Khan Academy Competitor? Alison.com founder on the future of Online Ed

http://www.wiredacademic.com/2011/09/khan-academy-competitor-mike-feerick-of-alison-com-talks-about-future-of-online-education/

by daviday • 15 years ago

40 21 15 years ago

wiredacademic.com

ashamedlion• 15 years ago

The whole site feels really cheap. I closed it at first because I thought I typed the URL in incorrectly and had landed on a parked domain.

The best thing about Khan Academy is its personality, which makes the learning very accessible. It's a no bullshit content delivery system, but this feels like it's straight out of Generic Corporate Designer™.

Also, if you want a clickable url: http://alison.com

benregn• 15 years ago

I agree with you on the site's looks, very uninviting... And that damn animated button in the right corner drives me crazy.

mythz• 15 years ago

It looks corporate and soulless - not fun at all.

Mizza• 15 years ago

Non-free content? A scrolling marquee and pulsating Join Now buttons? And calling your well established and much-loved competition 'buzz-heavy'.. yeah right. This isn't going anywhere.

acangiano• 15 years ago

I went to the site and it was virtually empty. A split second later I realized I had AdBlock Plus on. I disabled it and what I've seen looked like a spam site. I think the comparison with Khan Academy is extremely unjustified here.

maxjaderberg• 15 years ago

I agree the comparison is unjustified. What makes Khan Academy so good is the quality of Khan's explanations and teaching on the videos.

sandGorgon2• 15 years ago

I actually want to see an educational process/technique that produces content, even half as good as Khan Academy, repeatably.

My question has always been - will Khan Academy lose relevance after Sal Khan ? Or is there a recipe that allows the creation of more Khan Academys.

akarambir• 15 years ago

how can they win UNESCO award. Besides design, they are only promoting there diploma courses(paid) everywhere.

troymc• 15 years ago

I am happy to see innovation happening in how people get 'an education'. As usual, some of the most interesting stuff is being done by people outside the established providers (cf. The Innovator's Dilemma).

Sigi• 15 years ago

Khan Academy provides an easy way to download content for later offline viewing. This site, however, seems to try to do the exact opposite!

Using flash to restrict consumption and bugging users with registration offers is not a better way to learn.

imp• 15 years ago

If anyone is interested in a less corporate, more fun version of Alison, I started Curious Reef a while back. It's a social learning website.

For an example of someone actually learning something, here's a post by someone who just finished the MIT 6.00 Intro to Comp Sci class on Curious Reef: http://curiousreef.com/class/mit-opencourseware-600-introduc...

fapi1974• 15 years ago

It's interesting - Khan Academy has such massive following, but from a technology standpoint I've seen much cooler stuff... www.smart.fm comes to mind.

adeelk• 15 years ago

Sometimes, clear and intuitive explanations can go a lot farther than technology.

0x12• 15 years ago

This is the polar opposite of what the Khan Academy is all about: reducing barriers, open transfer of knowledge, transparency, no middle men.

bugsy3• 15 years ago

This article seems to be an ad for this guy's product, which is non-accredited college degrees from an online school. There's a lot of organizations doing online degrees, this is not very unique.

The comparisons to Khan are bizarre.

dimitar• 15 years ago

Competing in what? They don't offer the same courses!

Alison has stuff like "personal development", "touch typing" and even adobe products and a bit of Mathematics and Science, while Khan Academy is mostly Math and Economics in detail.

Khan Academy Competitor? Alison.com founder on the future of Online Ed

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