Part of my daily routine is reading Greg Mankiw’s Economics Blog. When I saw his post announcing that the text book that he wrote will now be accompanied by an interactive learning tool, I was intrigued. I quickly read the Washington Post article that Dr. Mankiw linked to in the announcement to learn more about Aplia, the company that developed this educational tool. It turns out that Aplia, which is based in Belmont, CA, was developed by a Stanford economist named Paul Romer who was very successful in developing a theory to explain why different economies grow at different rates, but not so successful at engaging students. Since Dr. Romer is clearly a problem solver at heart, he developed a product (and company) called Applia that “offers high-quality, auto-graded assignments” and is “dedicated to improving learning by increasing student effort and engagement.”
Paul Romer took $10 million in venture capital to spur the growth of the company, and he eventually sold out in 2007 to Cengage, a a textbook publisher. Aplia is now “used by more than 1,000,000 students at over 950 institutions,” so I’ll wager that Cengage is pretty happy to have a successful interactive tool to bring some life to their slowly dying textbook business. Now, the real reason that I got so excited when I first heard about Aplia isn’t my interest in interactive educational tools (although I clearly have an interest there), it’s the fact that I thought they might have internships. And they do. They still seem to operate separately from Cengage, so they have their own Jobs and Internships page (although it’s branded like it’s just for Cengage). We can’t link to the specific openings because of their crappy Applicant Tracking System, but if you head over there you’ll see they have a Marketing Internship and a Website/Graphics Design Internship listed. The opportunities are full-time and paid, so apply online before it’s too late.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
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Tags: California, design, education, Internships, marketing, paid, web development
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