Replaying an MP3 audio file of a lecture is not new, but combining this with notes and syncing the two together offers a whole new experience for students and teachers/lecturers.

Two US companies dominate the market, Tegrity and Echo360 (formerly known as Apreso and owned by Anystream). Aside from the innovation they bring to schools, HE and FE, one of the lesser known aspects of this market is that Echo360’s technology is largely based on Lectopia (formerly iLectures), software originally developed by the University of Western Australia’s Multimedia Centre.

Lectopia and its newly updated Echo360 variant are used by many UK universities including Imperial College, LSE, King’s College and US universities like Harvard, Temple and Duke.

Aside from changing the way students use lectures, this also shows how small university technology innovations can be developed into significant educational IP. Dr Andy Sierakowski, Director, Office of Industry and Innovation at The University of Western Australia said, ‘Lectopia exemplifies the model of an institution-backed project maturing into a technology primed for broad adoption by the education community’.

With licensing fees ranging from US$25k to over US$100k (for systems that support dynamic content) this looks set to be a profitable market for Echo360 and Tegrity.

www.anystream.com
www.apreso.com
www.tegrity.com