Dilip Modi-promoted Omnia Investments has funded candidate assessment venture Common Job Test and higher education firm Sunstone, picking up significant minority stake in both start-ups. According to a report by Economic Times, the total sum invested by Omnia in these early-stage start-ups amounts to Rs 7 crore.

(Via Dilip Modi-backed Omnia Invests Rs 7 Crore In Education Start-Ups | VCCircle)

Helion Advisors, one of the largest early stage venture funds in the country, today announced an investment of US$ 3.5 million in Vienova Education, an affordable private education provider based in Delhi, India. This follows the first round of funding by Indian Angel Network (IAN) and others in 2008. With this investment, Mr Sanjeev Aggarwal, Senior Managing Director, Helion Advisors, joins the board of Vienova.

(Via Helion Advisors announces investment of US$ 3.5 mn in Vienova Education)

“Toefl provides accurate scores at the individual level; it is not appropriate for comparing countries,” clarified Walt MacDonald, ETS executive vice-president and chief operating officer.

“The differences in the number of students taking the test in each country, how early English is introduced into the curriculum, how many hours per week are devoted to learning English, and the fact that those taking the test are not representative of all English speakers in each country or any defined population,” Said MacDonald.

via ‘Toefl score comparison unfair’ – The Times of India.

This was really my primary crib, when I wrote about the Proficiency Debate.

via Education-Technology Giants SunGard and Datatel Announce Merger – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The acronym MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course. The meaning of “massive” is obvious; a MOOC can range from several hundred to several thousand participants. But it isn’t just the size of the classes or even their location — online — that make MOOCs different.

MOOCs redefine academic courses in several ways. They are open, for one, which means that anyone can participate. The content of the course — readings and so on — is freely and openly accessible. The content that participants create is also open. Students blog, for example, and share their learning with one another.

via Are MOOCs the Future of Online Learning? | MindShift.

Having participated in a MOOC, recently – Learning & Knowledge Analytics – LAK11, (which, I admit, I have yet to complete – and that is the beauty of it), I can tell you that the experience is enriching. However, as Audrey Watters rightly says, there needs to be a “strong commitment” to learn.

The one major advantage of a MOOC, to my mind is the accessibility of the course. Learning content that would have been otherwise unavailable to people around the world is now on your screens and at your disposal in a way that you could not have imagined. A very recent example is the MOOC being offered by Stanford University on “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” A free course from Stanford University, yes you read that right. But here’s something that may not completely be wonderful about a MOOC. According to the info page for this course:

It is their objective to offer identical homework assignments, quizzes, and exams in both versions of this course. Students taking the online version will therefore be graded according to the same grading criteria as students taking CS221 at Stanford. However, to receive Stanford credit, the course has to be taken through Stanford; and students have to be registered at Stanford University. Online student will only get a certificate in the name of the instructors, but no official Stanford certificate.

That is the logic of free. I have yet to see a MOOC that offers any kind of certification. If you have read Audrey Watters’ article, you will have seen that a MOOC is necessarily an informal learning. So you’d participate in a MOOC more for the love of learning than certification itself.

A few thoughts on the way forward for MOOCs:

• It would be nice for MOOCs to have industry participation. For all the cries of talent shortage that the industry makes, it is ironic that would not want to participate in such a progressive and contemporary learning initiative.
• It would be even more worthwhile, if they endorse such courses. It would help provide additional motivation to the participants to take up MOOCs as supplementary qualifications.
• MOOCs use well-developed technology platforms for delivery; an ePortfolio would be helpful, something that the participants can carry in lieu of of a formal certificate.
• Since MOOCs usually have thousands of participants (not all of them quite serious learners), a method of filtering folks that you would like to follow and engage with. Also, a method to identify and discover folks who are actively engaged in the course.

These notes, to an extent, invalidate the very idea of informal and open learning. However, I believe the MOOC has the potential to address some of the gaps that education needs to fulfill.

Finally, the one irony of a MOOC, I cannot but help noticing, is the accessibility of a MOOC. By virtue of it being an online course, those who could be best served by the value of a MOOC, are the ones who do not have access to the Internet.

Embarking on a vision of training 15 million students in India by 2022, education services company Everonn would invest Rs 700 crore in the next three years to set up training centres in the country, a top company official said.

(via Everonn to invest Rs 700 cr in training centres – Times Of India).

Ad-for-equity media investor DB Corp, that publishes Dainik Bhaskar newspaper, is investing Rs 2.67 crore in DMC Education Ltd. DMC Education (earlier known as DMC International) had diversified from its original business of real estate to education sometime back and has been actively snapping small firms to build its presence in the sunrise sector.

(Via DB Corp To Pick Minority Stake in DMC Education | VCCircle)

Private equity interest in India’s bustling education sector only continues to grow. And this time, Kota-based Resonance Eduventures Pvt Ltd, a test preparation company offering coaching for IIT-JEE and other engineering entrance exams, is raising Rs 100 crore ($22 million) from CLSA Capital Partners, two persons with direct knowledge of the development told VCCircle.

While this may otherwise seem to be another deal in the busy ‘education’ market, it is interesting to note the valuation that Resonance Eduventures Ltd got, for this deal.

The deal which attracted the interest of about 10-12 players, fetched a significant premium to its publicly listed peer, Career Point Infosystems Ltd. Career Point, which has a market capitalisation of Rs 603 crore, is trading 15.4x its trailing PBT for FY11. According to VCCedge, the financial research platform of VCCircle, Resonance Eduventures had PBT of Rs 20 crore for the year ended March, 2010. This means Resonance is being valued over 40x its one-year-old PBT. Its latest financial numbers are not available yet. Resonance apparently commanded a higher valuation multiple in spite of having comparatively lower net profit margin (comparing Resonance’s FY10 with Career Point’s FY11 numbers).

(Via CLSA Capital Close To Putting Rs 100Cr In Resonance Coaching | VCCircle)

Mumbai-based Core Projects & Technologies Ltd has acquired the UK-based education solutions firm ITN Mark Education Ltd for a total consideration of $25 million. Core Projects has bought the firm through its subsidiary Core Education and Consulting Solutions UK Ltd.

Established in 1990, ITN Mark Education services around 1,600 schools from 16 locations across England and Wales. The company provides schools with qualified staff when they are in need of hiring. Headquartered in Manchester, ITN Mark Education has approximately 3,600 teachers and 1,300 teaching assistance vetted and available for work.

(Via Core Projects Acquires UK’s ITN Mark Education For $25M | VCCircle)

“The most important thing is not to optimise what you do, but to find out and decide what you should be doing… find out where you should really be and to make sure that you are climbing the tallest peak, not just a false summit…If you get stuck on a small mountain, you get to the top and look around and you find you’re on the wrong mountain. A mile away is a mountain that’s twice as tall…Learn how to search the landscape very widely, and to make sure we find the tallest mountain to climb – that we find the right thing to do. And having done that, if we find ourselves on top of a false summit…In other words we’ve got to get down the mountain, and cross that desert, and come up on the tallest peak. And that’s called letting go, killing a product at its peak.”

(Via Brave New World: Rethinking the Future: The Digital Divide)

This might sound quite abstract by itself — as a ‘thing to do’, but when you read the full article, you will know that it makes perfect sense. Martyn Daniels asks why the publishing industry is still stuck on the print model of the product and tries and retrofit this model in the digital world.

Digital is different and needs to be approached differently — not just as a medium but the social context of what digital is, how it is consumed, and how it is produced. There are no more ‘passive consumers’, and the more we treat them as such, the more we are alienating them from consuming our products. While Martyn makes a specific case in publishing, I suspect it is true across industries; education being no exception.

Hat Tip: Eoin Purcell