GetSchooled!

GetSchooled is online platform bringing gamification to virtual learning! With our app, you can browse courses, find lectures, get help & more... With points to be earned for participating in class :)

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Inspiration

Online learning represents a $300+ opportunity by 2026 (per BusinessWire), with millions of students being forced to learn virtually during COVID-19 & now beyond.

Yet, despite its benefits, virtual learning can be a challenge. Here's three:

  • Attendance to online classes is an issue, both to track and enforce... As Heber Marquez, a high school English teachers shared to the NY Times, attendance in his Zoom classes dropped to 45% from what he would have expected in an in-person context.

  • Administering online classes can also add burden to teachers. Indeed, per a survey from McKinsey & Company, 84% of American teachers felt online learning was significantly harder to deliver than in-person, often because of administrative challenges (per Forbes).

  • And the classes themselves can be less engaging... In a survey involving 3K students by Top Hat, 77% felt that online courses were not engaging, with 50% of those students spending less time on their coursework online than when they were in-person.

In short, online education has promise... But also lots of problems! And at GetSchooled, we're inspired to find ways to make the online learning experience more engaging for students, easier for students & more generally fun for all :)

What it does

With GetSchooled, you have a centralized hub for accessing materials related to your online education experience. As a student, you can browse course options in your high school or university, find classes for each course once signed up, get peer or teacher assistance from our "Homework Help" session, complete extra credit challenges & more!

Indeed, our big innovation is the incorporation of gamification to the online education space, with students able to gain points as they engage in their learning (for example, for signing up to a course, attending class or helping peers)... With levels, badges & even prizes for the most engaged students, what GetSchooled provides is a reward & incentive system to participate in online education, creating a more positive student experience for all.

And on the teacher side? It's a game-changer! Our analytics dashboard lets teachers see more detail of who's in their courses, with easier means to track attendance, share class recordings online & provide a forum for students to ask them/ their peers for help. The "Extra Credit" section is also a neat add here, where teachers can give students extra points for answering a survey, doing bonus assignments, giving input on key questions or more.

In short, what's GetSchooled about? Making online education more fun!

How we built it

I did not build it. The team did.

Each of us had particular roles in the project, with the core tech of the platform being developed by amazing project co-founder, Tara. On the tech side, the platform is built using ReactJS on the front-end and a PHP framework called Laravel for the back-end. A MySQL database is used to store users, courses, classes, posts & extra credit challenges. It is deployed on an AWS Lightsail instance, using a LAMP stack. The app is also fully responsive as a progressive web app, which means that it can be installed on a user's smartphone without having to download an app, with most core components now working.

On my end, my role has been more on the project management & ideation side. In particular, reflecting on past experiences in the EdTech field, I helped in conducting market research, dentifying possible features we could include & coordinating with the hackathon organizers to ensure we delivered the best project possible. All in all, with many hundreds (if not thousands) of lines of code written by Tara, we see great potential for this concept!

Challenges we ran into

We wanted to make an impact in the online ed space, but figuring out how was tough!

Just coming up with the idea was difficult, especially to find something that would be unique & stand out from the crowd. While Tara & I have both worked in the EdTech world, we know of the incredible innovations out there & wanted to create something that could be a real game-changer. Finding the right team was also difficult, with some of our other connections we asked finding it difficult to help out in the hackathon with other commitments.

However, thanks to an incredible teammate & working on things till early morning/ at all hours to get things done, we are proud of what we've developed. So proud of this team!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This team. Truly, in Tara & myself, I think we have found a team that complements each other exceptionally, with her bringing to the forefront 12+ years' experience developing apps for top companies like IBM, Samsung, Lockheed Martin & more, and me bringing a decades' worth of experience creating social enterprises & non-profits that have gone on to reach 10K+ people. We may be young, but we're dedicated to making a difference... This was not an easy project, but when you have the right teaam, you can accomplish anything!

We are social entrepreneurs at our goal &w ant to make a difference to the lives of millions of students & teachers. GetSchooled & this team (we believe) truly can do that.

PS And what we coded is also frankly pretty darn cool :)

What we learned

Humility. This journey was touching for me, as I saw someone in Tara willing to invest dozens of hours of her time to make this vision happen. I am eternally grateful to her for sacrificing so much to make this happen. Truthfully, I am not always the easiest person to work with, often demanding, often confusing. But we stuck through it, navigating some uncertainties around the hackathon demands too, and we're excited for what we created!

And another thing... We're proud at a personal level for honing new skills in this hackathon that we had not tried much before. Tara used some tech stacks for the first time, especially in the logic used to create user accounts. I learned a ton about how video-making works & got so much knowledge about the online learning space through my research.

Early in this hackathon, our team established the importance of giving it our all, learning & having fun! And, while the journey is just beginning, we do believe that we did just that :).

What's next for GetSchooled!

We're onto something here... Not kidding!

While we did not expect it when first starting this journey, Tara & I have been discussing the potential for GetSchooled. And we really think it might be worth pursuing beyond just submitting it to a hackathon. While it's hard to say exactly, both of us see a real potential for GetSchooled to make an impact on the lives of thousands (millions?) of students + teachers.

We'd love to see our platform get used. We'd love to see GetSchooled in actual schools. We'd love to maybe make this a real business. And we'd love your help to make it happen!

NOTE: We are particularly interested in competing for the "Best Hack for Teachers" prize, although open to prizes in other categories as well if allowed. Thanks so much!

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