The Scenario
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted schools, colleges and learning institutions across the world, ushering in the age of online education and learning. Kerala was one of the first Indian states to enter into a lockdown as early as end March 2020, disrupting examinations and putting students of all ages and demographic groups into an online learning mode.
Kerala is being held up as the unique example of a nation’s state that rose quickly to create a proactive approach by adopting an early lockdown for its 36 million population. Kerala is known for its high literacy rates and focus on quality education. It was into this scenario that Familheey became part of the solution platform for two schools in Kerala’s capital Thiruvanathapuram district.
The Solution
Kerala’s institutions of learning rallied around the State Television Victer’s Channel going digital on YouTube. Teachers converted their classes into online sessions that were viewed by thousands of students across the state. Familheey became an early decision for two schools in Thiruvananthapuram, trying them as a networking platform where teachers and students could interact, share documents and chat on a one-to-one basis.
In May 2020, Familheey was adopted as the networking platform for Grade 11 students in School A and Grade 4 students in School B. These schools had earlier tried the dominant messaging app owned by Facebook and found it unable to help with learning community interaction.
In a typical classroom scenario, a teacher would create a family and post the YouTube links of relevant subject classes on Victers Channel. The students would then use the family to respond to the video. The teacher would share home work based on the videos, using the documents feature and encourage the students to clear their doubts by using the chat feature on a one-to-one basis.
The Familheey development team has been working with schools to understand how Familheey’s unique structured communication approach can be sharpened to meet the schools networking needs. The adoption of Familheey and its increasing use in the academic community is an early indicator of success in this area.
The Benefits
This Familheey case study showcases our early findings between May and August 2020. Here are 5 key benefits that are indicators of Familheey’s early success as a networking platform in the education sector:
- Familheey has worked as a networking platform for two diverse groups of school students (grade 11 and grade 4) enabling them and their families to keep track of their academic progress
- Familheey’s unique structured communication approach which sets out levels of hierarchy and decision making is ideally suited for academe and the learning sector.
- Familheey’s early learnings built on feedback from the schools management and teachers is being rapidly implemented into the development of the system.
- Familheey app’s effectiveness has been shown with the key challenge of working in low internet penetration areas.
- Familheey’s networking platform has shown remarkable networking results for the academic, medical and ethnic communities groups over the first 4 months of the global lockdown.