Bigchalk builds its role as a distributor

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, Feb, 2001

Recent deals at bigchalk.com further establish the company as a distribution channel for online educational goods. The company launched just over a year ago with the merger of the K-12 assets of Bell & Howell and Infonautics (meaning the merger of the ProQuest and Electric Library products). They quickly gathered $55 million in funding followed by a November investment from SoftBank Finance Corp. Since then, they have concentrated on building a subscription offering that goes beyond the database offerings to curriculum and community. Bigchalk purchased MediaSeek (which gave them the ability to correlate resources with standards) and Homework Central.

Sue Collins, senior vp and general manager, explains that subscriptions account for the bulk of revenue. Subscriptions are typically a district or state purchase of the a la carte offerings aggregated on the site. One district, for example, might subscribe to Electric Library and bigchalk's community tool, and another to ProQuest and the BigChalk Retriever metadata search engine. Subscriptions are sold on a per-seat basis. The company does not offer a comprehensive subscription to all of their resources.

The site also has free offerings supported in part by advertising and sponsorship. Collins is adamant, however, in emphasizing that ads never appear during school hours. Free offerings are also designed to build traffic and promote the subscription services. Partners for the free offerings include National Public Radio, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and The Smithsonian.

New Subscription Content

Bigchalk.com has recently introduced a number of new products to build its online offerings in K-12 academic resources, curriculum (defined by Collins as children's curriculum, professional development and assessment) and community. Collins says that bigchalk will continue to expand as a distribution channel, and the company is interested in reviewing a wide range of high-quality, educational resources.

In the classroom curriculum arena, the company announced deals to begin distribution of Science Brainium, FableVision Studio's book NorthStar, and Generation GIT from Generation YES in March, 2001. Bigchalk has exclusive distribution rights for FableVision and Generation YES--deals which Collins says are possible because of bigchalk's strong direct sales force into the schools. FableVision and bigchalk will develop semester-long modules based on this popular children's book. The story will be presented through FableVision's TeleFable technology for the web or through a web-based audio version. Generation GIT (Girls' Issues and Technology) is designed to increase young women's interest in, and understanding of, technology.

Bigchalk will continue to develop resources in-house. They recently introduced, for example, new supplementary materials for history called ClassMate U.S. History. Their ClassMate products draw on the primary resources available from the Electric Library and ProQuest databases which were the company's impetus.

Similarly, professional development offerings are a mix of in-house content and resources from third parties. Bigchalk is expanding a series called Critical Issues designed in-house using the Blackboard 5 platform. These are in-service topics that all of a school's staff needs to know, issues such as safety, standards and building home-to-school communications. The company is partnered with Apex Learning for courses that offer continuing education units. They are distributing UCLA's graduate level courses from OnlineLearning.net. And for schools wanting courses to encourage wide reform, bigchalk is the exclusive distributor of Generation YES, semester-long courses in which teachers and students partner to create a technology-infused project. These offerings are typically district or teacher purchases. Some just-in-time professional development is available for free. Bigchalk used to distribute products for WebED, but their new agreements replace those professional development offerings.

The company also recently introduced bigchalk Library. The offering essentially combines the best of ProQuest and Electric Library to offer natural language or Boolean searches for more than 1,500 magazines, newspapers, books and radio programs along with 40,000 photographs and maps and over 2,000 educational audiovisual resources. The product is intended as the third-leg of tri-part offering, not a replacement for the two foundation products. It also represents an effort on the part of bigchalk to brand their in-house products with their name.

Bigchalk reaches international markets through distributors that localize the content. Infosentials, Ltd. (www.infosentials.com) reaches Australia and Southeast Asia. Rogers Communications, Inc. (www.rogers.com) distributes in Canada. The investment from Softbank has also created the initial stages of activity in Japan. Collins says that the company continues to be interested in creating relationships that bring the service to new markets.