Lessons From The CEO OF The First Ever MOOC
by Peter High, published on Forbes.com
12-31-2013
There has been much press for the massive open online courses or MOOCs, including in my series of interviews to date with Sebastian Thrun and Daphne Koller, CEOs of Udacity and Coursera respectively. If one is new to these companies, one might be under the impression that the MOOC phenomenon is less than two years old. That is not the case. The company that many credit as being the first ever MOOC is Advance Learning Interactive Systems ONline, better known as ALISON. Irish-American entrepreneur, Mike Feerick founded that company in 2007, and whereas many other companies in this industry are still trying to determine the business models, Feerick has nearly seven years of testing, experimenting, and succeeding behind him. In this interview, Feerick talks about the genesis of the idea, his rationale for focusing on vocational training, and his vision for the future of the company.
(To listen to an extended audio version of this interview, please visit Forum on World Class IT. This is the fourth in the education technology series. To read the prior interviews, please follow this link. To read future interviews with the CEOs of Khan Academy, edX, and FutureLearn among other companies, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Mike, as a MOOC pioneer, what was the inspiration behind ALISON?
ALISON started with seven computer literacy courses because it was a very practical field of focus. Prior to launching ALISON we charged for the service, however when we changed our model to free, a curious thing happened: our paying clients wanted to continue to pay as they did not believe that something free could also be of sufficient value! We have changed a lot of minds on that score, and in that sense ALISON has helped open up the market for free education for other MOOCS to follow.
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