EdCast, Inc. continues to support the Open edX community as a conference sponsor. Well respected in the field of education technology, EdCast works to integrate multiple systems and pedagogical practices to deliver online learning solutions. Karl Mehta, co-founder and CEO of EdCast, told us a few exciting things about the company and their work.
Can you tell us a bit about EdCast and what you do?
EdCast is a knowledge network. We work to inspire, empower, and educate individuals and organizations with daily bite-size insights (SmartBitesTM) while providing live access to influencers and subject matter experts. EdCast knowledge networks power social, mobile, and cloud-based informal learning for world-class institutions, enterprises, governments, and nonprofits to enable millions to become lifelong learners.
As part of an integrated learning experience, EdCast customers create powerful MOOCs utilizing the Open edX platform.
The EdCast executive team has a track record of building large-scale transformational technology; all of us are passionate about the global impact of mobile and online knowledge sharing. EdCast is a Stanford StartX company backed by tier one VC firms and advised by visionaries and globally renowned thought leaders, Mitch Kapor and Prof. Jeffrey Sachs.
We are based in Mountain View CA, with offices worldwide.
What are you working on right now?
We at EdCast are proud to announce our innovative Corporate Academy, powered by the Open edX platform, here at the conference. Corporate Academy is an out-of-the-box solution that allows companies to set up their own branded Academy and start running courses in less than 24 hours.
At EdCast, we’re firm believers in the 70-20-10 learning model. With the addition of Open edX Corporate Academy, we can now offer a solution that allows learners to access both formal and informal learning in one seamless and complete experience. Open edX Corporate Academy gives our customers the ability to design powerful courses and award micro-degrees to drive user engagement and effective corporate learning.Our proven EdCast Knowledge NetworkTM provides customers with a complete solution for informal learning. Knowledge Network users receive a daily feed of bite-sized content that is personalized by their job role, interests, and competencies. Our customers, which include thought leaders such as GE, HP, EMC, and Salesforce, can now combine our Open edX-powered Corporate Academy on the formal side, with the EdCast Knowledge Network on the informal side, to deliver an optimized learning experience.
What are you most excited about?
The feedback we’re getting from customers and how excited they are about our holistic approach to learning.
Take HP LIFE as an example. They have a very large entrepreneur community that they wanted to grow and engage. They were seeking a solution that would offer more control, allowing them to add courses easily, update content dynamically, and build a community that encourages peer-to-peer learning where users could learn and grow together. They also wanted a solution to seamlessly blend informal and formal learning to optimize the learning experience, making it intuitive, engaging and effective.
EdCast powers HP LIFE’s 175 courses. With Knowledge Network, they have complete control, able to dynamically update course materials and enable social collaboration tools to drive user engagement. They can focus on creating a customized learning experience for each user based on their interests, job, competencies, and other learning signals. Users can access our mobile apps to access and consume the full learning experience anywhere and anytime.
The results have been amazing. We’ve increased their global reach and improved user engagement significantly. In fact, 84% of HP LIFE users say that the learning program has helped them reach their professional goals.
Tell us a bit about your plans for the future of EdCast
To complement the formal learning enabled by Open edX Corporate Academy, we have added a series of new capabilities on the informal side including the ability to create live streams, learning pathways, and SmartBites. These new learning components enable users to consume content on demand, in real time, and in chunks that they can consume in a matter of minutes. This approach drives employee learning, which in turn generates higher business performance.
We’re continually improving the user experience and our emphasis right now is on building powerful analytics that allow our customers to track the progress of both individuals and teams through easy-to-understand visual dashboards.
We’re proud to be part of the Open edX community and we look forward to meeting you at the Open edX 2016 conference. We’ll be showing you our full solution stack including live streaming and learning pathways to help users achieve their professional learning goals. We’ll also share case studies with our customers on the Knowledge Network and the Corporate Academy. Please come see us at our demo table, so we can show you all the features.
