According to a study conducted by the 2020 World Economic Forum, for those with access to the right technology, students retain 25-60% more material through online learning compared to the traditional classroom model. Studies also show a 40-60% decrease in the amount of time needed for students to learn material presented in e-learning environments. With learning gaps still widening as schools swing between online and in-person attendance, personalized support is needed to create and sustain equitable learning for all. Four Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers and AWS EdStart Members are addressing on-demand learning and helping students advance in the classroom.
Interactive communication platform helps guide personalized learning for Gen Z
CLASSUM, based in Korea, is an interactive communication and education technology (EdTech) platform for higher education that aims to make communication simpler and smarter using chat tools and social media features. CLASSUM helps students receive instant feedback, host live sessions, and enjoy active discussion, anywhere, anytime on any device. It also provides educators and guardians with in-depth course reports on overall and individual engagement rates, providing customized insights resulting in personalized learning for students. CLASSUM is now used by over 4,000 institutions in 23 countries worldwide.
To power their solution, CLASSUM migrated to AWS to reduce the latency of content delivery. They now use content delivery network (CDN) Amazon CloudFront to deliver data, videos, and applications globally. CLASSUM also uses AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning servers, and Amazon Aurora, a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.
The CLASSUM team joined the AWS EdStart program to help accelerate their growth. “AWS is an indispensable choice for small startups that need to grow fast. It is important for EdTech startups to be a step ahead of others in this fast-growing market segment. Cost optimization is, of course, important, but with limited staffing, leveraging the AWS EdStart community to hire infrastructure has been invaluable. It’s more important for us to create better services than to gain market share,” said Youjin Choi, co-founder and chief operating officer (COO) of CLASSUM. Learn more about CLASSUM.
Virtual test prep helps students pass entrance exams in Brazil
Estuda, a Brazilian EdTech platform, helps teachers and educational institutions improve their learning process by providing virtual test preparation, specifically for the English National High School Exam (ENEM), a key exam for students in Brazil. With Estuda, students are able to test their knowledge by solving adaptive test questions to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Estuda also helps teachers save time, by automating test drills and exercises, utilizing a database of over 100,000 questions. The platform also helps with automatic test correction and performance reports. Estuda currently serves 5 million high school and elementary students across 600 schools.
To make information readily available to their students, Estuda uses AWS Elastic Beanstalk for deploying and scaling web applications; Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to set up, operate, and scale their relational databases; and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to send, store and receive messages at scale.
“The biggest return from working with the AWS EdStart team was being able to learn about the best practices in the EdTech market and align our infrastructure. We joined AWS EdStart as we were preparing for the next rounds of investment along with kicking off major partnerships. Due to the help of the team and resources available, we were 100% prepared. AWS EdStart has been pivotal to our growth, and critical as we have undergone audits and compliance reviews as we’ve grown,” said Carlos Netto, chief executive officer (CEO) of Estuda.
Affordable tutoring provides students expert help 24/7
Kunduz, born in Turkey and headquartered in the US, provides students with unlimited step-by-step homework help from experienced tutors in minutes. Students can chat directly with a tutor instantly and receive answers within 15 minutes, 24/7. Tutoring is available for math, physics and engineering, biology, chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and organic chemistry. In addition to their Q&A product, Kunduz also now offers personalized tests, private tutoring, and coaching to over 2 million students in the US, Turkey, and India.
Currently Kunduz uses Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) to provide secure resizable compute capacity, Amazon RDS, and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) to help deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications.
“AWS EdStart was an amazing opportunity for Kunduz to get immediate support whenever needed. As a growing startup, the hardest thing is to make the right decision in a very limited time. When we struggled to find the best practice for a solution, AWS EdStart helped us discover tools that we didn’t know existed,” said Baris Bilgic, chief technology officer of Kunduz. “They helped us to build something basic at the beginning and advised us to move to the next level when we actually need it.”
One-stop content and live tutoring support app helping students in Asia
Snapask, a mobile app out of Hong Kong, allows students to ask questions by taking a picture (or snapshot) in the mobile app and within seconds matches them with a tutor to have an instant learning session one-on-one. In addition to tutoring, the app also provides students with the options to take live classes. In addition to helping students with their coursework, Snapask also provides English language learning courses and live classes. Founded in 2015, Snapask is now serving over 3.5 million students with more than 350,000 tutors in nine countries including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
For on-demand content, Snapask uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for storage service along with Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS for a seamless experience for both tutors and students alike.
“We knew we needed, a smart, scalable solution, and with AWS, we have just that. As a member of the AWS EdStart community, not only do we have access to technical support, but access to a broad set of resources to help us continue to scale our business. We are grateful for this community, and look forward to continuing to growing together,” said Timothy Yu, founder of Snapask.
AWS EdStart resources support EdTechs to help students thrive
AWS EdStart, the virtual startup accelerator for EdTechs, helps entrepreneurs build the next generation of online learning, analytics, and campus management solutions in the AWS Cloud. Learn more about seven trends, including social emotional learning (SEL) in the newly published EdTech Startup Guide.