Just curious. It looks like there is nobody left.
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What is Learning Department?
Maybe “sold” to Learning Mate is not the right word, but 20 US employees and ~170 in Cape Town from the Learning Department were offered employment with Learning Mate to work as vendors with 2U.
Do you have details on what it means that they were sold to Learning Mate?
As far as I can tell, a small handful was retained and will be absorbed elsewhere in the company. The teams in the Cape Town office (learning design, graphic design, video, motion design, writing and development) and another 20 US employees were sold to Learning Mate, who 2U was already using as a vendor, and will continue to do the same work designing and building courses as contractors. The entire US video production team was laid off AFTER they just spent who knows what building a new studio at HQ.
Who is going to replace the work the Learning Team was doing? I left a year ago, but at that point, everyone was working with scant resources -- embarrassing quite frankly for a company charging so much to students -- and trying their best to push out what they could in what felt like an emotional blender. (Does anyone remember the day when Chip, sitting next to his coat of arms accused people of stealing time and working another job when in reality people were underpaid and overworked or the day when Chip took us on a virtual tour of the new gym when our team did not have the basic tools to do their jobs).
Chip and his team exploited the heck out of passionate people who loved what they were doing and kept doing it even when it got crazy. It seems like Chip has decided to stop a sinking ship by throwing the people bailing out the boat overboard.
I am sorry to all of you that are impacted. You did awesome work that went well and beyond the pay and respect you received and deserved better.
+1. It's been treacherous these past 2-3 years in Learning. There are individuals with exceptionally impressive backgrounds and skillsets in learning/media design, learning science, instructional quality, curricular development, and program management who have been overworked and stretched unhealthily thin across partners.
We've been exhausted and disheartened to see half-funded/half-resourced projects (aka courses and even full degrees) get launched and have so little say on the matter. So many of us really did care about our partner professors, students, and programs- but every means for us to provide the support we know is necessary for pedagogically sound learning experiences has been slowly whittled away these past few years. And we've spent the past few years unhealthily in-fighting for the few remaining resources with zero leverage or support.
So to faculty, students, and programs who are assuredly upset with 2U/edX right now: please know that so many of us deeply cared and tried our best for you. But it's been a losing battle for years.
Learning team worked with faculty to design and build the courses that students used. It has been a mess for almost two years, but all the people at the lower levels put in their best effort to ensure students had high quality courses, only to be thwarted by poor management and lack of resources.
What did learning team do?
A handful are left - although not sure it will be called Learning Team any longer.