Pearson – Full Steam Ahead

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Kirsten Winkler

Nevertheless, it does move.

Gallileo Gallilei

In the past few months we saw a couple of interesting moves from Pearson, from the partnership with the language learning community Livemocha.com to the Eleutian SpeakENG course powered by Pearson which is available on italki.com.

But Pearson, one of the biggest classic publishers, symbol of the “oldschool” education industry keeps on suprising me with innovation and expansion. Does not look to me as if Pearson is ready to lay itself to rest.

Lets start with expansion. From October 26 2009 learners of English as a foreign language have another certification to choose from. Besides Cambridge, TOEFL and IELTS Pearson will offer their new PTE (Pearson Test of English) in an Academic, General and Young Learners version.

The market for English language evaluation tests is fastly growing especially in India and China and right now dominated by the two non profit organizations which offer the TOEFL and IELTS certification.

According to Pearson over 2 million English language evaluation tests are taken every year generating several hundred million dollars in revenue for those organizations. So no wonder that Pearson tries to secure a slice of that pie.

The PTE is already accredited by over 770 educational programs. But I think this number will be rapidly growing. The distribution is planned through the global network of Pearson secure testing centers.

The evaluation of the PTE will be done by computers, not humans. This has the advantage that the test taker gets his / her results quicker. This might also be a reason to take a test with Pearson.

Second point today: innovation. Pearson is now offering customized course books. The problem of the classic text book is that you rarely use all of its content. But of course, you have to pay for all the content and you have to carry it around.

Pearson is now offering a service where Professors get a professional editor who goes with him through their curriculum sorting out the parts that are not used so you end up with a text book that has only  content in it which will be used during the year. Plus those customized books even cost less than used textbooks.

You think it stops here? Wrong. They even customize online content for pure distance learning or blended courses.

If you would like to learn more, you should visit http://www.pearsonpte.com and http://www.pearsoncustom.com as well as the YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/PearsonCustom

Related Posts:

  1. Pearson will Pay for your Ning – Or Posterous will Move it For Free
  2. italki reworks SpeakENG offer – adds Sampler and Levels
  3. Pearson offers English Learning on Nokia Mobile Phones in China
  4. Pearson and Livemocha receive Royal Honours
  5. Livemocha and Pearson Announce Partnership for Online Language Learning

About Kirsten Winkler

Education 2.0 Blogger at KirstenWinkler.com, Interviewer at EDUKWEST.com, Consultant at WinklerMedia.com.
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  • Nagarajan
    It's great! But Trinity College London Graded Examination in Spoken English (GESE) Grade 1-12, the one-to-one examination is a better option. It the real world you meet people and not computers for getting job or entry in college.
  • That's of course a good point, Nagarajan.

    But for many people the time you have to wait for the certificate is important, too.
  • I think this is great. Eventually, I see Pearson moving online too. It is hard to offer customized service without jacking up the prices significantly, while not being online. Of course, it is not impossible - if they can utilize crowd sourcing - but that could mean giving the community a share of the revenues :)
  • I think this idea has two clever parts: Pearson only sells what the teachers / students need but charge full price (just for the parts you buy, of course).
    Secondly, like WiZiQ, Pearson binds the people with the long term relationships to its product: the teachers. I mean they send you an editor, just for you and your courses. That's quite awesome.
  • Yes, but the model requires hiring editors :) That is the problem working offline. The moment you have 10 editors you need a head editor on their head and then moment you have 10 head editors, one on top of them and so on.
  • As far as I see it, Pearson has those editors already :). This move might save the "classic" part of the business whereas other publishers are struggling to sell new books.
    The used textbook market is huge in the US because students cannot / don't want to buy a book for about $100 they won't use completely anyway. So they buy used ones. This means publishers sell less, have to lay off editors etc.
    If I buy a custom textbook, I will use completely during the year plus it is cheaper than a used one, I probably won't sell it afterwards but keep it and work on it later on. So Pearson can sell a full set of books to the "next generation" on the campus and so on.
    Pearson is one of the biggest publishers worldwide, so they definitely have the man power and this way, they maybe can keep a lot of their editors in the company.
  • One thing that could work is that if this becomes big - every year the text books will surely change. Most professors would add a chapter, revise a few or add some exercises. So, I might not be able to keep the second hand book.
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