When we last wrote about San Francisco based Grockit, in late 2006, they were unfunded. Their business idea of holding low-cost GMAT prep courses over Webex was just getting off the ground.
Now they are funded - $2.7 million total ($2.3 million from Benchmark, $400k from angel investors Mark Pincus, Rob Lord, Reid Hoffman Thomas Ryan and others) in a Series A round was closed last month. And they are changing their model completely.
Instead of holding one-to-many classes via Webex, the company is building a new product from the ground up. Founder Farbood Nivi calls it MMOL, for Massive Multiplayer Online Learning (a play on the term MMOG). He says studies show that people learn best from eachother, not in a teacher-students situation. He, along with technical co-founder Michael Buffington (Price.com, MeasureMap, Stikkit), are going to try to prove this works. Beyond that, they aren’t divulging any details at all.
That is interesting that people can actually learn better from each other - this may explain the huge popularity of social web 2.0 sites and informational blogs.
It appears the potential informal education one can get via these multimedia mediums - dwarfs what took years to learn in traditional educational environments
This is something that has been discussed for years at Educational tech conferences. Should be interesting to see what a little capitalism can do for it.
I’ve worked on sort of similar things for medical school test preparation, this looks like a solid jump forward. There’s a ton of money in test preparation, a lot of candidates/customers out there with a large investment on the line, and a lot of related products to sell.
Interesting. I wonder if “players” will have 10-hour sessions like they do with the games. It’s amazing what can grow out of something as mundane as online GMAT courses.
Farb rocks. Very smart guy. These guys will dominate Kaplan, Manhattan and others!!!!
Wow, this idea of learning 2.0 built around a MMORPG is a great idea. What about the use of this for online training when it comes to things such as business development, SEO, college course,s etc.? I am looking for a solution for online training too and this is the perfect option. What other things will there be for this new application? I’m waiting ofr this to happen so I can mess around with the software applications created. This is sooo Exciting!
Funny, IRC has been around for YEARS!
MMLOL - Massive Multiplayer Laughing Out Loud
If it’s getting massive (in numbers of people helping each other) I can’t help but agreeing with urgen.