Every year, the WISE Awards recognise organisations from around the globe that represent some of the best and most creative work being done in education. These include non-governmental organizations, charity groups, cultural institutions, and the private sector.

ALISON, which stands for “Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online”, has pioneered a unique education and training model that allows all learning, assessment, testing, and verification services to be accessed by anyone, anywhere for free. About 150,000 new users are signing up with ALISON every month, illustrating the high demand from learners across the globe for workplace-skills courses. The popularity of the learning model amongst ALISON’s two million registered learners is evident from the thousands of testimonials the company receives on a monthly basis. ALISON provides over 35,000 topics of learning for free study and over 500 courses ranging from touch tying to English grammar to Diplomas in Business and Finance.

Welcoming the announcement, ALISON CEO Mike Feerick said, “Winning this prestigious award is a terrific achievement for all involved with ALISON. There is a lot of hype about free learning worldwide, but clearly the sustained strength, growth, and popularity of ALISON is what is earning us the recognition as one of the true leaders for the future of global education. We are very grateful to our millions of learners worldwide who have made this possible.”

ALISON accreditation uses a non-traditional model of “flash-test”, where anyone who holds an ALISON certificate can be tested on what they learned at any time.  Learning achievement is validated using a certificate, diploma and test structure with courses published under restricted licence as well as under Creative Commons. Courses are provided by global brand-name corporations such as Microsoft and the British Council, as well as recognised subject-matter experts on a wide variety of subjects, from technical to business to English-language courses.