VIDEO: MOOCs and Redefining Education for the Next Generation

Free education resources (Wikipedia)

ALISON - How to Educate the World for Free - Plenary Speech by ALISON CEO & Founder, Mike Feerick, YEO, DC Sept 12th 2013, ALISON.com: http://alison.com/news/ALISON--How-to-Educate-the-World-for-Free--Plenary-Speech-by-ALISON-CEO--Founder-Mike-Feeric

Education and learning desperately need to be set free. We must ensure they are upheld as a right for all, not as a privilege for a lucky few as it has been for millennia. 

For the 2 billion already online, and the 5 billion yet to be connected, new education and communication technologies now make this possible.

At a recent conference on Youth Employment Opportunities held in Washington DC, USA, our Founder and CEO Mike Feerick was invited to talk about the exciting possibilities before us. 

In his short address, he talks about many of the familiar topics with powerful candour.  He offers solutions for tackling the scourge of youth unemployment, empowering women via E-learning and accelerating the rate of change to redress inequality.

The MOOC revolution is as yet failing to empower those who need free education the most. Change must be realized only through real innovation: the readiness to do familiar things in a radically new way.

We need to acknowledge new ways of accrediting skills, removing teachers from fact-based learning where at all possible with a self-paced, flexible delivery focus on learner outcomes.

We need to be aware of the status quo in education that will try to keep things as they are and we must take the opportunity to add ever more sophisticated learner and career enhancing services online for free.

Finally, Feerick suggests the Freemium business model of ALISON should be looked at as a way of propelling free learning and related services worldwide. The ALISON free learning and certification model is simple but powerful Feerick says, and the genius of simplicity should not be overlooked.

Above all, Feerick outlines how free education can become universal, dynamic and empowering, if we allow new educational opportunities and methodologies to flourish.

About ALISON
 
Founded in 2007 in Ireland, ALISON is a for-profit social enterprise led by Mike Feerick, a serial social entrepreneur, ASHOKA Fellow, and Harvard MBA who has previously created successful internet-based companies in telecoms and finance as well as online education. 

The ALISON model has become highly scalable and self-funding - and its unique model has earned the company many accolades and awards including a UNESCO Award for Innovation in ICT for Education and recognition from national governments, NGO's and international media, among these The Economist, BBC, and NY Times. 

The company was recently ranked as one of Europe's top 20 e-learning companies in the EdTech rankings. ALISON stands for "Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online".