FunnelBrain Introduces Online Collaboration to Academic Q&A

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/21/09

FunnelBrain.com, an academic question and answer site that provides an environment for collaborative online learning, has gone into private beta testing. On the site students work in teams to create review questions and answers, paired with video explanations, for academic subjects. Users have access to wiki-style content creation tools, as well as a learning management application known as the "Funnel" that tracks and monitors learning progress and focuses the student's attention on a particular question at a particular time with a spaced repetition algorithm.

"Our focus is on fostering online collaboration among students," said Joe DeTuno, CEO of FunnelBrain. "Students already connect and communicate on Facebook. They already create and publish content on YouTube and Wikipedia. We are taking activities that students are already engaged in and applying them to collaborative learning."

The beta version of the site features review questions for high school advanced placement classes including biology, chemistry, calculus, United States government, world history, psychology, literature, and econ.