Research has shown that well-designed online learning can improve overall outcomes for students.
Digital technologies have supported student learning through features such as text-to-speech, pop-up definitions, interactive diagrams, digital note-taking, captioned videos, digital games, and online collaboration.
Rob Barakat is the co-founder of online learning company Atomi, which began with just a few 'how to' math videos. Today, millions of lessons are delivered to over 80,000 students – and counting.
Atomi uses the latest research in pedagogy and neuroscience in order to maximise engagement and retention. It also uses powerful analytics to get clear insights into student usage, who needs assistance and a teacher’s class is performing
Barakat says that while there are many online learning tools in the ed-tech market, three main factors make Atomi stand out in the space.
“We focus distinctly on three areas of interaction all centred around making Atomi a more relatable and personalised experience. Atomi moves beyond merely replicating the classroom experience online,” Barakat told The Educator.
“We use experienced teachers, top graduates and designers to rethink how lessons should be structured from the ground up. Short, sharp, structured, based on the latest research in pedagogy and taking full advantage of young relatable presenters.”
‘A much more personalised experience’
Atomi also includes interactive quizzes that allows students to not just be tested but have those tests automatically adapt in length and difficulty based on how students are performing in real time.
“This gives a much more personalised experience, allowing stronger students to move faster through the course, whilst assessing weaker students more rigorously,” Barakat explained.
He added that Atomi uses a “unique AI in the backend” that understands how students are performing, predicts how fast they’re likely to forget content and automatically generates personalised revision paths for each student, so they are always focused on the things that are most important for their individual success.
Helping teachers get back to teaching
Barakat said a key focus for Atomi is to allow teachers to spend more of their time on truly meaningful teaching.
He pointed to data that suggests 94% of teaching time is spent merely teaching content, compared to 6% of time being spent on higher order skills, such as group discussion, real-world application, in-depth case studies and specific feedback.
“Our motivation is to give teachers a resource that’s going to engage their students in base-level content and give them a whole new level of insight into how their progressing,” Barakat said.
“Atomi then allows teachers to focus on higher order skills and differentiating their teaching based on the needs of each student.”
Barakat said Atomi is currently revisiting how it develops content to make the resource more useful and effective.
“We are also experimenting with different forms of content; everything from text-based, audio, video, gamified and interactive content,” he said.
Barakat said Atomi’s development team is working hard to improve the effectiveness of data and analytics in order to show schools how they are performing in each area, where they need the most help, how to allocate resources effectively and how that performance compares to state averages.
“We are also working hard on our professional development arm, to offer teachers more face-to-face support around change management and digital initiatives in the classroom,” he said.