eCollege® and ETS Announce Agreement to Deliver Online Solution for Measuring Instructional Quality in Higher Education
DENVER – January 26, 2005 – eCollege® [Nasdaq: ECLG], a leading provider of value-added information services to the post-secondary education industry, and ETS, the world’s largest private, nonprofit educational testing and measurement organization, today announced an agreement to deliver an online course evaluation solution that will help institutions more efficiently measure, manage and improve instructional quality. The online solution also will provide institutions with the necessary data to support their ongoing accreditation activities, and benchmark their outcomes against a national data set.
The agreement combines ETS’ acclaimed course evaluations with eCollege’s leading course evaluation technology and infrastructure, which has been available for the last three years either as a stand-alone solution or as part of the Company’s comprehensive eLearning offering. eCollege customers will be able to purchase access to ETS’ academic assessment instruments, which include the Student Instructional Report II (SIR II) for on-campus learning and the e-SIR II for distance learning. Both will be delivered through the eCollege platform for a seamless experience. In addition to the current paper version of SIR II, ETS customers also will be able to purchase, directly from ETS, the new Web-based SIR II and e-SIR II products delivered through eCollege technology. This offers ETS customers a fully hosted, scalable and reliable online option.
“This agreement provides us with an additional channel to expand outside of our traditional online program niche as institutions look toward the Internet to streamline their course evaluation processes both for online and on-campus courses,” said Oakleigh Thorne, chairman and CEO of eCollege. “ETS is a recognized global leader in educational measurement, and together we can help institutions continuously improve instructional quality, which can drive student retention and program growth.”
eCollege’s experience in delivering highly reliable online software solutions and its existing Evaluation Solutions product line position the Company to provide a new avenue for efficiently deploying, collecting, analyzing and reporting on student feedback collected via ETS’ SIR II and e-SIR II. The SIR product line has been used by institutions for more than 30 years, and has been the focus of numerous research studies, providing evidence of its high validity, reliability and fairness.
“After reviewing different options for moving our SIR II and e-SIR II products online, we believe the agreement with eCollege merges two best-of-breed solutions,” said Kurt Landgraf, president and CEO of ETS. “In working with eCollege, we are able to expand our market reach to meet increasing demand, and provide our customers with high quality, online academic assessment products.”
About ETS
ETS is the world’s largest private educational testing and measurement organization. As a nonprofit corporation, its mission is to advance quality and equity in education by providing fair and valid assessments, research, and related services for all people worldwide. Its products and services measure knowledge and skills, promote learning and performance, and support education and professional development. Founded in 1947, ETS today develops, administers or scores nearly 24 million tests annually in more than 180 countries.
About eCollege
eCollege [Nasdaq: ECLG] is a leading provider of value-added information services to the post-secondary and K-12 education industries. The Company’s eLearning Division designs, builds and supports some of the most successful, fully online degree, certificate/diploma and professional development programs in the country. The Company’s Enrollment Division, Datamark, Inc., helps institutions build new enrollments and increase student retention. Customers include publicly traded for-profit institutions, community colleges, public and private universities, school districts, and state departments of education. eCollege was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Denver. Datamark was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City. For more information, visit http://www.ecollege.com/ and http://www.datamark.com/.
This news release contains statements that are not historical in nature and that may be characterized as “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the securities laws, including statements regarding: functionality of developments; adequacy of developments to support customer requirements; expected cost savings and other benefits to customers; the delivery and management by our project partners; our ability to leverage technologies; and any other statements that are not historical facts. You can identify such statements when you see words such as “will,” expect,” “plan,” “believe” and similar expressions. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks. Actual results may differ materially. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from estimates or projections contained in the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: competition in the highly competitive online learning market; the possibility of failures of our network infrastructure and computer systems; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; the impact of laws and regulations affecting education and the Internet; the timing of our sales cycle may cause variable operating results; the cost of marketing activities; our dependence on key personnel; and such other factors as are discussed in our most recent Form 10-Q/A Quarterly Report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which report you are encouraged to review in connection with this release. We believe that these forward-looking statements are reasonable; however, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which are based on current expectations and speak only as of the date of this release. We are not obligated to publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events after the date of this release.
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