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

by daviday on 9/4/2011, 3:46 PM with 21 comments
  • by ashamedlion on 9/4/2011, 5:10 PM

    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 Designerâ„¢.

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

  • by acangiano on 9/4/2011, 5:35 PM

    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.

  • by Mizza on 9/4/2011, 5:28 PM

    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.

  • by imp on 9/4/2011, 6:43 PM

    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...

  • by mythz on 9/4/2011, 5:19 PM

    It looks corporate and soulless - not fun at all.

  • by 0x12 on 9/4/2011, 8:27 PM

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

  • by bugsy on 9/4/2011, 9:45 PM

    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.

  • by troymc on 9/4/2011, 5:53 PM

    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).

  • by fapi1974 on 9/4/2011, 7:09 PM

    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.

  • by akarambir on 9/4/2011, 5:52 PM

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

  • by Sigi on 9/4/2011, 6:04 PM

    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.

  • by dimitar on 9/4/2011, 11:07 PM

    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.