What if the 232 million people who log into Zynga's Facebook games each month instead spent hours working through online learning resources?
At least where teens are concerned, a new Pearson-backed startup Alleyoop is betting the result would be more college graduates.
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“Fundamentally, we’re focused on big problem of how you help a teen take control of their future," Alleyoop President Patrick Supanc tells Mashable.
He's approaching the problem not by creating new content, as many startups in Pearson's cornucopia of tech investments have, but by structuring existing content like a Facebook game.
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Here's how it works: Students who are searching for homework help find guidance and practice problems on the site. Alleyoop doesn't actually make any of this content, but what it does do is keep track of how its users navigate through the third-party activities and lessons.
It uses this information to pull learning morsels it thinks would be appropriate for each learner -- whether videos, activities or one-on-one tutoring -- from partner websites and assembles them to make a relevant learning path. Some of these are non-profit sites such as PBS. Others are paid sites that use Alleyoop as a distribution platform.
These paid sites are where the Zynga aspect really comes in. Just as they do in Farmville, teens can use a virtual currency to instantly access premium content on Alleyoop. They earn "Yoops" for completing challenges and other tasks, but they have to bring some real bling to the platform in order to access features such as one-on-one tutoring at a rate faster than they can collect Yoops on their own. The sites providing the paid services share revenue with Alleyoop.
For now, the site offers only math help for learners between the ages of 13 and 18. If successful, it will likely expand to other subjects and ages.
It may be hard to tell from its marketing materials, but Alleyoop is not a purely altruistic mission to "help kids get ready for college and life." It's a business that could net Pearson a lot of money if successfully addictive.
But unlike Zynga, the site is peddling educational material rather than time-sucking games, and that's an important distinction. As it builds profiles of learners, it starts to make recommendations for college readiness and even career choice -- all the while baiting them with the promise of more Yoops.
If we can use game mechanics to get kids hooked on virtual-currency powered farm fields, why not learning?
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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