A complete updating of the current education system with particular focus on schools and ministries adopting digital means, Education Revolution 4.0 has been fast-tracked with the current COVID-19 pandemic. With more than 1.5 billion learners displaced worldwide due to global school closures, reliable, engaging, and easy to use learning tools have seen a rapid rise to enable students to learn from a distance. One thing that also gets overlooked is the training and professional development of teachers and making these tools easy to use so that they can continue to deliver quality instruction remotely. “We now live in a world where devices, good connectivity, and digital education tools are no longer a luxury but a necessity to avoid learning loss for learners across the globe, hence the COVID-19 pandemic has truly accelerated the digital transformation of the education industry as a whole”, opines Geoffrey Alphonso, CEO, Alef Education.
Intending to cover the full K12 Spectrum for the native and non-native language learners, the flagship award-winning Alef Platform is an AI-powered adaptive engine that brings together engaging digital lessons powered by a learning platform that truly puts the fun back into learning. The Alef Platform covers six core curriculum subjects aligned to the UAE Ministry of Education Curriculum and also has a variant of USA common core resources from grades 5 – 12.
The Go-to Digital Learning Platform
Offering four key products, Alef Education also offers three complementary products that cater to native and non-native language learners, namely, Abjadiyat (an animated K-4 young learner’s application for the Arabic language), Curio (a skill-based math foundation program), and Arabits (covering four major skills to acquire language proficiency), which is yet to be released, to drive a new non-native Arabic language offering for schools and learners across the globe.
Providing standard and tailored Service Delivery Offerings that include IT support and setup, training and professional development, as well as project management in terms of service, the Data Science and Research team at Alef Education, also offers custom AI and analytics services that will help drive and make sense of the powerful real-time data analytics the Alef Platform captures across the user ecosystem.
Targeting individual schools, districts, and Ministries of Education across Public and Private sectors largely in the Gulf Region, Alef Education aspires to become a global player with their continued successes. Offering off-the-shelf products with light customization as well as custom be-spoke offerings to align to various pedagogical approaches and curriculum if and as needed, the revenue model at Alef Education is based on a license per user structure where other ancillary services such as IT setup, training, project management, and customer BI and analytics services are priced to match the unique requirements of each customer.
With creativity, innovation, and passion of the 400+ employees who have come together to build a holistic platform being the driving force, Alef Education is on the right track to revolutionize the digital education sector. A single platform that caters to all actors in the education ecosystem that drives learning and skill mastery across all core curriculum subjects and that uses real-time data to drive overall learning efficacy, Alef Education is passionate about creating an experience for the education community that is often overlooked by the plethora of other digital tools that are readily available in the market.
Their biggest assets, the talented and diverse team of technologists and educationalists at Alef Education come from leading ed-tech and publishing organizations, who have studied in some of the best Ivy League schools in the world. “We are also grateful for our world-class Advisory Board and supporting professors and academics that constantly work with us to innovate and challenge our future product offerings and that are the driving force behind some of the research and efficacy work that is a focus for us in 2020 & 2021”, adds Geoffrey.
Providing Everything a School Needs
Passionate about creating a connected learning ecosystem for students, teachers, school leadership, and parents, Alef Education offers products that help motivate and drive student learning by providing a personalized learning pathway with engaging digital content. Every lesson captures formative and summative assessments to measure student progress and mastery providing real-time insights to teachers and parents to ensure that they understand their child’s strengths and weaknesses. “Also, Teachers are equipped with pre-loaded and professionally produced digital content to cover their curriculum, this saves time on lesson planning, and the auto-grading feature also eliminates time teachers spend on manually grading assignments allowing them to focus more on student intervention and facilitating the learning process”, adds Geoffrey.
Alef Education provides the School Administration with a 360 view of their school in a way that standalone systems cannot provide. The information they receive can be used to inquire, observe, and better manage their school and drive school-wide improvements. Along with this, through constant research and focus groups thinking of what is important to parents, Alef Education recently released their Guardian Application that brings a holistic view across all subjects, giving parents real-time, and relevant feedback to support their child through their education journey.
Well-poised for the disruption faced by the education sector and the world because of the pandemic, Alef Education was delivered its initial vision of providing a robust solution for students to learn anywhere and anytime. With the schools relying on their program day in and day out, Alef Education did not experience a lot of disruption as the only thing that changed was the fact that they were now logging in remotely from their homes.
Given the importance of the medical field due to the current pandemic, Alef Education partnered with a local University (HCT & Capital Health Hospitals) to produce a digitally enhanced program for high school students to peak their interest into the field of nursing, health care and medicine with selected students getting an opportunity to shadow a nurse during the summer months. “The program is currently delivering health care fundamentals to over 3,000 students from over 50 nationalities across the public and private sector in the UAE”, adds Geoffrey.
Re-equipping Education for Tomorrow
Believing that the future of education lies in embedding real-world context and experiences into the national or industry-specific curricula where students can be provided with an opportunity to learn about real-world problems, Alef Education provides an experience with real-world skills that can help drive them into the right career choices.
With over 75,000 students in more than 200 public and private schools in the UAE using the Award-winning Alef Platform, Alef Education has partnered with Ministry of Education and ADEK to transform the education sector in the UAE and drive a total disruption in big data and AI that has seen an overall increase in student learning and mastery, student engagement and school leadership feedback and adoption for the program.
Proudly partnering with NexGen and Harlem’s Children’s Zone in the USA to jointly launch the Alef Platform to raise the already high Math Standards in the Harlem Children’s Zone, Alef Education’s digital learning platforms are currently featured in UNESCO’s list of educational resources, and are available for anyone globally who can benefit from them. “We are looking to expand our offering over the next two years with a strong focus across the GCC and the USA”, adds Geoffrey.
With their growth objectives to rapidly scale their offerings to Ministries and Schools across the MENA region, with the GCC countries being a primary focus, Alef Education is all set to see exponential growth in the USA with their partnerships and the initial success they have seen over the past two years. Having garnered a lot of interest from the African markets, Alef Education is rapidly prototyping and assessing the right tools that would fit these regions to offer high-quality digital tools at a price point that would make it affordable and sustainable. “In a post-COVID-19 world we feel that the rapid rise of digital will also open up new markets and territories and although we are saddened by the pandemic and the catastrophic impact it has had globally, we are excited by the importance countries, ministries and school districts will place on adopting a digital-first strategy”, concludes Geoffrey.