HOT DOGGITY: Online education provider, HotChalk, has unveiled its first HotChalk Education Index quarterly report--an impressive analysis of over 30 billion data points and 25,000 survey responses. The data comes from nearly 130 million global visitors to 160 education sites within the HotChalk Education Network, a loose confederation of sites serving a variety of ed-related content. The methodology is a bit opaque, referring only to "patented and proprietary technology" as the primary means for controlling survey responses, but the insights are useful if not completely groundbreaking.
Perhaps most interesting is the comparison between "online education" and "onsite/in-person education." Forty-six percent of students who had some experience with online education reported it being "somewhat better" (21%) or "much better" (25%) than brick-and-mortar equivalents. By contrast, only 28% of teachers fell into one of those two categories.
The Education Index also surfaces interesting insights around procurement of educational content. Entrepreneurs hustling to break into school procurement cycles might be surprised to find that teachers are three times more likely (72%) than schools (25%) to pony up for the paid digital content used in the classroom. And they drive a hard bargain, preferring to spend $1-3 (24%) or $4-6 (%30) per subscription or download.
Download the full report or browse this infographic for more trends around online education, mobile penetration, and procurement. HotChalk plans to release the quarterly data sets for "custom research projects" beginning in Q3 of 2013.
