UK Start-up To Create Elearning Opportunities For SMEs And Consumers

Google Campus, London: mylearningworx, the UK’s first crowd sourced hub for elearning, has announced a new mission. The start-up will open up opportunities for SMEs and consumer markets to both produce and get access to the best elearning.

Berkshire (I-Newswire) December 21, 2012 - The announcement was made at its first ever ‘mylearningworxshop’ at Google Campus, arranged for free to enable elearning producers and users to get together to discuss their learning challenges and opportunities. The start-up enables all organisations and individuals to access and share learning regardless of size or budget. The launch comes at a time of growth in online education and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) with UK universities recently announcing new online courses to challenge their US counterparts.

mylearningworx is at the forefront of a mission to ‘democratise UK learning’ and develop educational technology. It offers courses created by the crowd, for the crowd – that is any Internet user. “For too long we’ve relied on expensive face-to-face training and the move towards learning online is already well underway” explains managing director, Martin Belton. “But much of what exists to support online learning has its roots in the corporate world. Enterprise learning management systems are designed specifically to handle the scale of data and information within large organisations. Which is great - if you're a large organisation. Often the experience is not so great for all those learners within the organisation. Even less great for the tens of thousands of small and medium sized businesses out there with little hope of accessing this type of solution. And what about the Average Joe who might quite like to learn a new skill in his spare time or retrain for a new career, but simply doesn't have access to it?”

Belton recognises that there is already a wealth of learning available online, much of it created by the crowd and much of it free. He comments, “It’s true, but the reality is most social media sites are designed for just that – social interaction – chatting, sharing views – all those great things we love to do. But not learning. Actually finding what you need to learn online, can be difficult. And more difficult to establish the authority and provenance of your information.”

And that’s where mylearningworx comes in: “We're taking the wisdom of the crowd, validating it, and sharing it with everyone in one easy to use place,” he concludes.

The ‘worxshop’ welcomed attendees from a range of backgrounds including higher education, blue chip corporates, small businesses and individuals. They revealed that a diverse range of learning content will be created for the site. Courses will cover everything from playing the guitar and oil painting, to leadership development and copywriting. This is in addition to the existing content already available on mylearningworx, including health and safety courses, accountancy modules, management training and IT skills.

Users will have access to all of this learning at entry level pricing. They can also create content themselves and charge what they feel is a fair price for it. This means they can reach others and share their skills and expertise, and generate an income as a result.

mylearningworx has a mix of paid-for and free online courses available. Access to the site is free to all.

About mylearningworx

mylearningworx is the UK’s first ‘crowd-sourced content’ learning centre. As a UK company, it focuses on offering courses that are relevant to a UK audience. That includes learning to help people at work or just to get more out of life. The mylearningworx team believes anyone can write and deliver powerful online learning to the world. And through mylearningworx people can reach out and share knowledge and skills with thousands of others for both home and business use, for everybody’s benefit. The site is welcoming new users at www.mylearningworx.com.