Much of the team behind Acrobatiq is being siphoned from OLI, including two of the platform’s founders. Other team members hail from New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto. The company’s headquarters is located in Pittsburgh’s South Side.
When Acrobatiq begins to roll out its services this fall, it will not interrupt any existing agreements institutions have with OLI , Frank said.
In some ways, the company is part of a larger trend of educators and college administrators trying to get ahead of the “disruption” coming from the educational technology sector (for-profit companies like MOOC provider Coursera, for example). If there are problems in higher education, they argue, then let the solutions come from higher education, too.
The team members behind Acrobatiq are not “disruptors,” Frank said on the company’s blog. In fact, the term seems to leaves a bad taste in the CEO’s mouth.
“It’s become fashionable to wear “disruption” like a badge of honor,” he said. “Most who do either have no idea what it means, or worse, seek to tear down without building up. We believe that higher education will solve the hard problems from the inside out.”
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