BenchPrep switches to subscription model in move towards education-as-a-service
The growing prevalence of massively open learning platforms and open education resources is bringing a sea change to the educational landscape. High-profile institutions have begun to adopt and launch open courseware initiatives (like EdX and Coursera) and, in so doing, are changing the ways we think about — and even define — the learning process. As a result, we’re seeing less and less value being placed on content as a means of defining and structuring the learning process, with the focus shifting instead to engagement, interactivity, and collaboration.
When we last spoke to BenchPrep CEO Ashish Rangnekar, the vision he laid out for his business was very much influenced by this transformation. At the time, he said that the most effective educational content no longer comes in book or even eBook form, but instead is interactive and cross-platform. The founders, as a result, are on a mission to build BenchPrep into an adaptive learning hub for interactive courses where students define the value of the content as it befits their learning style and study content from any publisher on any device.
The BrenchPrep co-founder tells me that students now think about content ownership in a very different way than they did five years ago — or even when I was growing up. Students now look at educational content more as a service than as a product.
