SP Jain School of Global Management's proprietary online learning technology, Engaged Learning Online (ELO), has won the Best Tech for Education Award at the India Digital Enabler Awards (I.D.E.A) 2020, hosted recently by Entrepreneur India.
We have been recognised for our achievement by leading publications such as PTI, India Today, Business Today, UNI, IANS, Education World, Higher Education Digest and GetMyUni.
ELO, launched in late 2018, is a one-of-a-kind virtual learning platform that brings the dynamism and engagement of a classroom online and in real time.
"We are thrilled to be recognised for Technology in Education, something we believe in strongly here at SP Jain. Fortunately, we had the foresight to see the rapid growth in online education way before COVID-19 and had developed our own proprietary online learning technology which is custom-designed to replicate an actual classroom," shares Nitish Jain, President of the School. "And, unlike Zoom, Google Hangouts or other popular videoconferencing software, that were mostly designed for office use, the emphasis within ELO is upon student engagement. In a real classroom, for instance, students get the benefit of eye contact with the professor. ELO is the only technology that enables this even if there are 60 students in the same class."
The ELO studio, from where professors conduct their lessons, are set up with robotic tracking cameras that allow them to engage in one-on-one conversations with students as if they were sitting side-by-side. Faculty can stand and move freely, maintain eye contact with students and respond to their visual cues, moderate discussions and more, all in real-time. The technology enables them to evaluate each student's level of engagement, respond to them individually and keep them motivated – just like they would do in a conventional classroom. Classes are timetabled, questions are asked and answered immediately, and the engagement is on par with what one would experience in a traditional classroom. An advantage of this technology is that while the faculty delivers the lecture from an SP Jain ELO studio, the student could be in any corner of the world.
Mr Jain adds that although the ELO was launched with the objective of making SP Jain's Executive MBA more accessible to busy working professionals, since the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, almost all of the School's programs were migrated to ELO.
"Since February 2020, over 1,100 students from 25 countries have experienced this technology and the feedback has been outstanding (student feedback rates ELO at 9/10 on technology). We are now working round the clock to embellish ELO with new technology-driven features like learning analytics to decode student learning patterns and trends, and provide important insights to faculty."