Introduction
Research from Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) shows that the response from companies on the various digital solutions to be used for educational purposes in the US is positive. The findings obtained from three different market segments on digital revenues show that instructional content developers were the leading in developing technology solutions, at 42%, followed by software solutions used for instructional support, at 41%. The other market segment was the solutions for administration and platforms which had a market share of 17%. From the same research, the market share for educational technology solutions in the United States is estimated at $7.97 billion. From this, the role of education is seen to be increasing. There are increased investments in education (Moore, & Kearsley, 2011).
Analysis of the current situation
Different kinds of players and leading companies
The technology players in education sector have been seen to fall in different market segments. The market segments include curriculum products, needs for teacher, school operations, college resources, and other products not falling in these segments. Education technology players are seen to be developing solutions that are based on these applications. Each of these segments has companies who are known to be developing solutions.
The structure of the market for technology solutions that are used for education is business to business to consumer (B-B-C). The solutions are developed for schools. The schools are treated to be a whole business and will get the product as a business. The school will then give access to the users who are either students or teachers. The users in schools are not able to purchase the solutions on their own. The users will be required to develop their profiles which will enable them to access the content (Watters, 2012).
Udacity is one education technology company that is making significant contribution to technology use in education. Udacity is seen to be developing their own classes where they are centering the classes outside an academic setting. They are piloting their computer science classes so that they adopt more of technology framework and not learning and academically aligned. There is a connection that is seen to be taking place between artificial intelligence, education technology and automation. Udacity is one of the initiatives of MOOCS together with Coursera and edX. Coursera and edX partner with universities to license classes. This is the difference they have with Udacity. Udacity is taking the advantage of the slow nature in which universities see the need to develop new courses (Watters, 2012).
Another startup is 6.003Z. This is a major innovation from MOOC. The urge to develop this education technology came due to the failure of MITx to develop follow-up classes for the 6.002x. One of the students in this class developed an open online course that would follow up with the course. There are tutorials and video for some lectures. There were videos that were created before inception of MOOCs. There are also tutorials which are included in the materials that are used for learning. This learning technology is an enhancement to the learning technology because it enables learners to create their own knowledge, websites, and technologies; they are not tied to one platform, curriculum, or institution (Moore, & Kearsley, 2011).
There is also the Microryza technology. This initiative is used to source for funds for scientific research. With this initiative, research will get the funding and will be supported by the public. It has the same objectives with crowdfunding which is also tasked with involving the public in research process. The public has had a minimal role with projects that are undertaken. This initiative and startup does not have rewards and tokens that will reward to the public in case they participate in the research. This is the difference between Microryza and other crowdfunding sites.
Blackboard is a company that has been seen to bring revolutions and changes in education because of the role that they have brought in learning. Blackboard has provided a framework in which technology could be used to manage the learning process. This helps in managing the course management. The company was founded in 2001 and was initially used in the US and China. The strategy that the company is making now is towards becoming a platform for education and not so much in becoming a learning management system. This is changing and is becoming a valuable strategy and platform that is used for development
Coursera is a company that offers free online courses by high-profile lecturers for top universities in the world. There has been popularity of online classes in the past years where there are many students around the world who have enrolled through the Coursera initiative. The company has attracted millions as funding from those interested and is developing because of the popularity that online classes is gaining today. The advantage with this company is that it is the first one to offer online courses for social science and the humanities. It is poised to develop to a major education company because of the partnership it is getting with major universities. It has nine universities who are already in partnership. There are high prospects because of the development because of broadband access to poor countries in the world (Watters, 2012).
There is also the Unglue.IT Company which is a startup that is concerned with getting e-books and paying a one-time licensing to the authors and publishers so that they are able to release free e-books. There have been issues with Amazon because of this free e-books and it had suspended the operations for some time. It is still in operation and is one of the startups that are to be watched.
Makey Makey is a startup company that deals with entry level hardware projects. The initiative is enhanced with the need to ensure that there is a need to have a society that is technically advanced and makes the development of hardware to be cost-effective.
There are big players in this field like Google and Amazon who are concerned with developing platforms. Amazon has developed the use of Kindle program for the e-book readers who have had difficulties in getting the content of e-books. Kindle has been useful for the people who want to access the online version of the books that they are interested. Google has been seen to develop platforms and cloud-based applications that have been useful in collaborating and sharing information online. These include Google drive, Googledocs, Google Sheets, and Google presentation (Leask, & Pachler, 2013).
Current strategy and profile of key players
The current strategy that is used by the key players is the development of platforms that will be used for learning. The current players use the changing needs of the learning process. There are many users who will want to make use of Web 2.0 technology. The platform for learning is seen to be more generic than the past learning framework. Amazon has been known to be the pioneer in access to materials and development of cloud computing platforms. This is still the case in the education sector. AWS Cloud is a significant development from Amazon that has made it the leading company in education and platform development for cloud. It has developed platforms that are now used to host apps that are used in the education sector.
Many startups rely on funding from those interested in order to develop their frameworks. Microryza with their crowdsourcing is an example where they rely on donors to develop and further enhance the development of the projects.
Future trends
Evolution of the current solutions
The current seem to be developing towards testing and assessment. This is the largest single category in this aspect. There are many solutions that have been seen to be developing in this sector. The growth and the foreseeable increase in revenues from the test and assessment category are from the trend where schools are adopting the use of electronic processes in administering exams. Schools are moving away from paper-based forms of examinations. There are two different types of tests that are seen to be developing which are tests that are based on common-core standards, and new tests which are developed by teachings that will allow the teachers to get immediate response from students. The sector of content development has been seen to be evolving and increasing in the use of technology. The only sector in content development that has not been using technology is that of reading and English Language Arts (ELA). The focus in this development is in curriculum materials. There is almost an increase in 20 percent in revenue in content creation and development category. The increase is seen to be taking place in Science and Maths subjects where technology use is increasing every year. The sector of administration and platforms has dropped significantly. According to SIIA study report, the sector that is seen to be improving and is making use of technology is instructional support which is seen to have grown at a rate of 30 percent. The revenue that was recorded in this sector was the revenue that was found to be coming from the category of testing and assessment. The area of testing and assessment is seen to be an area which will generate increased revenues and will be the key driver of growth.
The development of the current solutions to education with the use of technology has been enhanced with the different and changing needs of education. Initially, the management of learning has been a point of concern. With the increasing enrollment of students in institutions of higher education, there has been the need to have a solution to large classes and proper management of learning resources. For this reason, there was the need for learning management systems that would ease the need to manage the learning materials and the whole process of learning. This was fastened with the trend of information management systems in which other non-education sectors were using to solve business process issues. There was the need to ensure that the learning process was also managed with the use of technology and information systems.
This made the evolution and the use of information systems, which became an indispensable development of technology (Nickerson, & Zodhiates, 2013).
With time, there was the emergence of the internet and many people and learning institutions had a new way in which they could connect. This new development of networking led to the development of internet platforms that would integrate the learning in online communities. The use of the internet became successful in the development of education. There was the need to have systems and platforms that would enhance the use education technologies on the internet. This then led to the development of technologies that would enhance the use of the internet to interconnect learners on the internet. There was also the development of platforms that would help in the management and the hosting of applications that were used for education purposes. The development of internet platforms is what seen currently taking place is. There is also the use of cloud computing platforms for education systems (Manuguerra, & Petocz, 2011).
Potential new technologies and actors involved
There is the development of gamification technology where there is the use of gamification dynamics to improve the performance of students. This is a coaching method that was developed after 40 years of research in video gaming. Gamification has been improved with the integration of enhancing sustained performance and improvements in teams and groups towards ensuring that there is development of groups and individuals. There are platforms that have been developed that will further enhance the development of this new business venture. Badgeville has a Reputation Mechanics allows employees, managers, and partners of an organization to have their internal reputations applied in the company’s other sites and applications. The levels feature enables users to tie reputation to the quality and the quantity of work that is delivered in an organization. Another feature is that of tracks where there will be reputations for the users who will build their reputation based on the ranks. Gamification has been integrated in Kaplan University where there have been positive results from this integration process. There are improvements that have been seen with the development and integration of this gaming program. Bunchball is another company that deals with gamification. It is based on the fact that those people/students, who do more, will learn more and eventually share more. In order to improve the participation of online students in the program, there is a need to use this initiative (Gartner, 2013).
There is also the development of new technologies that are based on digitization where the pedagogy. Learning materials and the business model of education is developed based on the digitization process. The continuous development of the massive online courses (MOOCs) has enhanced the development and improvement of the data availability of the online courses which are improving and picking at fast rates (Gartner, 2013).
The earning process is enhanced with the development of such technologies as Mashware and Education Tablet. This is promoted by the entry of such players as Adaptive Learning and MOOC. There is the development and improvement of exostructure which has been developed through the evolution of standards and sourcing. The need to have standards has been seen to be important because there is much dependence on external services and information exchange (Gartner,2013).
References
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Gartner (2013). Hype cycle for education, 2013. Retrieved on 5 April 2014 from http://www.frankiejackson.net/uploads/2/1/1/6/21168820/hype_cycle_for_education_201_251104.pdf
Leask, M., & Pachler, N. (Eds.). (2013). Learning to Teach Using ICT in the Secondary School: a companion to school experience. Routledge.
Manuguerra, M., & Petocz, P. (2011). Promoting Student Engagement by Integrating New Technology into Tertiary Education: The Role of the iPad. Asian Social Science, 7(11).
Moore, M. G., & Kearsley, G. (2011). Distance education: A systems view of online learning. Cengage Learning.
Nickerson, R. S., & Zodhiates, P. P. (Eds.). (2013). Technology in education: Looking toward 2020. Routledge.
Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2011). Teachers Discovering Computers: Integrating Technology in a Connected World. Cengage Learning.
Watters, A. (2012). Top 10 Ed-Tech startups of 2012. Retrieved on 5 April 2014 from http://hackeducation.com/2012/12/21/top-10-ed-tech-startups-of-2012/
