Grockit, the mysterious online learning site that has been operating in stealth for the past year and has raised a total of over $10 million, has finally revealed itself to the public, and it doesn’t disappoint. The site calls itself a “Massively Multi Player Online Learning Game”, taking gaming concepts that have made World of Warcraft a massive hit and applying it to what amounts to an online SAT study group.
After logging in, users are presented with a list of active classrooms, each of which consists of less than a half dozen students. Once the session begins, the students are presented with a question along with a set of possible answers. Students can use an embedded chat box to debate on the possible choices, and can also leave comments beneath individual answer choices. After choosing an answer, Grockit highlights the correct one and an explanation detailing why it was the right choice.
As the sessions progress, students can award each other with “Grockit Points” for participating, which allow them to increase their Grockit rank (up to a level 10 blackbelt). The company says this leveling system gives users an incentive to play smart, and play often, and has worked well during its beta testing.
Grockit has the potential to be a huge hit - every year, millions of students spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on expensive prep classes for standardized tests like the SAT and the GMAT. Grockit may not be a replacement for these classes, but it’s a powerful tool nonetheless. Some of the panelists questioned the site’s virality, wondering why anyone would play this learning game in the first place. But they seem to forget just how far many students will go to ensure their success, buying handheld quizzing devices, test books, and the aforementioned prep courses. If Grockit can prove that it genuinely helps its students learn (and I think it will), then it should have no problem finding an audience.
Grockit originally launched in 2006, as an online video prep course for standardized tests. In 2007 the company abandoned the model and began developing the product that launched today.
The newest incarnation of Grockit launched at TechCrunch50 during the Games session. You can watch a video of its presentation here.
Expert Panelists
Robert Scoble - There are two kinds of gamers - World of Warcraft gamers play for hours on end. On other hand, me and my wife like to learn stuff we want to win play stuff and get out. This looks like lots of commitment, have to set up game time, then return to the site later…
Grockit - You can start a game instantly, just play for five questions.. As far as game mechanics are concerned… We want to give experts some recognition they can work towards
Robert Scoble - Are you going to partner with some of the book companies (SAT, GMAT, etc?)
Grockit - We aren’t affiliated with the tests, we created the site on our own. We could get in a situation where we license a bunch of questions from the College Board etc.. Eventually we’ll release an open platform so you can make what you want…
Robert Scoble - do you have a mobile client?
Grockit - We’ve got an iPhone preson we’re going to get on board, working toward it.
Sheryl Sandberg - Where do you think most of the content would come from? What about users?
Grockit - Once we vet the system and it’s scalable we’ll open it up. We already have it in there, just have to skin it.
Robert Scoble - Can you put media into the answers? For instance with a language?
Grockit - Any of the answer choices could be push or pull (can do media)
What’s the distribution model?
Grockit - Create sessions with your friends, there’s motivation for experts in system to get people in
Joi Ito - how do you invite people?
Grockit - Load Gmail account, or Facebook friends)
Joi Ito - seems like a new idea, so if I got an email that says let’s play SAT toeghetr, I think t doesn’t feel very viral..
Robert Scoble - That’s why I was wondering about ties to books. This would be good to study from the book.
Grockit - I guess the best way to think about it is study groups. If you get one of these people, it’s pretty natural to get friends in there.
Bradley Horowitz - At first I thought this was like Tom Sawyer’s multiplayer fence painting . But I could see this as a great virtual tool. How do you see this as it comes up against yahoo answers?
Grockit - Everything in game is archived, will be available for offline viewing..
Bradley Horowitz - Is it by search engines?
Grockit - Probably for free content, when you create your content that will be your choice.
Robert Scoble - Can i play all the way through, do i become credible source if I’m right?
Grockit - As you earn experience points you level up.
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Farbood the CEO is nails, and with $10M will nail this one out of the park, especially once they license data from Kaplan/etc.
$10M to do nothing? License data from Kaplan for what a quiz app? Hype.
I emailed my cousin about this a while back and told her to check it out and they sent her an NDA to sign up for the beta. Not only that the NDA was for potential employees. You’d think you could at least hire a lawyer who can give you two versions when you raise millions of dollars.
Regardless, it’s pretty sad that you have to sign an NDA to do their beta. I told my cousin to go get a tutor. This site looks pretty disappointing. Too much hype.
Definitely interested in seeing how this pans out!
I’m struggling to see how this is anything like World of Warcraft. This is more like a Facebook app that lets students collaboratively take tests. It’s not particularly viral either.
$10 MM can’t turn a bad idea into a good one. It can just make it hyped up.
How are they going to make money from this?
The fact that the panelists even mention books as the main competition suggests that there is a great market here. We (and especially Scoble, of all people) know that *everything* is better on the Internet. If books are currently the primary way of doing this task, no doubt the Internet can make it better!
If books (which are 100% non-viral) can build a successful business, then I’m sure this can too. However, one could debate whether this sort of publishing can make for the easy 2-years-to-$500 million exit and 30x return that a VC might want.
That already exists and many sites have been featured on TC - tutorvista, prepme, and others come to mind
I work in an office/call-center with a bunch of middle-aged women who play Bejewelled all day between calls. They’re far from tech-savvy, but forward stuff to each other all the time. The viralty of Grockit will kick in when they get beyond test prep and start offering this sort of casual gamer the opportunity to learn social stuff, like chili recipes and gossipy “facts” (believe me).
As far as making money, they should sell “design-your-own course” stuff to businesses where they can teach each other stuff they need to know, like customer-service stuff. Do you have any idea how many questions call-center reps ask each other all day? I’d love to be able to grockit all.
I thought the judges were unduly unimpressed.
Is there more to it than private classrooms and multiple choice quizzing?
Is there a notion of instructor led learning to supplement the quizzing or what is the mechanism that individuals learn the material for which they are being tested?
Given some of the quality open source options out there such as eFront (http://www.efrontlearning.com) or Moodle, I’m wondering what differentiates Grockit that justifies 2 years of development and 10 million dollars?
I am pretty bummed that a product with so much potential turned out to be such a simplified online quizzing tool with a social feature. I wrote to this team long ago and wrote about them in my blog but of course they did not respond to me. Can anyone tell me if anyone plans to bring k-12 education online with entertaining content, social aspects, knowledge tracking and constant flow of new content? There are so many good ideas and technologies that could be used to fundamentally change how fun learning can be. This sadly, is not even close. However, the attention and the fact that someone was willing to invest in it is at least good.
I believe we have for high school students trying to learn more about college: http://www.AskAboutCollege.com.
I, too, was unimpressed by what Grockit turns out to have developed after all the hype and secrecy.
Could someone please explain to me what they could possibly consider to be secret in their app? And why does it take $10M to build such an app?
I met Farb earlier this year to discuss partnership opportunities with Grockit and my online community, beatthegmat.com. I was really impressed by Farb’s intellectual horsepower and it seems like he had a really great team behind him.
This is definitely a radical approach to learning, and I hope that it succeeds. I’m a big fan of ‘learning by play’, and I think it’s an approach that will be more widely studied/deployed in the future. Looking forward to seeing where Grockit heads in the future!
So I am assuming that Grockit is gonna support all the other big tests too in the future? (GMAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT etc.)
This looks very similar to the free GMAT question bank on LearnHub. It includes thousands of user-created questions, with solutions, ratings, and comments. Users can compete to get the highest scores, and can time themselves.
Isn’t Grockit more of a feature than a product? This is just one of the dozens of features that are included in complete social learning sites like LearnHub.
Funny, Grockit violated the rules of your contest at http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/blog/the-rules/
They still haven’t launched. I guess when you’ve raised $10.7 MM, TC will bend the rules for you.
It’s 9 days since TC50 and these guys still haven’t launched. WTF?
Almost a month later and still no product. Good work Benchmark. This is a bomb.
The grockit site is broken. I tried to sign up 3 times. How did they raise so much money if they can’t even make a site that lets you log in? Its a catchy idea I guess.