Convene
Encyclopedia
Convene is an early distance learning company and currently the largest company in that market. The software company was founded in the late 1980s by Larry Allen when he created collaborative seminary training programs. Although Convene still has collaborative software for use by some 15,000 religious leaders, it expanded into an international distance learning software company in 1993. It uses specialized software to facilitate online classes for over 100 universities.

Convene International

Between 1989 and 1993, Allen discussed the company with Jeffery Stein, who had founded an information process company called On-Line Business Systems. Working with Reda Athanasios, Stein, buoyed by his experience founding a computer-based service company, played the largest role in turning the early software company into Convene International. As part of its transformation, the company began offering asynchronous distance learning
Asynchronous learning
Asynchronous learning is a student-centered teaching method that uses online learning resources to facilitate information sharing outside the constraints of time and place among a network of people. Asynchronous learning is based on constructivist theory, a student-centered approach that...

 software in Windows (instead of DOS) and eventually added 24/7 phone tech support. The first major client to offer the service was the University of Phoenix
University of Phoenix
The University of Phoenix is a for-profit institution of higher learning. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Group Inc. which is publicly traded , an S&P 500 corporation based in Phoenix, Arizona...

 online campus, then in its fledgling years. Convene then expanded to over 45,000 students at more than 100 universities in the United States and elsewhere.

Stein left the company in 2000 to form a corporate advisory services company, Peyton Investmentshttp://www.peytoninvestments.com. He is currently the chair of the IT History Society
IT History Society
The IT History Society is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research...

. In 2002, the Learning Technology Partners, a similar company, bought Convene for an undisclosed sum.

Sources

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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