Dive Summary:

• Educational publishing giant Pearson on Thursday announced the first class of ed tech start-ups in its Pearson Catalyst accelerator program.
• Pearson Catalyst differs from other accelerator programs in that it is entirely virtual--the start-ups meet with mentors via video conference, telephone and e-mail--and while the company provides accepted start-ups with $10,000, support from executives and an opportunity to launch a pilot program, it doesn't take an equity stake.
• Among the inaugural class are interactive online class provider VLinks Media, science education site Spongelab, adaptive learning tech provider Ace Learning Company, social academic platform ClassOwl, online e-reader ActivelyLearn and Full Stack Data Science, which provides a natural language and text processing platform that can detect cheating.

From the article:

... Instead of competing with other ed tech startup programs, Diana Stepner, head of future technologies, at Pearson, said the company sees its accelerator as complementary since it targets startups that are a little more established and already have a viable product. Socratic Labs, for example, is a partner, she said, adding that they’re working together to enable graduates from the New York incubator to move on to Pearson Catalyst. ...