Content Sharing Reimagined @ Vedantu

Learning is a lifelong process. For most of us who believe in formal schooling and supplementary education, learning can never be completed without assessment. For enabling great learning, periodic assessment  is equally important. If we can pinpoint to the strong and weak areas of a student, customizing a study plan to suit his/her needs becomes much easier. We at Vedantu, strongly believe in solving everyday problems for learners and teachers and thus, we created our own Learning Management System (LMS) recently.

It has been 2 months since we launched our LMS (Learning Management System) and it has been an amazing ride to see the product being used in unique ways by our teachers and students.

Why we built the LMS? In our user research, there were few Key problem areas that we identified with Content Sharing and Tests/Assignments:

• Content Creation – Teachers did not have any easy tool to create  personalized content (tests, assignments, notes) and share with the student on Vedantu
• Content Sharing – Teachers could not share tailored content as per the requirements of the student and the topics taught, which resulted in students  not receiving enough tests, assignments to practice on time.
• Content Consumption Interface – Test/Assignment sharing, attempt and evaluation interfaces were not intuitive and had very few options that led to offline sharing and submissions with no tracking.
• No Tracking and Reports – Students and teachers did not have the progress tracking and reports at one place.

Tests and assessments play an important role in the entire learning cycle for a school student. Assessments inspire teachers to ask these important questions:

•  Are we teaching what we think we are teaching?
• Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?
• Is there a better way to teach the subject, thereby encouraging better learning?

Hence, we came up with the following solutions to address the problems and concerns:

• Completely new LMS for teachers – Teachers can now create their own personalized tests/assignments/notes to suit the learning needs of their students. Teachers can unleash their creativity and create interesting tests and assignments for students.
• All Types of Tests/Notes – Students shall now get objective, subjective and mixed tests along with Assignments and study material from their teachers for practice
• Easy interface for the attempt – Students can now easily attempt tests/assignments from desktop or mobile. Students can type answers, take a photo of the written answers, add attachments, record audio or video answers. This helps students in reinforcing the concepts they have learned and also help them in gauging their learning.

• Track Progress – Students can now attempt and track all their tests/assignments/notes from a single page. Now they can view the report of each test and assignment attempted, anytime!

Now that we have our awesome teachers using our LMS for more than 2 months, we have some great practical stories to share…

 “LMS was something I always wanted as I was not really happy with the kind of ready-made tests we had before. I wanted to create my own tests. Initially, it took a little time to understand the process but now I am very comfortable. 

Tests and assignments are integral part of teaching – learning process. With subjective test, I am able to check the student’s’ ability to comprehend whereas objective tests are the best way to test learning outcome in a quick, time-saving manner. Auto evaluation of objectives is such a boon that combination of objective and subjective test helps me to handle assessment of a number of students at once.” –  Sweta Rai

 “I have used LMS enough to be able to use it in a very effective manner. I am very comfortable with it now.

During a class, I set the expectation to complete a test by the coming weekend. Weekends being a little light, are the best time that they can attempt the test with full enthusiasm. Even though I set the expectation to finish a test by the coming weekend, I set expiry date to at least 2 weeks. Due to unforeseen circumstances (school load, sick, travel, guests etc), a student might not be able to get time to finish test on time. I don’t want them to complete it just for the sake of it. If they can’t finish it by the weekend, they can finish it later.

Student reaction is positive. Many students and parents remind me if I fail to provide a test on time. Attempt ratio is very high. Its not 100% because there are students who are taking class for casual learning right now and want to take serious classes later (eg. one student based in Toronto paid for OTF, never attends it, gets the video and watches later. He has plans for serious Physics studies starting in a month).

In case of OTF, it also helps me gauge myself. If a few students in a batch have performed poor, then I have to improve them. But, if most of them have performed poor, then I need to improve myself. I did a poor job in explaining the concept to the class.LMS helps me gauge the level to which a student has understood a concept.I can then plan to either revise the concept with student or move on to the next one.

I do see a few shortcomings and have suggested a few enhancements. If they are implemented, my productivity would increase. But the current product, as it stands now, is a good tool in itself.” – Bhavdeep Sethi

 “LMS is very comfortable for me as I can prepare my own question paper and assignments for my students depending on their individual capability. I am having freedom to choose questions for designing a question paper which consists of all type of questions varying from easy to difficult. I am including reasoning type questions, concept based questions and HOTS questions.

Students are very eager to take test as they want to evaluate themselves. Most of the students attempt shared tests and assignments within 12 hrs, this shows their willingness in taking test.

Evaluation is very easy, in case of MCQ, True/False, Match their is an auto evaluation option, and also I can add a comment for wrong and correct answers, because of this student will get to know their mistake once they finish their test.

I share a test with my students after every topic completion.  From their test results, I get to know how clear are they with the concept and what topics they are facing difficulties with. I discuss the difficult topics in my next session and clear students’ doubts. This makes the student and teacher self satisfied. Student will be very confident in taking test at their schools.” – Santoshi Gururajan

 “Prior to this tool, it was difficult to send tests, assignments, notes and similar tasks through mails or phone. It was equally difficult to keep the track of them.This process has become relatively convenient and easier now. This tool is very simple and easy to use. Though there is one time effort to create tests and assignments but once we create them, we can use the same with many students that s reduces my workload by leaps and bounds. Students are also very enthusiastic and zealous to learn via this tool. Though the attempt ratio is little less, but I must say it is increasing day by day.

Moreover, interesting fact is that students are asking me to share the homework without fail. This tool is really helping me a lot to set the goals for my students. They can see their grades and they can improve their grades by keeping track of their marks.” – Manisha Bhala