In May 2011, former Penn students Joseph Cohen, Dan Getelman and Jim Grandpre left college early to focus on developing Coursekit, a new learning management system designed to supplant Blackboard use at universities.
Their project moved quickly: Coursekit has been initially launched to 3,500 students in 80 courses, with a writing course at Princeton among the first trial courses to use the new program.
“We thought of a class — a group of people engaging with each other, creating conversation, sharing ideas and getting to know each other,” Coursekit CEO Joseph Cohen said. “Then we thought, ‘Oh, we can do that.’ We are already doing that in other parts of our lives, like on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. We should bring that to education.”
The trio quickly made this idea into a reality. In January 2011, they created a prototype, which they soon tested in a class at Penn. By May, they had raised over $1 million in financing. After building Coursekit from late May to early June, they launched it to a test group of 30 private schools across the country on Aug. 22.
Today, the team remains small, with Cohen and cofounders and engineers Getelman and Grandpre and marketer Hunter Horsely forming its core.
Horsely manages what Cohen called “campus founders” — students paid to advertise Coursekit to students and instructors at their respective universities.
Kevin Zhang ’15 said he has already applied for one of the campus founder positions at Princeton.
“I think Blackboard has very similar features but is not as aesthetically pleasing,” he said. “If Coursekit can market itself as a social and educational platform, I think it could be very successful because they have a lot of momentum.”
Coursekit was launched to the public on Tuesday, allowing any instructor to integrate the software into his course for free. Cohen said that Coursekit will always remain free for users, a central part of their business plan.
“Our strategy is similar to Google’s and Facebook’s: We give it away for free to form a really large base of users, then use it as a platform for distributing content and software,” he said.
The team’s goal is to power every single class in the world, Cohen added. Before that can happen, however, instructors and students need to be convinced to make the switch.
English preceptor Jens Klenner GS said he enjoys using Blackboard on a regular basis and is unconvinced that a new software is necessary.
“I have found it really easy to upload material with Blackboard, and I think it is a pretty essential tool to managing precept,” Klenner said. “I see no reason to get new software.”
Meanwhile, Daniel Wu ’13 is in a Korean class that uses Blackboard to facilitate audio exercises and said that he believed Blackboard is fine as it is.
“I think it is too idealistic,” he said of Coursekit. “I don’t think people would be apt to continue discussion on the forum.”
Despite apparent skepticism toward trying the new product at Princeton, Cohen said the response from the pilot program has been very positive.
“There is this constant theme of instructors and students saying Coursekit is a breath of fresh air,” he explained. “They say it is clean and simple in contrast to Blackboard, and that the Facebook-inspired features change the experience, allowing them to be in communication beyond when class meets.”
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