DENVER—April 7, 2008 — Students at many of the nation’s leading online higher education programs have access to more support services aimed at improving their success in college and beyond, now that two of the nation’s top providers of educational services have joined forces.

InsideTrack, a provider of student coaching services to colleges and universities, and eCollege, the nation’s leading provider of comprehensive online learning technology, have formed a strategic partnership to offer InsideTrack’s Success Coaching service at colleges and universities that use eCollege’s online learning platform

Success Coaching connects coaches with students to provide guidance, structure and feedback to help students be more effective in school and in life. Success Coaching complements student services such as advising, counseling or mentoring and consists of weekly, one-to-one, live sessions over the phone between students and trained, InsideTrack-certified coaches. Success Coaches help students to identify goals and create action plans to achieve those goals. Each week, students review their progress with their coach to stay focused on priorities and motivated to achieve.

Success Coaching has been proven in over 50 studies to improve student engagement, first-year retention, and persistence to graduation—typically a 20 - 25% reduction in student attrition. In addition to having a significant positive impact on students’ higher education experiences, the Success Coaching service also improves revenue opportunities for universities. The program can be implemented quickly and pays for itself.

eCollege’s comprehensive learning platform offers students effective online programs in a reliable course management system. Winner of the IMS Global Learning Consortium’s 2007 user satisfaction award in the both the Course Management System and Services categories, and a finalist for the Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 2008 CODiE Award for Best Postsecondary Enterprise Solution, the eCollege course management system offers a complete approach to eLearning for schools. eCollege provides all of the technology to support online learning, allowing schools to focus on learning, instead of maintaining and supporting complicated hardware and software.

“Today’s announcement reflects InsideTrack’s ongoing commitment to helping our partner colleges educate and support online learners,” said Paul Reddy, Vice President of Business Development for InsideTrack. “The eCollege platform already provides quality eLearning to thousands of students at several leading universities. By partnering with this powerful online course management system, InsideTrack has an opportunity to coach already engaged students toward an improved college experience and greater success.”

“eCollege’s partnership with InsideTrack extends the value that we offer to higher education institutions,” said Matthew Leavy, President of eCollege. “InsideTrack’s Success Coaching services have continually increased their client college’s graduation rates. By bringing our learning services together, institutions are able to offer students the flexibility and convenience of online education, as well as the support and coaching that have a huge impact on their success.”

Direct coaching is one of many tools that an education institution can use to increase retention and graduation rates. Both InsideTrack and eCollege provide robust analytics tools that help track student activities and achievement, as well as the practices within programs that lead to success. eCollege offers a variety of reporting and data-analysis tools to help institutions identify what is working in their online programs, in addition to operational and academic support services that help drive success. The InsideTrack Catalyst application is a performance-reporting tool that allows universities to measure and manage the effectiveness of coaching teams and the coaching service across cohorts. Additionally, RightTrack is a student-centric application that enables coaches to work with students on managing their commitments and evaluating their progress towards obtaining their degree. The companies expect integrations between the two software platforms to support the analytics needs of their clients.

With eCollege and InsideTrack, client institutions can benefit from the integration of both companies’ technologies and support. The eCollege platform provides an efficient eLearning platform with powerful tracking tools, while InsideTrack provides an important service dimension to coach, manage and measure student success. This combination of tools and services will have measurable return on their investment and help drive higher success rates for students in online education programs.

About eCollege
eCollege, a Pearson company (LSE: PSON, NYSE: PSO), is a leading provider of value-added information services to postsecondary institutions and K-12 education. The company provides a comprehensive, on-demand eLearning solution that supports many of the most successful, fully online degree, certificate/diploma and professional development programs in the country, and increasingly, around the world. Pearson, the international media company, is the global leader in educational publishing, assessment, information and services, helping people of all ages to learn at their own pace, in their own way. In addition to Education, Pearson’s primary operations include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group. For more information, visit www.ecollege.com or www.pearson.com.

About InsideTrack
InsideTrack's mission is to promote student engagement, persistence, retention and success. Its core solution is Success Coaching, a clearly defined, reproducible methodology that delivers measurable results — typically a 20 - 25% reduction in student attrition. The program can be implemented quickly and pays for itself by improving tuition revenues. To date, InsideTrack has coached more than 85,000 students at more than 50 campus locations nationally, enabling partner colleges to increase student retention, total enrollment, graduation rates and tuition revenue. Partner universities include Arizona State University, Florida State University, and California State University, along with private universities such as Northeastern University, University of Redlands and Chapman University. To learn more about InsideTrack, visit www.insidetrack.com.

Contact:
Susan Aspey
Director of Communications
Pearson Education
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