In a deal announced yesterday Ingram Content Group has acquired the CourseSmart educational content partnership that was formed almost ten years ago by Pearson Cengage Wiley and O'Reilly. Here is their press release:
Vital Source Technologies, Inc., Ingram Content Group’s global leader in building, enhancing and delivering e-learning content, today announced that it has acquired the assets of CourseSmart, a leading provider of digital textbooks in the higher education market.“We are pleased to make another investment in higher education and technology with the acquisition of CourseSmart,” said John Ingram, Chairman and CEO, Ingram Content Group. “By integrating the strengths of CourseSmart with Vital Source, we are creating an extensive global sales channel for publishers and bringing the best in digital learning technology and accessibility to the higher education community. We are strengthening our services in the higher education market and reinforcing our commitment to helping publishers, institutions, educators and students navigate the evolving landscape of digital learning and succeed by providing them with content in any format.”CourseSmart’s strengths in inventory, instructor sampling and analytics will be integrated with Vital Source’s reader platform and global, scalable distribution network. By combining the two organizations, Vital Source will offer the world’s largest digital content catalog and provide better digital content solutions for the higher education community."CourseSmart was founded by member publishers to improve the distribution of digital learning materials in higher education,” said Will Ethridge, Chairman of CourseSmart. “Since its founding, CourseSmart's innovative services have led the company to become a leading higher education platform for institutions, professors and students to discover, adopt and purchase course materials. By becoming one company, CourseSmart and Vital Source will be able to further accelerate the adoption of digital learning materials to these audiences, while providing more effective distribution and customer relationships for authors and publishers as well."CourseSmart was founded in 2007 by Macmillan, Cengage Learning, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson with a simple goal of providing instructors a better textbook evaluation service. The company has since expanded to become a leader in providing digital learning content to the higher education community. CourseSmart has millions of users around the world and offers access to over 90 percent of core higher education titles as e-textbooks along with the largest catalog of e-resources and digital course materials.“We have worked with Vital Source and CourseSmart, and both companies have added value to our digital learning environment, supporting our unique, competency-based learning model,” said Dr. Robert Mendenhall, President, Western Governors University. “We are encouraged by Ingram’s increased investment in higher education, and we expect the combination of CourseSmart and Vital Source to expand the availability and distribution of digital course materials and curriculums to institutions.”The company will offer a best-in-class digital content platform and will be committed to pioneering new technologies in areas like accessibility and analytics. It will provide more options for institutions, more inventory for faculty and course designers, and greater scalability for content creators and resellers.
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