CASE STUDY:
US ENGLISH CLUB
TECHNOLOGY USED
ABOUT UA ENGLISH CLUB
The UA English Club is made up of a group of passionate individuals who believe in the transformative power of education and connection. Understanding just how difficult it must be for the displaced children due to the war in Ukraine, this not-for-profit organization set out on a mission to provide online classrooms to help students continue their education. They strive to create a safe space where these children can learn and grow, despite their circumstances.
THE SITUATION
UA English Club was struggling to manage their volunteer-led classes as they had limited resources and knowledge of how to create a tech stack that fit their needs. With a desire to help a number of displaced students from the Ukraine, UA English Club needed to replace the following process flows:
- Single Zoom Account – Having just one paid Zoom account made managing class schedules hard. The only alternative they had at the time was for volunteers to use their own Zoom accounts to run classes. This was not ideal since UA English Club had no way to control the classroom environment.
- Google Sheet for Managing Class Schedule – An online Google Sheet was shared between all registered volunteers so they could sign up for available classroom timeslots. Volunteers had to scroll through and find times that were available as opposed to timeslots that worked best in their busy schedules.
- Goolge Forms for Registering Students – UA English Club was using a Google Form that allowed parents to register their students for a single class just so the volunteers could know how many people to expect. Each class required parents to complete the form from start to finish.
THE SOLUTION
Solutions Afoot connected C-level executives at Caspio and Vonage so that UA English Club could take advantage of specials both companies were running for organizations helping those in the Ukraine. They then created a complex online classroom environment that allowed for all of UA English Club’s needs to be met with a few bonus features. The following processes were developed:
- Registration System for Parents/Families: Created a process that allows parents to create their individual account and then register multiple children under their managed account. This one-to-many scenarios utilize many unique indentifiers. This enables UA English Club to keep track of the registered families through their admin portal. Each user profile has a profile page so that parents can easily monitor all classes they register for and the curriculum that was uploaded for the corresponding classes.
- Volunteer Approval Process: Solutions Afoot connected UA English club to a world-wide background screening company that would perform background checks behind the scenes. From a development standpoint, when a volunteer registers, their key information is automatically passed to a background registration page for the volunteer so they can apply to teach classes. Once the admin team at UA English Club approves the backgroundof a volunteer, they can easily approve volunteer individually or as part of a bulk approval process. Automated emails are sent out to volunteers to keep them updated throughout the process.
- Online Calendar for Scheduled Classes: Each volunteer can select when they want to teach class and multiple classes can take place at the same time. When a volunteer creates a class, that class appears on a calendar that parents can use to register their students. Parents can easily filter what classes appear on the calendar based on subject, teacher, and age appropriateness for their students.
- Online Video Classroom with Whiteboard: Solutions Afoot utilized the Vonage Meetings API to allow unique video meeting tokens to be generated when a class is created. That unique token is then used when the volunteer starts the class. Once online, students can interact with the teacher and each other and a whiteboard can be shared to assist with explaining things on the fly. Teachers can also share their screen and files with the class during the session. Each class also allows the teacher to upload resources that the students can download and use to supplement the lesson.
- Classroom Management: Each classroom has a seat limit to make teaching more manageable. Once all the seats are filled the system closes off the registration for that course. An admin has the ability to add more seats to a given course.
THE RESULT
Using Caspio, Vonage Meetings API, Node JS and Javascript, Solutions Afoot was able to create an environment where multiple classrooms can be used at once. The volunteer can create the course being taught, schedule it for a time to be taught and upload the curriculum for the course through an easy-to-understand flow.
