Express News Service

KOCHI:Though online classes are going on in full swing in the state, many students and teachers are still struggling to cope with the new system. To address these challenges, Transstream, a Bengaluru-based company envisioned by the management team of TransformIT Solutions and Zocio, has come up with an online educational solution that helps students and teachers transition from a traditional classroom to the virtual classroom easily. The educational solution is an integrated platform that can be accessed both offline and online by the students. Malayalis Aparna Viswanathan and Prasanth Konoth, who have been in the training space for more than a decade, are behind this concept.

While most educational institutions use applications like Google or Zoom to conduct online classes, some schools are even dependent on WhatsApp to impart lessons to their children. The teachers are under a lot of stress as they need to be technically adept to prepare for each class and most often students find it difficult to attend the classes on time due to bad connectivity or technical glitches. Through Transstream, this teaching process gets relaxed.

The application has three elements. First, a Learning Management System or the LMS. Second, an online teaching tool that connects teachers and students virtually and the third component being content for teachers which is provided in audio, video and text format s with a database of more than a lakh assessments. This helps teachers reduce the stress. Teachers can either conduct classes online or record their lectures which are uploaded to the LMS.

Students can access the LMS any time and study at a comfortable pace. This reduces the pressure of tuitions, says Prasanth Konoth, director, Transstream. Our LMS can be accessed by the students on the web as well as ones mobile phone (android and iOS) platforms. As the system provides more than a lakh assessments, creating questions and conducting regular tests become easy for the teachers. The platform is customised in tune with the respective educational institutions name, he adds.

The main issue students are now facing is bandwidth and connectivity. To address the same, our platform gives the advantage of downloading the content and storing it on the app whenever the students has access to internet and learn at his or her pace which takes away the worry of having constant connectivity. The emotional and mental stress on a child also reduces significantly, which, as a teacher, I am more concerned about, says Aparna Viswanathan, director of operations at Transstream.

The app is now operational across schools, colleges and other coaching/training institutes in more than five states. More than eight schools in Kerala are using the platform on a trial basis. The creators believe using the application will make a teachers more comfortable as they take less time for class preparation and can retain their personal teaching style. The platform offers security and hence teachers find it much more comfortable since the classes can be accessed only by the students of the respective school, adds Aparna.

The Transstream team plans to keep adding features to make the software more effective. Work is afoot to soon integrate artificial intelligence into the solution. Most of the schools have invested time, money and effort to put systems in place to make sure learning process is not affected majorly. We believe most of the schools will adhere to either online or hybrid model this academic year. We are also trying to address the issue of children being left out of the learning curve due to unavailability of seamless connectivity through this solution, says Aparna. The team is launching their services in the schools in West Asian countries soon.

Excerpt from:
New app by Malayalis to make online education seamless - The New Indian Express