Richard Fielding
It was once again time for an EDUKWEST on tour. I like this format a lot as these interviews have their own dynamics and thus a slightly different feeling or atmosphere for me as the interviewer as well as the interviewee, I’m sure.
I met with Richard Fielding of PrepMyFuture. The startup was also declared the winner of my last TWiSTParis meetup with Jason Calacanis. TWiSTParis focuses more on the business side of things, but it might be interesting to one or the other of you.
PrepMyFuture are a startup on online Math education and have built an online platform in order to prepare for the GMAT standardized test.
The aim is of course to provide the students with an experience at least as good as working offline with a tutor.
Besides obvious advantages like learning from the convenience of your home without paying large amounts of money for a private GMAT tutor, the prepmyfuture platform adapts to the individual students knowledge and learning progress. Since the popularity of Khan Academy adaptive learning is of course on everyone’s lips, but I am convinced that done the right way and not only used to market a product, it can help students a great deal when preparing for tests, especially when they decide to prepare themselves without the assistance of a teacher and thus have to analyze their performance data themselves.
Richard also kindly provided me with a screencast of how the product works, so that you get a good idea of the overall look and feel.
Generally speaking, test prep has been one of the more interesting trends in the non-institutional learning space for me to portray in 2011. This is for various points: the technology is now ready, there is a market for it and people are willing to pay money for these services. Thus I’m almost sure that it’s one of the trends that will not only survive but flourish next year with more companies popping up and exploring the different opportunities in that market as well as different ways to teach it in an asynchronous way on the Internet.
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This Interview is sponsored by Hello-Hello – Language on the Go!
Hello-Hello couples social networking with language learning allowing users to interact with native speakers around the world directly from their mobile devices. Courses in 11 different languages available for the iPad, iPhone and Android deviceshave been developed in collaboration with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).
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Additional Links:
| Homepage: | http://prepmyfuture.com |
| PrepMyFuture on Twitter: | @prepmyfuture |
| PrepMyFuture on Facebook: | http://www.facebook.com/prepmyfuture |
| Richard on LinkedIn: | Richard Fielding |
