Businesses and workers all across North America are participating in a rigorous debate over the benefits and detriments of remote work and work from home. Heck, we’ve even launched a Q&A series that includes the perspectives of small businesses, global businesses and experienced recruiters in order to help the international business community make more informed decisions for themselves.
However, the workplace isn’t the only place facing pressure due to less in-person contact and more remote requirements. Education – K-12 and post-secondary alike – are facing their biggest disruption in decades.
Numerous Waterloo-based companies are striving to make remote education work for teachers and students, creating solutions like learning management systems, online course collections and more.
Here are six Waterloo companies that are enabling a future of remote education:
D2L
One of the most successful tech companies in Waterloo, D2L has been an innovator in the edtech space for more than two decades. In many places, their technology – including the Brightspace Learning Management System – are synonymous with remote learning. For K-12, higher education or corporate learning, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better learning platform or a more experienced company.
DigitalEd
A spinoff from Maplesoft, a long-time Waterloo-based edtech innovator, DigitalEd was created to manage the company’s suite of online education products, including online courseware, testing and assessment, as well as placement testing. The Möbius platform provides full courses and lesson material that instructors can deploy immediately or customize for their own needs, with a specific focus on math and physics topics.
Chalk
As the world shifts to online education, issues like curriculum coordination and academic standards becomes even more important. Chalk offers a platform for schools, districts and teachers alike to assess curriculum effectiveness in real-time, ensure alignment on curriculum and lessons across schools and districts, as well as standardizing lesson planning best practices.
Knowledgehook
One of the biggest challenges with the sudden shift to at-home learning is the challenge of closing the learning gap that appears when personalized classroom teaching is no longer possible. Knowledgehook has developed a platform that helps students continue math education from home while assessing the student’s performance against provincial learning objectives. The platform then provides the student with personalized solutions to close the gap and provides teachers and parents with progress reports. The Government of Ontario has rolled this platform out to all 72 of its school districts.
LumenEd
Like schools, educational groups and tutoring companies need to get online, fast. LumenEd has the tools to make that happen. Offering a simple platform for digital learning, this startup can help organizations get online quickly through virtual classrooms with real-time interactions. Their technology also helps simplify the back-end of scheduling, billing and more, making tutoring easier than ever.
YOURIKA
An exciting startup working in the artificial intelligence space, YOURIKA has developed an AI-driven platform that allows online educators, tutors and trainers to deliver on-demand, personalized and adaptive learning experiences. They’ve also developed an intelligent knowledge assistant (named “IKA”) that is available to learners 24/7 to answer questions, tutor or match learners to the optimal live expert.