Measuring What Matters: Why CoLearn Cares So Much About Student Attendance

Attention is key before learning can happen.

The statement seems obvious and yet we don't pay enough attention to it, both in offline and online learning. Every time a student skips a class, it is certain that there would be zero learning outcome gained that day. In learning STEM subjects, where CoLearn specializes in, students are constantly building on prior knowledge and internalizing new information that would be a prerequisite to understanding more complex concepts. Building the discipline to attend and pay attention to classes regularly has the compounding effect in learning outcome and the delight of that effect will, in return, increase students' motivation to invest more time and attention to the subjects.

Ever since we decided on cohort-based live courses as the most effective strategy for learning, attendance rate has become our obsession and the basic requirement we must constantly meet before we can begin to optimize learning outcomes further. It also doesn't hurt that attendance rate is a reliable predictor to semesterly retention and therefore customer lifetime value (LTV)!

Not Quite the Tiger Parents

Painting Asia with one broad brush–assuming edtech’s success in one country can always be replicated in another–will inevitably lead to a big disappointment. Some Asian societies like South Korea, Japan, Singapore, China, and India, with large-scale edtech’s success stories like Byju or Zouyebang, have very high societal pressure for children to perform well academically. The portrayal of the tiger parents in 'Asian' culture, was largely derived from the abovementioned societies. In these societies, not being competitive academically may well impact your perceived social standing and the fear of the consequences alone is a big driver for attaining sustained students' attention to their academic subjects.?

Meanwhile, many countries in the region like Indonesia, where CoLearn primarily serves its students at the moment, simply does not put the same level of pressure for academic excellence. It is important to note that Indonesians by and large do see investment in education as important to prepare for one's future. However, the pressure to race to be ahead of the curve is not always a priority and it does not necessarily impact significantly on ones’ perceived social standing. Therefore, students do have some degree of freedom to choose to participate or to continue participating in any learning program available to them even if the need is obvious.

With this backdrop, we do need to think harder about competing for students’ attention and making learning engaging. In this scenario, the team needs to understand that we are competing against their favorite Youtubers, online video games, and more! Learning has to be relevant to their lives and their future (as far as they are able to see).

Tracking Attendance Provides Near Real-time Feedback

It was clear to us from the beginning that traditional MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses), with on-demand recorded content and global completion rate averaging at below 10%, just wouldn't be effective. In contrast, our strategy of cohort-based live classes, where students learn from the same familiar teachers and peers with high levels of interactivity through a semester, saw consistently over 70% attendance rate every semester with primary and middle school students leading the pack at over 75-80%!

Tracking attendance obsessively and chasing feedback relentlessly shortens the build-measure-cycle, enabling us to realize when we got things wrong and turn initial failure to eventual success earlier in the semester. The beauty with cohort-based live classes is that we can always adjust many parameters such as pace, teaching strategies, and session lengths to fulfill students' real need.

Most importantly, even though changes we make to our product are results of plenty of healthy debates among teachers, instructional designers, product and engineering leaders, everyone at CoLearn is aligned on one most important thing about their work: it's always about the students.

Measure What Matters to Attendance

With the prevalence of online learning during the pandemic, the world keeps coming up with new technology and ways, enabling teachers and institutions to track and measure students’ attention. From AI-powered eye tracking, voice analysis, to brainwave trackers, we are just seeing the beginning of transformation in how we deliver education as massive amounts of in-class data becomes available through these technologies. .

Learning is entering a new renaissance. How we learn will evolve and take shape in ways we may not yet think of. We are super excited to be part of this. However, technology is only a tool. What ultimately matters at the end of the day are engagement and learning outcomes. For us, any leading indicator for in-class attention must translate to sustained attendance over a semester and beyond. In return, it will give us a higher chance to transform the students; relationship with learning for the rest of their lives.

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About the Author

Marc Irawan is the co-founder of CoLearn. As COO, he is responsible for the overall operations and academic leadership in the company.

About CoLearn

Founded in early 2020 and backed by some of the world's best venture capital funds, CoLearn's mission is to make Indonesia competitive on the global stage. It is our goal to enhance STEM education by providing the best educational content and technologies.

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