illi

Mission

illi builds on the efforts of online educational content providers to create an infrastructure that empowers individuals to tailor their own custom solutions for addressing educational problems as they arise. 

illi is an online learning platform that will provide a great way for students and teacher to share educational content, and provide a great environment for students to learn online. 

 

 "A good education system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources... empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known. ... Learners should not be forced to submit to an obligatory curriculum, or to discrimination based on whether they possess a certificate or diploma."  

                                                                      - Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (1971)

What's wrong with schools?

A lot of content driven learning experiences can easily be created online, and yet the majority of students are still reliant on the consistent quality of tuition in schools.  A lot of great teachers are spending 75% of class time, delivering content to students, when they could be helping them with problems or constructing contextualized learning environments. The cost of providing teachers for non core subjects, and AP/Honor Classes can be prohibitive for a lot of schools.

Learning 2.0

Recommendation of Content Customized for the Student: With a feed of open content data, we can run some simple learning style algorithms to construct lesson plans based on how a student learns best.

Self-Paced Learning: Crowdsourced content creation allows students to have access to dozens if not hundreds of courses (many on the same topic) that allow them to learn at their own pace, and in a way specific to their own needs.

Group Learning: We can contextualize learning, by creating online study groups. We can affect competitiveness on the platform for students, by matching them to peers for problem solving exercises onthe platform...using a system a bit like Mario Kart Online.

   

An illi solution.

illi represents a fundamental shift in how we create, distribute, and interact with educational resources on the web. 

We bet that applying learning 2.0 delivery systems to AP content will create an attractive product that students will want to use.

We think there are students interested in benefits of AP (greater freedom of curriculum in college, reduced tuition expense, competitive cachet) that don't use the program for x reasons. more students would take AP tests if they could learn the content online at their own pace

Data analytics and learning algorithms allow illi to help the open education community address the ever-evolving, and often nuanced, needs of the modern learner. This info has value to teacehrs and parents.

Key FeaturesContent by All: By utilizing freely donated, user generated, communally curated content (a la Wikipedia), illi provides access to an an ever-expanding supply of quality educational resources that match the varied needs of today's students.  Crowdsourcing content creation, gives students  have access to dozen, if not hundreds of courses (many on the same topic) that allow them to learn at their own pace, and in a way specific to their own needs.

Modular Education: illi introduces modular courseware -- that is, course material that is produced and consumed as modules (lectures, problem sets, exams, discussion), and which can be mixed and matched by the user to create personalized learning experiences. 

Notebooks: Creators of personalized curricula can save their creations as "Notebooks." . These can be used as reference material, or swapped with friends. Users can publish their Notebooks, so that the  illi community can benefit from uniquely remixed course materials.  

User Rated Content: Users can rate complete courses, as well as specific modules within those courses. This user driven approach to content curation ensures that the best, most widely used resources  are made the most available to students. 

 

 

Advanced Placement? What's that?

The Advanced Placement (AP) program is a curriculum in the United States which offers standardized courses to high school students that are generally recognized to be equivalent to undergraduate courses in college. 

Participating colleges grant credit to students who obtained high enough scores on the exams to qualify.

Market 

• 1,845,006 AP Students in 2009-2010 (Source: College Board), grown by 50% in the past 5 years.

• Potential Pivots:

– Test Prep (GRE, MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, etc): 1 million test takers/year 

– General Content: MIT Open Courseware has 58 million users. Total market size unknown

Why Now?• Record cuts in education have forced cash-strapped schools

across the nation to make deep cuts to their AP programs. • To lift the framework from  "Galapicon Valley", a period of rapid innovation

 has given rise to a rapid increase in open education content models and learning 2.0 platforms. The two haven't been married yet. We are the new species rising up that is more optimized to the new conditions.

Competitive Landscape- Overview

 

Competitive Landscape- content hubsThis is a highly fragmented space with many competitors, so we spent a lot of time researching the competition.

Close Competitors

 

• Open Content• contextualized

learning• Get into college • Save time and

money 

• Colleges• College Board• Teachers• Content

Providers• Web Marketers

 

• encourage content production

• build website• attract users• customer

development

• Schools• Teachers• Students• Parents •  

Biggest expenses• engineering• sales force

• web development• data analytics• ad budget• delivery

innovation

• Students- online marketing

• Teachers- online marketing, direct sales, offline marketing 

• Parents-• online, offline

marketing.

• Schools  recommend us

• Students learn from our content

• Parents like our results

• Charge per class- mkt rate is $500/class• Premium subscription services- access to

study groups, learning algorithms

TeamShane Mason, CEO: A current undergraduate at the  Haas School of Business, Shane has a background in education, non-profit management, and real estate development. A semi-finalist in the Berkeley Business Plan competition and top student in Jennifer Walske's entrepreneurship, he's had about as much academic training as he can get and wants to get out in the world and start building stuff. 

Vincent Lyons, Head of Business Development: Is an Irish entrepreneur, taking time out of his Electrical Engineering degree in Trinity College Dublin to move to California where he'll build a great education company. His background is in startups, business development, strategy, sales, hacking and venture finance. Vincent has previously held a number of sales roles, founded a small and unsuccessful web and software development company, and helped put Dogpatch Labs Dublin together. He's worked on a variety of education projects, including learning in Second Life at CRITE TCD, and the development of a new model curriculum for k-12 education at Bridge2College TCD. 

Michael Vattuone, Information Architect/Head of User Experience: A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Cognitive Science, Michael has a background in user-centered design, cutsomer experience strategy, user research, and usability testing. 

Michael Pimentel, Product Visionary: A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Economics, Michael has an extensive background in economic research, public policy and campaign politics. 

Appendix: Product Wireframes