Examville has been around for a while, but on Tuesday the company launched a new marketplace that may make it a legitimate contender to such major online learning platforms as Grockit and Udemy.
“Examville is the only complete online marketplace for K-post-secondary education, including continuing education,” the company said via email. “Examville provides online classes and materials from teachers and publishers. It also provides a complete tutoring platform where students can seek out tutors, allowing teachers to build an online tutoring business.”
The new marketplace features include virtual classrooms where “teachers” and students can interact in live classes that tackle specific subjects or test preparation, as well as find or offer tutoring services, exchange notes and study guides, and purchase full-length practice tests.
I put “teacher” in quotes because classes can be taught by anyone interested in teaching them. Any Internet user can create, offer, and make money on a class for other users, regardless of credentials or expertise. For example, a GRE math review class is offered for $34 for one live session and is taught by an individual registered as “examville_tutor,” but the tutor’s profile does not include any information about test scores, credentials, education history, etc.
Grockit, on the other hand, offers free live courses taught by qualified tutors (for test prep courses, for example, tutors list their own test scores). Udemy is an online learning platform that allows anyone to create and offer “courses” of their choosing, but this is the basic premise of the site—any user can go on Udemy.com to teach online. Udemy is not offered as an exclusive study/test prep site but rather as a sort of social learning site that also offers full-length semester-long recorded lectures from top schools around the country.
According to the company, its revenues are based on subscriptions, purchases of online materials, and advertising. It also takes a 30% commission on classes offered by users (so Examville takes a $10 cut of every $30 class offered on its website). While the company has not disclosed how much it has raised, it has named Rediff.com as its lead investor.
The website also offers a number of free resources and services, including practice questions for specific tests like the GRE, GMAT, SAT, and LSAT. Subscribers can access several full-length tests depending on which subscription level they have.
Other online learning sites like StudyBlue offer free study services, such as note sharing, the ability to make and share flashcards, and connection with classmates. Examville takes a different approach by offering more comprehensive tutoring materials and online courses. Of course, Grockit always seems to trump other online learning startups as it offers studying and tutorial services, most of which is free. It’s hard to compete with free.
Image source: examville.com
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Udemy is a website that enables anyone to teach and learn online. Udemy tries to democratize online education by making it fast, easy and free to create online courses. Udemy is an open platform, so anyone can build an online course by posting videos, presentations, writing blog posts, or hosting live virtual classroom sessions.
Udemy tries to solve a simple problem: there are millions of smart people in the world (authors, speakers, coaches, trainers, subject matter experts and teachers) who want to teach over the internet. Currently, it costs $10,000 to create a website to teach, and there are thousands of instructors doing this (we've talked to them; they hate it). We provide instructors with the ability to create their own course without any up-front costs. That way, they no longer have to deal with the technology and can focus entirely on teaching.
Udemy Live is Udemy’s live virtual conferencing and classroom tool. It is entirely web-based and built on component architecture. Each component was built separately, and there is an internal API so third party developers can build components on top of Udemy’s virtual conferencing tool. The API is not currently public.
Udemy was founded by MobileCrunch writer Gagan Biyani, Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar. Eren and Oktay worked at SpeedDate.com, an online dating site that has received over $8M in funding from Menlo Ventures.
Udemy will start by focusing on a specific niche: Poker education. We will roll out Udemy to enter the $100M business of online poker education. Udemy has deals with more than 15 extremely popular poker instructors to teach on Udemy Poker over the internet. After that niche, Udemy will begin to enter additional markets in which there is a willingness to pay by consumers and a clear set of high-quality instructors interested in teaching.
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Examville is a global online education platform that facilitates user-to-user collaborative learning at an affordable cost from anywhere, at anytime, by creating an open, virtual meeting place.
With the belief that education is a right, not a privilege, Examville democratizes education by offering equal access to quality learning content and connecting great teachers with eager students of any age or nationality. Students can use our website to take classes, share study materials, prepare for standardized tests, and improve their grades. Teachers can share their knowledge with millions of students and generate additional income. Examville also provides a robust feature-set available to third parties including test preparation/tutoring companies, premium publishers, corporations, and other organizations.
Be a part of Examville's global learning community - learn, teach, share and connect!
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Grockit is a web-based social network for studying that uses collaborative learning to improve academic achievement and extend learning outside of the classroom.
