Florida Online High School selects Jones' e-education as its exclusive course platform

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Dec, 2000

After an extensive review of numerous e-learning platforms, the Florida Online High School (FHS, Orlando, FL, www.fhs.edu) has selected JonesKnowledge .com's (Englewood, CO, www.jonesknowledge.com) e-education online learning solution as its exclusive online course delivery platform. Phyllis Lentz, business development officer for FHS, says the school was surprised by the capabilities of this lesser-known offering and especially pleased with the company's responsiveness to the needs of FHS.

Lentz adds that having delivered online courses for four years, FHS knew what they wanted. Given two similar products, flexibility and people made the difference. Their special requests during the proposal process included populating the testing area with an uploaded file, downloading zipped files from the testing area, modifying the gradebook for various grading methodologies, modifying the interface from an adult look to a K-12 feel and adding an "In/Out" box to the work submission area.

The online school has been operating with disparate components of their online classes; they will begin offering courses on the e-education platform next month.

Heather O'Mara, president of JonesKnowledge.com, tells ISEM that the company's responsiveness is made possible by having in-house technology for the platform, assessment tools, registration tools and other features. e-education's chat is the only exception to their rule of proprietary technology. Not relying on a third-party vendor, she says, allows Jones to rapidly adjust the offering.

24 hour, 7 days a week customer support by phone and email also distinguished eeducation for the FHS decision. The support extends beyond technology from JonesKnowledge.com to say, a plug-in that an instructor might want to use. Lentz says the technical support will free FHS employees for other tasks. Other features include an assessment tool which allows pictures and mathematical formulas to be downloaded, a white board which allows for the use of mathematical symbols, and the optional e-global library.

e-global Library Is Designed for Online Learners

Originally developed by Jones International University (JIU, www.jonestinternational.edu, see below) to support its students and fulfill the criteria for accreditation, e-global library is a new online library for online learners that is officially being introduced December 4th. The service capitalizes on a long relationship between the company and the Library of Congress to include numerous public resources. It also has tutorials and various Internet resources reviewed and organized by a staff of 20 librarians. Numerous database resources include ABI Inform, ERIC, H.W Wilson Select Plus and World CAT.

FHS will be the first institutional user of e-global library services other than JIU. Lentz is pleased with what the company is doing to adjust what has essentially been designed as a higher education resource for her high school audience. She is also pleased to give her students access to the librarian staff (a staff which does not yet see a demand for the 24x7 hours of the technical support crew, but does have extensive availability).

License fees for e-global library are defined on an individual basis, but are based on an institutional fee and a per student fee. There are options to add the academic database services, but institutions already subscribing to these databases do not pay twice. The on-call librarian feature is also optional with an additional fee

e-education is a hosted, ASP solution. It requires a $500 set-up fee, a $35 fee per student/per course and a per course/per term license fee. That fee is $250 if the institution administers users, such as handling "adds" and "drops" and $500 for Jones to provide full-service user administration. O'Mara says users new to online courses typically begin with the full-service model to ease and quickly migrate to their own user administration.

e-education's Market Position

The platform is currently used in 170 institutions of higher education, typically at the department level or at the institutional level on a non-exclusive basis. JonesKnowledge.com also has one K-12 client in addition to FHS, the Colorado Online School Consortium. O'Mara says the software product has been in place since the first beta in the spring of 1997, but the company has been focused on building an infrastructure to support customers rather than on marketing. They have also been building a sales and marketing staff over the past year, and the group will be extending the reach of e-education into higher education, K-12 and corporate learning.

JIU Adds Courses

The JonesKnowledge.com umbrella of activities also includes Jones International University, tagged as "the first fully online, accredited university." JIU offers college courses, certificate programs, a Bachelor of Arts completion degree in business communication and Master of Arts degree in business communication, and a Master of Business Administration degree with seven areas of specialization. Those seven distinct MBAs focus on e-business. O'Mara says plans call for rolling out three new degree programs each year.