News - ALISON Celebrates its First Birthday!

25/04/2008

ALISON Celebrates its First Birthday!

ALISON is one year old and celebrates a hugely successful first year!

ALISON, the world’s leading free online education site for interactive learning celebrated its first birthday this April. Since its launch in 2007 ALISON has registered learners in 233 countries and territories worldwide, and has very quickly become a highly-valued resource for basic and essential life and workplace skills training. Schools, colleges, non-profits, information societies, local and federal government, private enterprises and individual learners across the globe have embraced the ALISON platform.

Reflecting upon the anniversary, ALISON CEO Mike Feerick commented “We began this journey into the world of free online learning after many years of research, and it has been one of the most exciting decisions we have ever made, both personally and professionally. We have been particularly delighted to engage directly with learners all over the world, and we have been inspired by their enthusiasm and passion for knowledge and learning. They, and the teachers and trainers concerned with basic skills learning, are the dynamic power behind us; they are the ones driving our success to date.” So far the ‘Alisonians’ (individuals learning on ALISON), are demonstrating through their repeat visits the popularity of the site. ALISON recently welcomed its one millionth unique visitor, a terrific achievement in such a short time.

The response of the education community around the world has been an additional pleasant surprise according to ALISON Chief Academic Officer Martin Galvin, and has been a core ingredient in ALISON’s startling rise to prominence in online education: “We did not expect the degree of support we have received from teachers, training professionals and NGOs active in the education sector. They have enthusiastically embraced ALISON, and have worked with us to bring our courses to their students, families, learning centres, and client organizations." Galvin points to the large number of organizations now working with ALISON to make available free learning online in different languages across the world. Such projects now cover among others the Russian, Arabic and Spanish languages, and also include several regional translations across the India sub-continent.

One market for the exciting future ahead for ALISON is the degree to which publishers and e-learning developers have responded to the call to provide free education to individuals worldwide. According to Sean Griffin who manages new content acquisition at ALISON, the free service will soon be massively increasing the number of hours of high-quality content it can make available for free access to members of the public. “We are delighted to have so many new publishing partners so firmly behind us and their support will help us create the revolution in global learning the ALISON team set out to achieve over a year ago.

In a short space of time but not to our surprise, ALISON has become a global leader in online education says Feerick: "ALISON is no longer taking baby steps, we have made our mark and are now primed and ready for substantial growth throughout year two.” Feerick continued: “For the progress made to date, we are hugely grateful to the ALISON team for their commitment and hard work. To our partners and publishers, we thank them for their contribution to the ALISON mission over the past year. Finally, to ALISON learners and the teachers and trainers supporting learners worldwide, we thank them for learning on ALISON, we hope they enjoyed their learning, and we invite them to explore and acquire new skills and knowledge via ALISON in the coming year.”

For anyone wishing to acknowledge ALISON’s birthday, we ask you to take a few moments to consider who should know about ALISON and e-mail them today. Whether it is an individual learner, a school, an NGO, or a potential publisher on ALISON, no birthday gift could be more warmly received than a positive referral to a potential new member of the ALISON free learning community. Thank you!

The mission of ALISON is to enable anyone, anywhere, to educate themselves for free via interactive self-paced multimedia. It is our belief that through ALISON, the cost of access to high-quality education can be removed.

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