Warren Buffett’s right hand man, Charlie Munger, coined (or made famous) the idea of the “too hard pile.”  Back in the day when communication was by physical letters and memos, you would have three bins on your desk: inbox, outbox and the “too hard pile.”  In Charlie’s world of investing at Berkshire Hathaway, the key was to look at an investment opportunity and decide where it belonged. If there was “hair on the deal”, his rule was to put it in the “too hard pile” and move on.

ExtensionEngine teamed up with Jennifer Gormley, Senior Director, Product at McKinsey Academy to present a webinar on “Using Open edX for online training to generate revenue or create impact.”

Not too long ago, ExtensionEngine hosted an information session geared towards those interested in teaching abroad. This session was organized by Edvntr and featured Tu Ngo cofounder of Yola Institute and ELSA Corp, which won at SXSWedu Launch 2016.

Edvntr is an edtech startup that is engineering a web application that connects foreign schools with teachers interested in teaching abroad anywhere in the world. Edvntr has also roadmapped features to help teachers acclimate to their new enviornment via geo-mapping which will provide them with information about their location and local events as they explore their new home. Edvntr hopes their app will make the teaching abroad process less daunting and more readily available to all. They’ve begun their efforts by partnering with the Yola Institute in Vietnam.

As part of our ongoing exploration of how other pros approach learning experiences, we recently took a look at the newly updated YouTube Creator Academy.

From time to time, we like to take a look at the learning experiences other organizations are creating to help sharpen our own edge in instructional design and user experience.

In the pursuit of our mission to help every person get a great education, we have created a nonprofit arm of ExtensionEngine, known as ExtensionEngine.org.

Please, not another “we ought to put this online” idea….

Recently we’ve been speaking with companies that deliver training and generate revenue from it. Most of these companies deliver this training in-person. They’ve done it this way for years, they know how to get students, deliver the training and generate good revenue. And when we suggest to them that they think about moving it online, we often hear “No! We’ve tried that and it didn’t work. It was hard. The students didn’t like the experience. We never got the results we hoped for. I am not going there again.”

Every so often, a new product enters our awareness that impresses us so much we want to share it. Last week, Marc Zablatsky, Vice President and General Manager of Sitecues, came to our offices to give a talk about web accessibility and how they are approaching this problem — specifically, for those users with visual impairments, english as a second language, low literacy and other print disabilities.

ExtensionEngine has always been conscious about accessibility in the projects we have taken on and executed. After all, students can’t learn if they don’t have complete access to the material — and, in fact, public educational institutions are required by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to provide accessibility. More on 508 compliance below.

It’s always gratifying to read an article that validates your position and provides evidence that you have, indeed, been making the right decisions and are providing a valuable and much-needed service.

For us, one such publication is a recent white paper, Report on Coursera online course for University of Chicago and Booth School of Business written by John H. Cochrane. The white paper enumerates various “lessons learned” from Cochrane’s venture into online course development as he adapted a Ph.D. level course, Asset Pricing, for the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) environment.

Last week, a diverse crowd from four continents, 25 institutions and 26 corporations gathered to attend the inaugural Business Education Online Learning Summit