St. Bede grad makes learning easy, fun
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| Former Spring Valley resident and St. Bede graduate John Levisay (right) is CEO of Sympoz, which offers online learning on a variety of courses to users. Other members of the Sympoz team are Andy Rogers (from left), Josh Scott, Todd Tobin and Bret Hanna. (Photo contributed) |
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DENVER, Colo. — John Levisay has come full circle.
The boy who grew up in Princeton and Spring Valley and wanted to be a teacher is now helping others learn.
Levisay, now 43, was just a boy when his family moved to their new home in Princeton in 1974. The family moved to Spring Valley in 1981, and Levisay attended St. Bede Academy, graduating in 1985.
Levisay went to Colgate University as a history and English major, but before graduation, decided business was a better fit. So he worked for General Electric for a while before earning his MBA at the University of Michigan, and then moving on to Wall Street.
“I quickly decided that that was not for me,” he said. “It just wasn’t a business I wanted to spend my time in.”
A telephone call from a former colleague gave Levisay a new direction.
“He called me and said, ‘Hey, I’m at this little company in California called eBay, and I think it’s going to take off. I’d love to have you come out and help me develop eBay Motors,’” Levisay said.
Levisay said eBay Motors has grown to a $14 billion a year global business.
“It was a transformative thing at the time,” he said. “Even in 1999, I don’t think anyone thought people would buy a car over the Internet. There were still people at that time worried about buying a book over the Internet.”
Levisay left eBay in 2006, traveled around the world for 10 months, worked a couple of different places, got married, and moved to Denver, his wife’s hometown, where he worked with ServiceMagic.
ServiceMagic was a bigger company than Levisay was looking for, so he and a few colleagues raised some money and started a new business they called Sympoz.
“What we’re working on at Sympoz, we feel like is just as transformative as eBay Motors,” he said.
Levisay said the founders of Sympoz believe everyone has a desire to learn — whether for academic reasons, a hobby, or a stage of life — but are kept from learning because of schedules or miles.
“People have this desire for lifelong learning, but they can’t fit it into their schedule to go to live classes,” he said. “The online offerings that are out there now are in many ways essentially PowerPoint presentations with a voice-over.”
So Levisay and his co-workers created Sympoz, which offers the flexibility of online education, but with the experience of a live classroom.
“Part of what makes a live classroom so great is the ability for students to ask the instructor questions, the ability to take part in vibrant discussions, and the ability to talk to other students in their class,” Levisay said.
Sympoz users can view a class at their convenience and ask a question whenever something comes up.
Then the fun begins.
“You ask that question at 4 minutes and 12 seconds into that lecture, and your question is tagged to that exact time in the video,” he said.
The instructors, who remain with Sympoz after the classes are filmed, respond to the question.
“When they answer it, the answer will appear at 4 minutes and 12 seconds under the video right with your question, so that anyone else who watches the video after you will see your question, the instructor’s answer, and they can participate in that conversation, or they may have another question,” he said.
Levisay said users seem to enjoy the discussions, with some online discussions having as many as 97 participants.
Not too bad for a site that wasn’t launched until mid-November.
“Yeah, we’re really happy,” Levisay said. “There’s a lot of people who are really liking it.”
Levisay said the presentations are entertaining and informative.
“We’ve intentionally chosen professors who are funny, engaging and interesting,” he said. “It’s actually a lot of fun.”
Levisay said there are two paths they will continue to pursue with Sympoz.
First, the current catalog, which consists mainly of aspirational learning classes for adults, with continue to be expanded to include about 100 courses on a variety of topics.
“There’s a huge breadth of topics that people are passionate about and that people want to learn about,” Levisay.
The second area is to make Sympoz available to universities for their distance learning.
Levisay said he believes all people want to continue to exercise their minds, but instead fall into the habit of doing something mindless like watching bad TV.
“You’ll say, ‘I can’t believe I just watched that. An hour of my life is gone when I could have been doing something productive,’” he said with a laugh.
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