CEO/Founder of ALISON
From blogs.ubc.ca/etec522Sept2013
Week 4: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
Post by jiorns 1:23 am on September 27, 2013
CEO/Founder of ALISON
Mike Feerick is the quintessential entrepreneur. He is US-born, lives in West Ireland, and has a string of successful Internet technology start-ups to his name. In April 2007 Mike founded ALISON, an online platform providing free certified education and workplace training skills to adults. He has been leading the enterprise through rapid growth ever since.
Value proposition
The value proposition of ALISON is the provision of free courses for adults anywhere in the world. Mike states, “At ALISON, we believe certifiable, standards-based learning can be made available for every subject, for free, online, especially for marginalized people in the developing and the developed worlds”.
Mike regards the venture as a social enterprise and one that supports the UN Declaration on Human Rights: everyone is entitled to education.
Products
Courses are interactive multimedia Certificate and Diploma courses accessible on mobile and other devices. There are currently 58 publishers sponsoring ‘free to learner’ courses. ALISON claims to offer 500 free courses and support more than 2 million learners in 200 countries.
Recognition
Due to its innovation, and Mike Feerick’s leadership capabilities, the company has received both the UNESCO Award for Innovation in ICT in Education in 2010 and the World Summit for Education Award ‘for outstanding quality and exceptional impact on education through innovation’ in 2013. It has also recently received a WISE Award in Qatar.
Company structure
I cannot identify if ALISON is a for-profit or not-for-profit venture. This doesn’t appear to be public information.
Business model
The company earns revenue from ‘parchments’ (certificates of completion), website advertising fees, and fees charged for ALISON’s course management software which enables course publishers to manage and track progress of enrolled students.
Founder/CEO credentials
Mike Feerick is a highly regarded entrepreneur who both conceived the idea of ALISON and championed the start-up and growth of the enterprise. Before founding ALISON, Mike had founded other technology start-ups including JFAX, YAC, Advance Learning and TVC Media. He has the credentials of successfully leading several companies through inception, growth and sale.
Mike is also currently a director of the University of Limmerick Foundation, a member of both the Global Irish Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative, and is also a frequent guest speaker. In the past, he has been a chairperson of other academic and social organisations in Ireland.
His entrepreneurship and services to education have been internationally recognised. In January 2011, he received a UNESCO Diploma prize for services to innovation in online workplace education and in 2010, he was awarded an Ashoka Fellow for dedication to social entrepreneurship in education.
Mike holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BBS from the University of Limerick. His full biography is available on Bloomberg, together with his photo.
Team/Board Credentials
The only information I can find about members of ALISON other than Mike are the profiles of marketing and public relations professionals on LinkedIn. There are regular posts about ALISON on social media, indicating that the promotion of ALISON is being well managed. Mike’s profile appears regularly, together with videos of his speaking appearances.
Connect/Follow the enterprises’s LinkedIn Group
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Further comment by jiorns 1:30 am on September 27, 2013
I have provided a link to a photo on ALISON’s website rather than copied a photo from the website as due respect for copyright.
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Comment by davidp 3:48 am on September 27, 2013
I think you’ve hit on something that is important to consider when you note that Mike Feerick is a highly regarded entrepreneur, and as noted, is a serial entrepreneur with a number of successes (and possibly a failure or two) among his experiences.
This type of profile insures that a product champion can see a market, explain a solution clearly, assemble a team that can add agility to establishing a market presence, and demonstrate a revenue stream early that can sustain the venture.
I think this analysis clearly illustrates the advantage of having multiple experiences and the knowledge of what to do. Many successful ventures do in fact stem from multiple previous venture experiences, either as part of team, or as lead player. It all counts and helps downstream.
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naomi 6:24 am on September 30, 2013
I researched a bit further online and discovered it is a for profit company. I think that it should also be mentioned that ALISON is a unique take on the MOOC. Unlike other MOOCs, it’s courses are vocationally focused, and not associated with universities. Courses can be created and provided by outside companies such as Microsoft and Google, so their product is really their learning platform and certificates. Quite an ingenious and novel idea to have someone else do the bulk of the learning design so your income can go into business growth and platform development.
One critique for potential market success is recognition of certification. Yes, learners have to score over 80 percent, and complete all courses to get a certificate, but if I were to put it on my resume, it would have little value as few people have heard of ALISON, unless the certificate mentioned the course provider – this then would have some cachet. OF course, this is purely a North American perspective. I know from some of my students that in their countries, the more certificates you have the better. The institution doesn’t always matter.
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sylvainm 9:15 am on September 30, 2013
I like your comment Naomi. I think that MOOCs have the potential to diminish the power of post secondary education in sanctioning students learning. In many industries, what matters is not the marks you had in school, but what you are actually able to do. There is also an advantage for corporations to provide courses in that they know what is going on in their own industry and can tailor their courses to fit their needs. Another advantage is that through their courses, they can identify and recruit individuals who have the qualities they are looking for in employees.
There is also the possibility that professionals get certified through an entry exam into the profession rather than the completion of a degree. Respective professional associations would determine whether you qualify as an engineer or a teacher rather than take your degree from any university at face value.
I think that ventures such as ALLISON are the starting point of what could lead to profound transformations in the instructional market space.
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jiorns 1:26 pm on October 3, 2013
Thanks for an interesting reflection. Vocational education is a huge market and ALISON stands to disrupt the Voc Ed market in the same way MOOCs are disrupting Higher Ed.
I read in an Ambient Insight market analysis that apprenticeships (one area of Voc Ed) are moving online, which is interesting. I wonder how much of the learning that occurs in apprenticeships can go online, and whether we are really talking about blended learning models?
ALISON is certainly tapping into the huge market for lifelong learning and courses may be acceptable to employers, or at least acceptable if the content provider is recognizable and credible. A perception of credibility will be unique to each individual.
It seems likely that free ALISON courseware can save corporate training departments a lot of money, and in that vein, some of the for-fee content providers to corporations could lose some market share to ALISON.
Similarly, free ALISON courseware could complement (and become part of a blended learning solution) for vocational education providers, thus easing their development budgets.
In countries where national competency standards and frameworks for training delivery and accreditation exist for Voc Ed, there would be a bit of work to match the competencies acquired through ALISON to the competency framework of a local market. It remains to be seen whether institutions would go those hard yards. If there is a match between ALISON course content and a learning outcome and performance standard for an accredited national competency, then bingo! Free content.
As the poster above has said, post secondary education as a whole is getting a shake up with the emergence of free, open content. ALISON has taken a left field to MOOCs by virtue of its target audience, but ultimately the two types of open learning platforms may converge.
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jldr 9:46 am on September 30, 2013
This is a very unique perspective that I had not considered before. Thanks!
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mb585 12:39 pm on September 30, 2013
Interesting ideas. It is amazing how many courses they offer. I am a big supporter of ‘free’ global education. It reminds me of how public education began and people didn’t entirely support it. They needed their children to help out at home not be in school. However, it ultimately was successful and changed the world. I feel like the internet and free online education might have a similarly world changing effect. It’s exciting!
