Social learning startup Grockit raised its fourth round of funding, a $7 million series D, with current investor Atlas Ventures leading the round. Existing investors Benchmark and Integral Capital also participated, with new investors the NewSchools Venture Fund (an education fund backed by John Doerr and Reid Hoffman) and GSV Capital CEO Michael Moe. The round is much less than the $33 million education startup Knewton just raised, and in fact is the same amount as Grockit’s series C funding in May, 2010 was also $7 million

Grockit is building out a set of online social learning services. It began with test prep for the SAT, GMAT, and LSAT, then moved onto high school AP classes. It’s latest service is Grockit Answers, a site that creates a Q&A page for any videos on YouTube. Here is one on the credit crisis. The videos get chaptered based on the point at which each question is raised or answered, and the community can supply their own answers. “Anyone ca ask a question or answer,” exlpains Nivi, “and pin it to that point in the video.” Grockit itself has collected 3,700 educational videos on its YouTube channel, which founder Farb Nivi claims is more than Khan Academy.

Grockit is all about students, teachers, and tutors aswering each other’s questions online. About a week ago, Grockit passed its 10 millionth answered question, and the number of chat messages going across the site is approaching 100 million. Out of its 1 million total registered users, about 25,000 to 50,000 are active in any given month, which suggests that most students use it to prepare for a test and then move on.

Crunchbase

• GROCKIT

Company: Grockit

Website: grockit.com

Launch Date: December 2006

Funding: $24.7M

Grockit is an online social learning company. It currently offers Test Prep services for GMAT, IIM CAT, LSAT, GRE, ACT, SAT and AP Calculus and AP History tests. Grockit has conducted significant research proving that people learn better through peer-to-peer instructional design instead of teacher-to-student lectures, and Grockit has built a platform for license and direct-to-consumer products that harness this research. Florida Virtual Schools, KIPP Schools, Georgetown University and other schools have deployed Grockit services. Grockit...

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