Academic Partnerships Bolsters Higher Ed Support Services with Coursetune Acquisition

Academic Partnerships (AP) is strengthening its support for higher education faculty by acquiring Coursetune, a provider of curriculum mapping software.

The acquisition builds on AP’s commitment to support the growing needs of universities and colleges in designing a successful curriculum and helping faculty stay on track to deliver it, Dr. Amanda Smith, Chief Academic Officer of AP told Fierce Education. Coursetune is a perfect fit for AP because they have the shared goals to provide best-in-class curriculum design capabilities for faculty and to increase collaboration in education to improve student outcomes, she said.

AP is an online facilitator that assists public institutions of higher education in taking their academic programs online and recruits and retains qualified students through program completion. Coursetune helps institutions improve course and program design by focusing on mapping and assessment alignment. The acquisition will deliver more value to both AP’s and Coursetune’s existing education customer base, Smith said.

Regarding Coursetune, “It truly helped prioritize how we wanted to get where we were going and do so in a way where we didn’t need to wait to the end of any degree program in order to know where and how to go. That was the real value add from Coursetune.” Dr. Niccole Kopit, former University Dean, College of Business and Management, Colorado Technical University, back in 2020.

Added Colleen M. Culley, Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh, “It was retraining my brain to think differently– I was like ‘why did I write that as a course outcome? I didn’t have any learning objectives that matched with it!’ and so, I could see the mind of the student why there was a disconnect with some of the things I was asking them to do because I didn’t have appropriate learning objectives to match up with that competency. It’s a fun new way to think.”

High-quality online education is becoming a necessary part of universities’ degree offerings.  Coursetune’s software helps universities and faculty demonstrate that courses and programs are mapped appropriately to the institution’s overarching workforce, regulatory and programmatic goals. Doing so, helps faculty and program leadership alike showcase at-a-glance embedded skills and competencies that support strengthened outcomes for students and educators.

“This acquisition builds on the combined strengths of both AP and Coursetune and furthers our ability to meet the increasingly diverse and complex needs of our university partners and their faculty by providing a powerful software solution that helps institutions demonstrate high-quality outcomes and workforce alignment in their online offerings,” said Rob Ganji, AP’s CEO, in a prepared statement. “Most importantly, Coursetune has a strong commitment to increasing quality learning experiences with equity and access for students everywhere. They are a natural extension of AP’s mission to expand access to top quality, affordable and workforce relevant education, especially for students who are working adults like nurses and teachers. We look forward to integrating Coursetune’s dynamic visualization software into the support services for our partners, almost all of whom are regional public universities.”

Added Dr. Maria Andersen, Coursetune CEO, “We are thrilled to join the AP family, which shares Coursetune’s vision across future products, services and support.  We will continue to scale and accelerate our current product roadmap, and now we will have access to even more support and resources that will benefit educators and their students.  We built Coursetune specifically to solve complex problems, and AP focuses on student populations that can truly benefit from these solutions. It takes all of us working together to comprehensively help support increased access to affordable, top quality education.”

Coursetune will continue to operate and grow as a distinct brand with a dedicated team, said AP’s Smith. Its software will remain available to customers on a stand-alone basis, and over the coming months, the companies will examine ways their customers can benefit from the others’ offerings, she said.