Tuition classes may not be necessary for students who are capable of catching up with their homework and studies; however, due to peer pressure and the kiasuness of parents, attending tuition classes have become a norm in the society.
In fact, in this day’s competitive society, academic classes are not enough. In order to get ahead of the pack, students now sign up for music lessons, dancing classes, drama auditions, sports practice, and so on. But how are we supposed to know which instructors are reputable?
Usually we’d have to depend on referrals via word of mouth and that isn’t a very dependable method because options would be very limited and it’s time consuming to ask one person after another for a recommendation — that is a problem that Aone Learning wants to overcome.
Evolving Based On Needs Of The Public
To revolutionise the way students and tutors are connecting together, Darren Gouk, a PhD graduate from Chemistry in University of Malaya launched My Aone Learning.
Together with his fellow co-founders Liew Tech Zhee and Soh Ee Venn who have known each other for around 16 years, the concept was sparked when he started a conventional home tutor agency who linked students and tutors at various educational levels. “We received a lot of inquiries not limited to education, but including swimming lesson and private piano lesson,” he said.
Subsequently, the team decided to create My Aone Music and My Aone Swimming, specifically for swimming lessons. However, later they decided to combine everything into one single platform called My Aone Learning.
The Airbnb For Learning
Malaysian startup My Aone Learning is a platform that connects instructors from various industries to interested learners. ‘Aone’ may sound like a funny name, but it represents something meaningful, and that is “Anyone Can Teach, Everyone Can Learn”.
Once you’re a member of the website, you get to search for classes, and sign up for it. At the same time, instructors can also sign up to offer their services to potential learners.
If the concept sounds familiar, it’s because the website works like Airbnb, except that it’s for lessons instead of property; whereby users able to search through different lessons from instructor, and instructor can also post up their classes on the website.
My Aone Learning play a role as a breakthrough from conventional agencies by becoming an online marketplace for offline lessons in Malaysia. Darren told Vulcan Post, “This platform will benefit both lesson providers and students as they are able to communicate to each other via our messaging features in this platform.”
Anyone Can Teach (Well, Almost)
What caught my attention about My Aone Learning is that they strongly emphasise on their ‘Anyone Can Teach’ motto, and that means ‘anyone’, regardless of whether one has an official teaching qualification for that particular course.
“No matter how little you know about a particular skill, your knowledge might be deemed useful to others. Therefore, we won’t verify or restrict the teaching qualification of general lessons,” said Darren. However, there are some lessons whereby certification is compulsory, such as swimming lessons because the activity involves the security and life of the learner.
Using Facebook As Their Launch Pad
With the beta version of My Aone Learning released just two months ago, to-date My Aone Learning have gathered 1400 of freelance instructors and 214 lessons. Darren also further mentioned that they are endeavoring to build up their user database first by strengthening their social media community, mainly via Facebook. “Even before the beta launching of our platform, we already have a Facebook community for instructors and learning centres to promote their lessons to our learners’ community,” said Darren.
At the moment My Aone Learning is accessible in Peninsular Malaysia. Some of their notable classes includes Dragon Muay Thai in Bukit Bintang Kuala Lumpur and Kyokushin Karate in Johor Bahru. Darren mentioned to TechInAsia that they hope to venture out to other Southeast Asian countries soon.
For Instructors And Learners
Instructors who are interested to partner with My Aone Learning can sign up on the website and the team at Aone will verify the instructors’ contact information to make sure that they are contactable. Other than that, they will collect the instructor’s personal information such as IC numbers and home address for verification and protection purposes, and they take 20% of commission from each enrollment.