Dive Summary:
- Inspired by the ongoing massive open online course (MOOC) disruption in the U.S., Berlin-based startup iversity wants to bring the MOOC "revolution" to continental Europe.
- Iversity will launch its first courses in September or October; iversity will not provide its own course content but plans to get it from universities and professors.
- Originally launched in 2011 as an online collaboration tool for learning management, the startup recently rebranded itself as a MOOC platform; iversity currently has venture capital funding but is looking at certification fees for students, licensing fees for universities and recruiting fees for employers as three potential revenue models.
From the article:
“... 'Clearly the American companies have a time advantage… but there is one critical piece in this particular business as it is beginning to emerge — and that’s your local or your regional connections into your content community [ie university professors],' says Riecke. 'It’s certainly feasible that it might be a little more difficult for Coursera from Palo Alto or Mountain View to be quite as close to universities on the ground in Europe as we are.'
The continental European education landscape is also different to the North American one — with generally greater access to higher education and at lower cost — which means iversity will be tweaking its business model to better tailor it to specifically European educational realities. ..."