also bet on students, by democratizing access to study materials: its 12.5M users, to be exact.

By tackling the “The 4 Ls” - crucial problems that students and educators face today - this college student favorite wants to change the way students learn, study, and succeed in the “workplace of the future”.

What are the 4 L’s? It’s lack of:

#1 TIME:
Students today have less time than ever before to master their course material because of more classwork, homework, multiple study groups, extra-curricular activities, and even side jobs to pay their ballooning student bills.

#2 MASTERY:
Students learn the same material at the same pace but are often not mastering the full content, resulting in an unstable foundation.

#3 COLLABORATION:
Collaboration is the absolute norm in the modern workplace, with tools like Slack, Google Docs, Box, and Asana. In fact, the time spent by employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more in the past 20 years. Yet, many classrooms are still focused on individualized learning and individual contribution, which may not prepare graduates for the workplace of the future.

#4 PERSONALIZATION:
The sheer number of students per class poses a hard challenge for educators and TA’s in assisting the needs of each student. Educators just can’t personalize if they’re dealing with an over-crowded classroom.

In the last 12 months alone, the platform’s content library has grown over 50%, it has added 170,000 pieces of Course Advice (from virtually zero) and its user base now exceeds 12.5M users.




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Course Hero Graduates: Unveils a Brand refresh and Makes Key Hires to Accelerate White Hot Growth

Hires Google, Yahoo! and VMWare executives as it powers through 145+% user growth

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. Course Hero, an online learning platform that empowers millions of students and educators to succeed, today is announcing major growth metrics, three big name hires hailing from Google, Yahoo!, and VMWare, and a corporate rebrand to better position itself for the hard-to-reach but very important demographics of students and educators.

Course Hero is a crowdsourced learning platform where students and educators share and access millions of course-specific educational resources, get 24/7 online tutoring, and create flashcards. In the last 12 months alone, the platform’s content library has grown over 50%, it has added 170,000 pieces of Course Advice (from virtually zero) and its user base now exceeds 12.5M users.

“I’m incredibly proud of the work the Course Hero team has done to support students and democratize access to course-specific study materials,” said company co-founder and CEO, Andrew Grauer. “I’m also proud of the work we’re doing to support educators as the Course Hero platform now serves more than 85,000 free educator accounts. These accounts enable them to share their own materials with other educators and students and get access to each other’s materials. Our aim is to bring educators together. We want to help them find new inspiration, learn new techniques, and investigate multiple perspectives to learn from each other, save valuable time, and get better learning outcomes for students.”

To continue this trajectory of rapid growth in serving both students and educators, Course Hero has also brought on a slate of top leadership, and is introducing an exciting new brand identity.

To help accelerate this growth and scale the company's marketing and partnerships team, the company recently hired Patrick Mork as its new Chief Marketing Officer. Mork, who led the rebrand initiative, has an impressive career background that includes building and leading the marketing team that launched the Google Play store. He is joined by new VP of Engineering Lynne Thieme, formerly VP of Engineering at Idealist and a member of the Alumni board at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Thieme’s career also includes positions at VMware, Oracle and IBM. Lastly, the company also brought on CFO Stephen Van Horne who was previously CFO at Get Insured and brings years of experience from Yahoo!, Ignite! and Bechtel.

About Course Hero | Master Your ClassesTM

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Course Hero is a venture-backed online learning platform that empowers millions of students and educators to succeed. Fueled by a passionate community of students and educators who share their course-specific knowledge and educational resources, Course Hero offers the biggest and best library of study documents, expert tutors, customizable flashcards, and course advice. The company was named a Top Workplace by the Bay Area News Group. Download the Course Hero app for iPhone or Android today or follow Course Hero on CrunchBase and AngelList.

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Great career exploration web site

The US Dept. of Labor has a great site for students to use to explore careers. There are games and quizzes to learn about careers and statistics, student resources and a teacher's desk. The student resources include career exploration, economic information, charts and tables and a glossary.

It is very easy to use and provides a new way for students to explore potential careers. There is also a teacher's section and you can look at the careers in different lists. Not every career is here, but many are and the teacher or counselor can help the student find others.

Another good site from the DOL is the Occupational Outlook Handbook. The OOH has information on different careers such as the employment outlook, education requirements, working conditions, and more.

These are great resources to use to help students explore different careers, as well as learn about the economy and statistics. 

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College is not for everyone - some quick thoughts.

image from http://professorjosh.wordpress.com

College is not for everyone. But, education policy loves to say that we are making students "college ready", whatever that really means. We need to focus on giving students certain knowledge and skills, but college ready is not the only focus we should have.

A report I saw today (sorry, can't find link) said that 2.1 million college students are MIA. They were tracking the number of college freshmen, and then the number of graduates. The data is hard to get because there isn't any true data collection. I'm sure everyone knows some students that have not finished college. College isn't for everyone.

College is expensive. If you really don't know what you want to do, should you really spend all that money to "find yourself", or would it be better to work for a while and explore things. Some students are not mature or socially or emotionally ready for college. Some students have interests and job wants that don't require college.

I think we need more career/job training in schools. We need plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and carpenters. They make good money too. We really need skilled machinists in this country. CT has a huge shortage. Engineers I know tell me that their companies can't find enough machinists, and they make very good money.

College is great for some people. It's not for everyone. Schools should not focus on "College Ready", we should focus on "future ready." We should focus on giving students the skills to succeed in college, technical school, apprenticeships, or any job.


Related:

10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future

What Do You Like - career exploration web site from US Dept of Labor

The US Dept. of Labor has a great site for students to use to explore careers. It starts with the image above showing different school subjects. The students then click on a subject that they like, and the site links them to different careers that are similar to that subject.

It is very easy to use and provides a new way for students to explore potential careers. There is also a teacher's guide and you can look at the careers in different lists. Not every career is here, but many are and the teacher or counselor can help the student find others.

Another good site from the DOL is the Occupational Outlook Handbook. The OOH has information on different careers such as the employment outlook, education requirements, working conditions, and more.

STEM Career information resources for educators to share with students

Choosing a career is a tough thing for students. The more exposure they have to information about different career fields and what they do, the more informed decision they can make. Career shadowing, field trips, and guest speakers are great ways to expose them to these things.

The CBIA (Connecticut Business and Industry Association) has a great site with education resources. One part of it is called "Career Pathways." In this section, there are videos and teacher's guides for helping students learn about different careers. I've used them and the resources are excellent. For the engineering career one, they have interviews with engineers and follow them on their daily work. The teacher guides have lesson ideas and student resources that make these very easy to use.

I recommend them to career teachers and counselors as well as class room teachers. You can use these to connect what you are teaching to real world careers.

The career areas are: Energy and Green Technology, Engineering, Health and Biosciences, and Manufacturing. Even though it is geared towards Connecticut, anyone can use these resources.

Related:

CTEduOnline - career and technical education resources

Technology in use in Engineering

I have a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and I worked for 10 years as an engineer before becoming an educator. I still do some consulting and keep up to date in the field. With all the talk about educational technology, I thought it would be nice to share some of the technology currently being used by engineers so that educators have an idea of what college students will be learning.

Engineers, like everyone else, use office productivity tools (MS Office, Google Docs), email, and the internet. In fact, the internet is one of the engineers' best tools. Research, online catalogs from vendors, online reference guides and calculators, and discussion groups and forums are all used on a daily basis.

Computer Aided Design (CAD) is the next major technology that engineers use. Products are designed in 3D on the computer, analyzed, fit checked, and simulated before prototypes are even built. Multi-physics simulation software, Finite Element Analysis, and Computational Fluid Dynamics software are critical to being able to design, analyze, and test products virtually before spending more money on manufacturing and live testing. They can analyze and simulate almost everything that a product would go through, virtually.

There is also Bill of Material (BOM) software to keep track of all the pieces and parts, Manufacturing software to help the engineers figure out the best way to build a product and then programming the equipment to do the work.

3D printers are used to make functional models of the product for early testing. They either strip away material, or lay down material (a plastic) to create the parts. These 3D printers can fit on a desktop. There are also 3D scanners that can be used to take a real part and turn it into a 3D model in the computer.

When I worked at Sikorsky Aircraft, we did everything on the computer. Design, analysis, simulation, manufacturing layout, communications, coordination, and more. Even our manuals and references were all online. If we printed something out, it had a watermark on it saying that the computer network should always be checked for updated information.

Computers and software have always been important in engineering, but as computers have gotten more powerful, so has software and the tools that can be used. Things change quickly, so engineers have to be able to learn new software and tools on their own.

As a high school physics teacher, I teach 90% seniors. This means that I am usually the last science teacher that they will have in high school (they may be taking two sciences). I try to expose them to project based learning (how WPI does things and how engineers work) and different types of software and systems that are out there for science and engineering. I try to teach them how to do their own research and how to learn things on their own, because I know that is what they will need to be able to do in college and in the workplace.

I also try to encourage students who are interested in and good at science to look at engineering as a career. Our world needs more engineers to solve the world's problems and continue with improving our standard of life.

Engineering is obviously not the only career field using technology - medicine, manufacturing, even retail, all use technology in ever increasing ways. This means that the more our students are exposed to technology, the better prepared they will be for college and the workplace.

More information on engineering and engineering resources for educators:

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/10/engineering-resources.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering

Great career exploration web site

The US Dept. of Labor has a great site for students to use to explore careers. It starts with the image above showing different school subjects. The students then click on a subject that they like, and the site links them to different careers that are similar to that subject.

It is very easy to use and provides a new way for students to explore potential careers. There is also a teacher's guide and you can look at the careers in different lists. Not every career is here, but many are and the teacher or counselor can help the student find others.

Another good site from the DOL is the Occupational Outlook Handbook. The OOH has information on different careers such as the employment outlook, education requirements, working conditions, and more.

What colleges and employers are looking for in graduates

I just read some research and articles about what colleges and employers are looking for in graduates. Content knowledge was 5th or 6th on the list. They both want to see well-rounded students, with a variety of skills.

They both want students who have:
1) academic achievement
2) work experience and internships
3) clubs and organization membership that shows leadership
4) community service

The reports all say the same thing about other skills colleges want students to have:
1) communications - personal and electronic
2) teamwork skills
3) problem solving skills
4) critical thinking skills

Employers have also said that they expect students to have a basic knowledge of internet research, computer operating system use, and office productivity software.

This means high schools and colleges have to teach our students all of these qualities and skills as part of our curriculum.

One way we can do this is through using technology in the classroom, project based learning with hands on projects, cooperative learning where students work in teams and help themselves.

We can also motivate our students by letting them know what colleges and employers are looking for and by helping them understand what they are learning, and WHY they are learning it.