Technology in education has followed two main trajectories in recent years. One revolves around digitalising the classroom (projection, laptops, touch screens, and VR in some cases), the other around bringing content and user-experiences online (apps to help teachers, parents and student connect and track, numerous subscription-based websites offering content).
While these are all important in moving education up the technology ladder, the Holy Grail perhaps is, one day, technology will help us reproduce the classroom and teacher to pupil experience seamlessly.
When news of COVID-19 started to blanket the media in January 2020, we at The Brainery Code immediately implemented precautionary measures such as travel declarations, LOA (Leave-Of-Absence), and classroom safe distancing. In addition, we were also concern about business continuity.
The Brainery Code started in 2015 and currently has two centre locations in Singapore with almost 300 active students. We believe that the one thing that sets us apart is our readiness for future challenges.
Our company has always planned ahead, as we first broached the possibility of conducting online lessons two years ago. We would do a rudimentary exploration of platform options and brainstorm on how we would deliver without compromising lesson quality.
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Thus, when the situation presented itself, we were able to rapidly roll out home base learning (HBL) in early February.
Fail to plan? Plan to fail
In early February, we started offering HBL, even though we were still allowed to run onsite lessons then. We were anticipating the needs of a small group of students who may be placed on LOA, or parents who might want to keep their kids at home if the situation did not get better.
Many enrichment centres did not take this step at the early stage of the outbreak, which highlighted the fact that many in the industry have yet to take the steps to go digital.
This reluctance is perhaps buttress by the parent’s demand for onsite facetime as a non-negotiable in deciding the efficacy of an enrichment lesson.
While our initial sign-up for HBL was modest (about 10 students –a mere four per cent of our students), it did allow us to fine-tune and improve after each lesson, which was invaluable. Delivering coding lessons such as our Python Coder programme online was relatively straightforward, but when we figured out how to move our Robo Coder robotics programme online utilising the Remote Access Control feature on our conferencing platform, we realised that we have accomplished something significant. Students could now programme their robots remotely.
When the government announced on March 25 that all onsite enrichment lessons will be suspended, we kicked our HBL sign up into full gear. By April 4, we had about 100 of our students on HBL. As of May 19, this number was 150 or about 55 per cent of our students and still growing.
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While our teachers were still able to teach HBL lessons from our centre, we started preparing them to conduct lessons from home instead.
When the government eventually announced that all (except essential services) would have to work from home effective April 7, we were ready. In fact, parents did not notice any difference when our instructors transitioned to “teach from home”.
As we’ve also moved our business processes such as invoicing into the cloud, we were not tied down to the traditional location bound Point-of-Sales (POS) system, and as such, adopting these technologies has enabled us to continue operating virtually out of our homes.
At The Brainery Code, we aim to constantly innovate to enhance our students’ learning experience. The enrichment industry needs to embrace new technologies and perhaps go out on a limb to change perception and expectation.
This is important, not just for situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but as a way of sustaining students’ interest for technology and the benefits it can bring to their learning. It is my belief that many in the industry will emerge out of COVID-19 better prepared and more resilient.
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