Five Questions With: Michael D. Croft

Michael D. Croft is CEO of Volute, which bills itself as the world’s first composable learning marketplace.

Michael D. Croft, CEO of Volute, which bills itself as the world’s first composable learning marketplace, talks about the Lincoln-based business with Providence Business News.

PBN: How did you get the idea for this new business model for education?

CROFT: Imagine you’re taking a degree program from your favorite university. Your program can be taken online and as a hybrid program. In fact, your degree program is actually a cloud marketplace comprised of education web apps created by leading universities. For this degree program, you’re taking leadership assessments from Columbia University, watching video lectures from [the University of Rhode Island], interacting with learning analytics from [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], engaging with alumni network tools from Brown, accessing career services apps from Rhode Island College, and leveraging collaboration tools from Georgetown.
This concept fosters best-of-breed, personalized and adaptive learning while creating an entire new business model for education. My company, Volute, is making this a reality.
The idea was formalized during a project for Columbia Business School [in] which we developed a web portal for a series of custom executive education programs for Fortune 500 organizations. I thought if we could offer all schools a way to reuse and share education and learning components, it would benefit students with a personalized learning experience and create new revenue streams for schools to license these components. The director of the Columbia Business School program agreed with me, and joined our company as chief marketing officer.
Volute was born January 2015, and began crowdsourcing leading universities around the country to co-develop a new breed of education web apps, called Volute Apps, which assemble like building blocks to create personalized education courses and programs.
Volute Apps are published in our own cloud-based Learning Marketplace. Schools can create Volute Apps and publish them to the Learning Marketplace. Other schools can license these Volute Apps from the Learning Marketplace to mix and match best-of-breed education components and learning tools to curate the most personalized learning experience available. Each school that owns Volute Apps in the Learning Marketplace receives revenue from the monthly active users, creating a profound new business model for education.

PBN: How far along are you on the development of the education web apps?

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CROFT: Volute empowers schools to become the innovators and creators of education products, Volute Apps, which no mainstream educational technologies address. We provide a unique toolset and platform that allows rapid assembly of existing Volute Apps, or the creation of custom Volute Apps for their specific educational needs.
During the initial stages of launching the Learning Marketplace, we are collaborating with innovative schools to co-develop a suite of complementary Volute Apps that can be used across a variety of courses and programs. These innovative schools include Rutgers University, Drexel University, Columbia University, Brown University, Rhode Island College and others.
PBN: Will these be used at all grade levels, or just in higher education?

CROFT: In short, yes, our platform will be used by all grade levels. Our CMO is the former director of a global leadership program at Columbia Business School and because of his network we are initially targeting higher education. Although we are collaborating with K-12 subject matter experts for potential pilot projects in Rhode Island K-12 schools.

PBN: Can you tell me the benefits of using these apps?

CROFT: We are launching an autism Volute App marketplace globally in 2016. The organization who owns these autism Volute Apps was able to compartmentalize their predecessor system into reusable and composable Volute Apps to address the unique needs of their customers. This in turn allowed them to increase their offerings, reach and customer base. The technology combined with their expertise puts them at the forefront of autism education.
We are in discussions with Columbia Business School to transition some of their executive education programs to the platform and more than 40 universities have expressed interest due to the many benefits of our platform. Teachers can assemble and manage program content and interactive Volute Apps on the fly. Students receive the most personalized and collaborative learning experience available. Schools have a new business model by repurposing existing content, leveraging diverse, university-created Volute Apps and licensing their own Volute Apps and content to other schools or organizations.

PBN: Tell me how you are working with state officials.

CROFT: Lt. Gov. [Daniel J.] McKee recently toured our office as part of his mission to cultivate R.I. small businesses and to foster business retention and growth initiatives. During his visit, we introduced him to the Volute Learning Marketplace; as an advocate for education he was excited about our new technology and business model and offered to facilitate introductions to other educators who could benefit in K-12 and higher education.
We are also working with state Rep. K. Joseph Shekarchi, sponsor of the Jobs Creation Bill, for his guidance on financial incentives available for businesses, with the R.I. Commerce Corporation.
We are working on a statewide Learning Marketplace pilot with several state organizations for regionalized initiatives that could be consolidated within a RI Learning Marketplace, reducing development and maintenance costs, while centralizing access to state assets and resources.

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