The Princeton Review: A Case Study in Scalable Learning Content Delivery
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Designing solutions for large scale content development and online delivery can be daunting. Michael Bleyhl, VP, Product Technology of The Princeton Review, is not only responsible for setting learning technology strategy, but also for setting the standards around Adaptive, Predictive and Personal Learning. He will discuss their unique business challenges, solution design, key integration strategies as well as his vision for the future of personalized online learning. He is joined by Mark Hellinger, CEO of Xyleme. The Xyleme Learning Platform has played a critical role in The Princeton Review’s success, incorporating single-source content development along with secure, scalable delivery from the cloud.
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The Princeton Review: A Case Study in Scalable Learning Content Delivery
- 1. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 1 The Princeton Review: A case study in scalable learning content delivery Michael Bleyhl VP, Product Technology The Princeton Review Mark Hellinger CEO Xyleme @XylemeLearning #LearningDelivery
- 2. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 2 Today you will learn 1. The role of the Learning Content Management System (LCMS) in the overall solution architecture. 2. Key Integration considerations, strategies and success measures. 3. The advantages of content delivery from the cloud with Xyleme. 4. The future directions of online learning enabled by the right technology foundation @XylemeLearning #LearningDelivery
- 3. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 3 Quick Facts: Helped 3.5 Million students in 2013 Network of 5000 Teachers/Tutors Partner with Universities world wide Publish 150+ Books Test Prep Services SAT®, ACT®, SAT Subject Tests™, AP® Exams, MCAT®, LSAT®, GMAT®, GRE®, DAT® and OAT Tutoring and admissions resources Online courses and resources Print and digital books ®
- 4. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 4 Manage the Content Lifecycle
- 5. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 5 Challenges • Learner Experience • Performance • Reliability • Scalability • Content Management
- 6. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 6
- 7. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 7
- 8. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 8 Integration Points Learning Content Management System (LCMS) Learning Object Repository (LOR) in the Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) Learning Management System (LMS) Ecommerce Engine Student Dashboard
- 9. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 9 Multi Channel Learning Delivery API LOR LRS …. LMS Mobile Student Portal
- 10. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 10
- 11. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 11 Multi Channel Learning Delivery API LOR LRS …. LMS Mobile Student Portal
- 12. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 12 Responsive Learning
- 13. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 13 Learning Content Management • Non-linear development and maintenance • Reuse and Reassemble • Publish to the cloud • Audience specific delivery • Measurable “ i ? ? l p l i ? p ? p ? l i ? p ? l ? ? l l Author Manage Publish Distribute Measure
- 14. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 14 Single Source Authoring/Reuse
- 15. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 15 360 View of Students ? ? li
- 16. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 16 Learning Paths API LOR LRS LMS Mobile Student Portal learning objects
- 17. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 17 Analytics API LOR LRS LMS Mobile Student Portal learning objects
- 18. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 18
- 19. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 19 Benefits • Version Control • Collaboration • Agile • Reuse • Improved delivery performance • Cost savings Put us on the path to personalized learning
- 20. ©2014 Xyleme, Inc. 20 Thank You Michael Bleyhl VP, Product Technology The Princeton Review Mark Hellinger CEO Xyleme @XylemeLearning Xyleme-Inc sales@xyleme.com www.xyleme.com
Editor's Notes
- Dawn - Introduce our speakers and housekeeping rules.
- MARK – Welcome everyone and thank Michael for being here. Talk about what we will accomplish in our call and encourage questions from the audience. Ask Michael to describe what is that TPR does and his role/history.
- MICHAEL Describe TPR services, and give an idea of scale. Number of students % choosing online % wanting mobile Number of authors/SMES Describe your role and what business problems you are responsible for solving. Describe how you found out about Xyleme (as a transition back to Mark)
- MARK – explain what it is that Xyleme helps companies do. Remember 1 or 2 of the challenges that TPR had when they came to us and ask Michael to elaborate
- MICHAEL – Elaborate on what you biggest challenges were. -Content Delivery -Content Management Content Delivery Issues Change from Single Server/Single data set to moving – eventually even to multiple servers. The next piece was, “Well, we could have a server on the West Coast and a server on the East Coast.” And then (CDN) came on scene and, you know, you tried using it but it is designed for webpages and, I think, more around pure data where the Xyleme’s Cloud Player is specifically designed for learning content, and there’s the “I” to that, and everything that Xyleme does is they build out and add features, where try to get Akamai to add a feature that’s specific to learning? Good luck. So I think that that solution, pushing your content out to the edge, obviously, increases your performance drastically. Like I said, we went from sometimes almost 60 seconds of load time on content down to a couple of seconds in India and Taiwan and – Managing content Issues Lacked collaboration, efficiency, reuse, standardization, etc.
- MICHAEL Talk more about your entire operation and how you support so many students, and key elements of your solution architecture.
- MICHAEL
- MICHAEL What types of technology and integration points were important to you when designing your solution. (no need to mention specific names of applications and providers – just the need that they fill)
- MARK Talk about Xyleme’s vision for multi-channel delivery from a single source, and relate other needs that typical corporate clients might have that have been addressed by the cloud LOR and LRS. - Single Source for Web and Mobile Explain the importance of creating content that is separated from presentation.
- MICHAEL Our online-only business and live online business is growing 10 to 20 percent year over year, and it’s really where most of our growth is coming from. Mobile Delivery And we need to have the flexibility of devices. So there’s this huge push for mobile, mobile-enabled, and like a lotta companies, we jump in and embrace mobile, but I will caution everybody to make sure that you’re using the right tool for the right job. So yes, while our GMAT and GRE tests will function on a mobile device, I don’t think anybody wants to take a three-hour exam on an iPhone. However, your drills, your practice material, things that people can do when they have a couple of free minutes, we know that adults learn based on how they spend their free time, so you want to make sure that you focus your content for the purpose that’s being used. Not everything has to be able to play and be accessed seamlessly from a mobile device, but the important content, the content that will be used just in time or as people have free time while sitting on a train. Yeah, sitting on the train, couple minutes of downtime at home, that’s when you want to be able to have the opportunity to take a small chunk of learning, whether that be a drill, a couple practice questions, or even a couple of passages of learning, that’s where you wanna focus your time, not necessarily enabling everything to be played on a mobile device. We’ve created a responsive website, so I think the approach has, from a native app standpoint or a container app standpoint, given us a little bit more freedom to just use responsive web design to be able to deliver on multiple different devices, our entire learner dashboard, and then our other companies that we partner with that we may offer an app for some of the content.
- MICHAEL But one of the things that is key is making sure all the data is in the same place. So if you’re going to have an app, you wanna make sure that that data, when somebody’s using that app, is coming back to your central database so that the progress that students use, whether they’re on the app or they’re accessing it through their PC or a tablet, all of that shows up as progress, and I think in the past, __ _____ a big push for apps, but apps have never been connected to the learner’s overall transcript, and we’re finding that it’s much better to, if you are gonna do an app, make sure that that content is linked back to the learner’s profile, and that when they log into their home dashboard for progress, all of that information is there. Plus it allows our teachers and our content directors to understand where people are spending their time and what content they’re focused on. So basically, it just means that your content needs to be available in a mobile format, if it’s applicable, as well as being accessed via the laptop or desktop PC or – well, I guess it’s just better to say web app. Then, eventually, that allows – ultimately, I would love to be able to track progress in the classroom and be able to understand what students are doing in the classroom, and as we get more and more infrastructure within our own classrooms and every place has Wi-Fi, that becomes even more important, where our learner dashboard, you know, I envision a classroom someday of everyone having a laptop or a mobile device that they’re using within our classroom that’s connected to our ______ learner dashboard.
- MARK Agree with the key points that Michael made and talk a little bit out Xyleme’s responsive outputs, Publishing templates, etc. Bring it back to the content, and how it is created and managed.
- MICHAEL – talk about before and after the LCMS. 90% of content there now. Test questions, instructional content. How is content organized?
- MICHAEL - Tangible cost/time savings? Strategy for reuse i.e. A hard question on the SAT is exactly the same question - easy GRE question
- MICHAEL One of the things that the Princeton Review ultimately wants to be able to do is understand our students in a 360-degree view so that we can recommend the right prep. We wanna make sure that the time they spend with our material is the most efficient for them, especially students that are purchasing online content and online program only. We offer both classroom and online, and a blended approach, and even our classroom courses have online material that supports that, but the students that are specifically choosing an online program are doing it because they’re looking for – they’re busy. They’re looking for something that is tailored towards them, and that they want to be able to focus on their areas of weakness or opportunity, and being able to collect all that data and present it to them is something that the standard LMS really didn’t do a great job of, where the combination of the Xyleme LCMS with a very granular atomic-level content combined with the broad bay cloud player gives us the ability to do some things that we had only thought about years ago.
- MICHAEL Adaptive recommendation approach - Xyleme becomes a very important piece of that. Correlation between Problem A and Problem B. Measuring what content works the best for them. Which content is the most productive. Quickly show you where you have holes assessment objectives. We have delivered the same learning as a mix and match and as a video. That big data collection and understanding where students’ gaps are and being able to recommend content that is specific to those needs is the secret sauce, and if we can get that content – the right content to them at the right time very efficiently, see how they do on that, and then make additional recommendations, that’s huge for us. It even gets to the point where we can start to predict the outcomes. So if we understand what the learning objectives are – the assessment objectives of standardized tests and be able to understand the student’s level of mastery of those, we can actually start to recommend how long it’s gonna take them to achieve a particular score or which type of delivery might be better for them. This is all future stuff, but is the direction we’re heading in.
- MARK Expand upon measure, Tin Can and what we can do now that we have never been able to do in the past with SCORM. Ask Michael to talk about some of the key benefits of moving to Xyleme
- MARK – Better reporting.
- MICHAEL Xyleme have allowed us to take our best content, understand the data that we’re getting back from it, and really deliver a great solution for these students, and that’s multiplied when you look at our students that are studying for the GMAT, which is the business school exam, and they’re working full-time. They don’t have time to go to class, and they really, really have gravitated towards an online-only solution. It is gonna really allow us to do some things that we’ve been talking about for years with very little – with significantly less investment than we had thought we would have to make by looking at other system installations. I mean, just the next storage alone that we’re saving in CDN by moving the Bravais is the first wave of getting some return on the Bravais Player, and the fact that Bravais Cloud Player also will give us the ability to track a lotta this data, and overall, enhance our programs, enhance our student experience, but moves us towards that ultimate goal of really that big data. Unfortunately, when you’re building these things out, you have to think about three, four years out, and you have to build an infrastructure that will deliver on your needs today but doesn’t prevent you from going where you wanna go in the future. I’m sure we’ve all done technology projects where the solution sounded like a great idea, but didn’t think about the next steps down the road and would that infrastructure support that, and I feel like between the Xyleme LCMS and the Bravais Cloud Player, this gives us the foundation and the flexibility to go exactly where we wanna go and places that we haven’t even thought about going yet, because all of the foundational pieces are there. We can collect data. We can launch content. We can publish content. And with those three things, we can manipulate the data. We can show the content in different ways, through dashboards. That foundation is there, and that’s what I think we’re so excited about in the next couple of years, is getting the most out of the system.
- Dawn – close webinar