Author: proprep

Proprep is delighted to be working with The Access Project, a UK-based education charity that supports students from disadvantaged backgrounds to secure places and succeed at top universities. Through a unique combination of in-school mentoring and personalised tuition, they aim not only to raise students’ learning outcomes, but to improve their confidence in achieving at university.

Proprep will provide The Access Project’s STEM alumni, transitioning from A-Level to undergraduate and from 1st to 2nd year, with access to Proprep’s bite-sized video tutorials and thousands of practice questions. These students will use Proprep’s resources to cement their understanding of the topics they find most difficult, apply their knowledge to practise exercises, and check their answers against video solutions.

Our partnership aims to address diversity challenges in STEM and give all students the opportunity to succeed. Katharine Jackson, Proprep’s CEO, said: “We are delighted to help The Access Project with their mission to ensure that every young person regardless of background can make the most of education and succeed at the top universities, unlocking their potential and ultimately enabling a fairer society.”

Alice Reilly, Head of University Partnerships at The Access Project, stated: ” We’re really proud to be partnering with Proprep. We work hard to help disadvantaged young people get into university and ensure they transition well into university life. By working with Proprep, our students will receive the additional support to help them succeed. Currently, 73% of students from disadvantaged households graduated with a 2:1 or a first-class degree, in comparison to 83% from more advantaged households, so this partnership supports us in levelling the playing field for disadvantaged young people at university.”

About The Access Project

https://www.theaccessproject.org.uk

The Access Project was established in 2008 to help talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds gain access to an education at one of the UK’s top universities. Through a unique programme of in-school mentoring and personalised tuition, The Access Project helps teenagers unlock their potential and transform their future prospects.

About Proprep

https://www.proprep.com

Proprep’s mission is to accelerate learning and unlock the potential in every STEM student by improving their understanding of challenging materials with easy-to-use, customized tutorials and study guides. With over 50,000 videos and limitless options for module customization, students can study the way that best suits them. The result is a deeper understanding, improved problem-solving techniques, and better grades for the student.
Contact: Simon Bell [email protected]

Proprep’s new B2B offering lets higher education faculty access and adapt high-quality, university-level, curated STEM content to create their own courses or class resources. Providers in this market are increasingly using multiple business models to sell into different stakeholder groups.

What to Know and Why It Matters

Proprep, a subsidiary of Israeli edtech company Kvasir Education, offers curated, customized e-learning STEM resources targeted at the higher education market. An Israeli-based sister company is used by around 20% of Israeli students and reaches over 500,000 worldwide.

Before the launch of Boost, Proprep’s solutions were available via subscription to students individually and via their institutional libraries. Proprep’s pedagogic team has created and curated a large library of learning resources focused on supporting first- and second-year courses in STEM disciplines. Content assets include bite-sized video resources and self-assessment tools designed by Proprep to help students succeed in their STEM studies.

Proprep sees video as a critical medium for 21st-century students, providing 5-12-minute videos that appeal to students accustomed to this sort of short-form content. These videos provide concept explanations as well as exercises which take students through concepts step by step, helping students to utilize what they’re learning in real-world contexts.

In its new Boost offering, Proprep provides the scaffolding for faculty to address the need for computational fluency across STEM subjects. The Boost platform offers curated playlists and resources which faculty can adapt and add context to, where needed, to align to their disciplines and specific courses. Instructors assign courses, and students can also self-enrol in other courses to drive their own learning or plug learning gaps.

Students can see the full course and jump in and out of topics or follow the course chronologically. After watching the video explanations, students can test themselves using multiple-choice questions that also assess confidence levels — this information feeds into data for faculty to assess student performance on a cohort level as well as by individual student. The Boost platform sits at the intersection of courseware and resources and offers considerable flexibility for faculty whilst providing them with a comprehensive bank of content to address specific gaps in student understanding.

Analyst Rating: Positive

Proprep’s content library, pedagogic approach, and technology are designed to facilitate students’ understanding and application of STEM concepts. As such, this may be a more difficult direct-to-student sale than a homework solution like Chegg, particularly for students seeking a quick fix to an upcoming problematic assignment. Targeting faculty via a B2B (or, strictly, B2E) model with a platform that delivers clear value spreads the risk for Proprep. It should enable the company to put in place longer-term customer relationships that reduce reliance on student decision-making — which is often last-minute and based on urgent assignment-related needs rather than long-term learning outcomes — and parlous library budgets.

Winners and Losers

Homework solutions like Chegg that target students saw steep revenue increases over the course of the pandemic. Progress has been less than smooth over the last six months, however: investors fear that Chegg failed to make clear that growth was temporarily driven by courses moving online during the pandemic — and that the service facilitates cheating, which is an unstable business driver.

To avoid this connection with cheating, education platforms like Proprep and players like Argos Education are highlighting the ways in which their platforms do not facilitate cheating. Indeed, they are actively designed to help students master concepts that are critical to successful course completion and apply this knowledge after graduation. Given that this may reduce student demand, Proprep’s decision to target faculty with Boost opens up a new market opportunity.

Argos Education also targets faculty, providing a range of pedagogic structures to facilitate course creation and amendment. Boost is also designed to be flexible by offering curated courses and a database of resources that faculty can fully customize and amend as needed. This flexibility will be critical for providers looking to attract faculty working to easily deliver digital courses that align perfectly to their course outlines.

What’s Next

To date, Proprep has targeted Israel, the US, and the UK, but there is strong potential for further international expansion, particularly into markets where instruction is undertaken in English. Faculty are looking for resources that will help students in STEM subjects, where demand is growing, to consolidate their understanding of criticalunderlying concepts; Proprep is well placed to address this demand. Further options could include serving alternative education pathways and online course providers, where students would benefit from a solid STEM foundation.

Essential Actions

Outsell’s essential actions for solutions providers looking to develop higher education course content and platforms include the following.

Spread the Risk

As Proprep shows, using a range of business models can help spread risk. Institutional sales may require an investment in sales force capabilities but tend to be more long-term than B2C sales, particularly in higher education, where students are likely to want access for the duration of their courses, at most, and sometimes for much less time than that.

Deliver Value to Multiple Stakeholders

Proprep provides clearly definable value to both students and faculty. This is critical to generate usage, without which renewals will be difficult. However, solutions that focus on students to the detriment of faculty — Chegg is arguably in this category — or vice versa will clearly face difficulties even if short-term growth is achievable.

Use Technology to Underpin Pedagogy

While Proprep is now in the process of embedding adaptive learning into its platform, it has already made strong use of video and the value that video can bring to driving deep understanding of key concepts. Using technology to drive pedagogic benefits need not be as complex as implementing AI tools, but it must deliver value that goes beyond what can be offered by print resources.

About the Author

Kate Worlock
VP & Lead Analyst
[email protected]

About Outsell

Outsell is the leading research and advisory firm serving executives operating in thedata, information, and analytics economy. Our solutions leverage proprietary data,leading industry analysts, thriving peer-to-peer communities, and a network of partnerSMEs, all operating in a platform ecosystem. Through deep relationships, we ensurethat our clients make smart decisions about their strategy, competition, markets,operating best practices, and M&A. We stand by our work 100%, guarantee results, andare fanatical about our clients’ success.

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The information, analysis, and opinions (the “Content”) contained herein are based onthe qualitative and quantitative research methods of Outsell, Inc. and its staff’sextensive professional expertise in the industry. Outsell has used its best efforts andjudgment in the compilation and presentation of the Content and to ensure to the best ofits ability that the Content is accurate as of the date published. However, the industryinformation covered by this report is subject to rapid change. Outsell makes norepresentations or warranties, express or implied, concerning or relating to the accuracyof the Content in this report and Outsell assumes no liability related to claimsconcerning the Content of this report.

Pastoral care and digitally supported, scaffolded teaching can address skills shortages and boost student retention

The first year of undergraduate study in STEM subjects can be a challenging experience. Making the transition to independent learning can be a culture shock, and often students lack the core skills to ease this transition. The challenge facing higher education is twofold; to support STEM students with pastoral care and to tackle foundational skills gaps head-on.

Speaking at THE Digital Universities Week 2022, Katharine Jackson, CEO of Proprep – an online learning provider that helps STEM students develop core skills, which launched its university facing platform, Boost by Proprep, at the conference – stressed the importance of academic confidence.

“People don’t always have the confidence to visualise themselves [in higher education], and to visualise them succeeding in a room with others,” Jackson said. “There is something we can do on the content side to help understand the skills, particularly in mathematics, that they need to succeed.”

Rajkumar Roy, dean of the School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering at City, University of London, is an advocate of this scaffolded teaching model. His institution has launched a number of programmes to bolster core academic skills, particularly to support students from underprivileged backgrounds, for whom the transition to university can be more difficult.

“We have launched scaffolded teaching for mathematics,” Roy said. “This year, we are going to launch physics for STEM subjects and study skills. You would probably be surprised to hear that a lot of our students don’t have the basic study skills and discipline, and do not understand how to take notes properly. And bringing all of these things together is the scaffolded teaching we want to build.”

City launched its STEM Digital Academy to teach digital learning skills alongside STEM subjects and to expand the institution’s options for online teaching and learning. The university has also been considering a summer school programme to address skills shortages among school-leavers.

Nathan Samson, CEO of The Access Project, said that the first year was crucial when supporting students. A non-profit organisation, The Access Project helps young people from disadvantaged backgrounds participate in higher education through mentoring and support initiatives that teach life skills such as budgeting and logistics.

“The really important thing that supports the transition into university is the sense of belonging,” Samson said. “That seems to be one of the really crucial things which gives students a sense that they are in the place where they are meant to be, and that is particularly an issue for students from a disadvantaged background.”

The panel:

• Katharine Jackson, CEO, Proprep

• Nathan Samson, CEO, The Access Project
• Rajkumar Roy, dean of the School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, City, University of London
• Ashton Wenborn, special projects deputy editor, Times Higher Eduction (chair)

Find out more about Proprep.

London, UK: Two years since the COVID-19 outbreak rapidly forced all university learning to go remote, educators are embracing the advantages of online instruction in combination with a return to face-to-face learning. E-learning company Proprep, longtime advocate of blended learning models, has launched Boost, a new educator-facing platform that gives university lecturers access to Proprep’s curated STEM content as well as the ability to create their own. With AI-powered learning technology, Boost offers short, practical video tutorials which improve student engagement and learning outcomes, accessible within an easy-to-use database.

Proprep is a leading provider of high-quality, customised learning resources. Thus far, Proprep’s subscription-based service has allowed students to create accounts and individually explore their course library. Boost will give educators access to this library of thousands of video tutorials and practice problems, enabling them to assign work and additional resources to their students. As well as saving lecturers time, this aims to enhance student understanding and improve their academic outcomes, which are easily trackable for educators both individually and as a collective within the platform.

“At Proprep, we believe that STEM subjects are key to the future workforce and a crucial launchpad for social mobility,” commented Kate Ryan, Proprep’s Director of Business Development. “Our educational resources help to reduce dropout rates, ensure higher attainment in core mathematical and scientific skills, and so increase student employability. “

Boost can support flipped classroom models and asynchronous learning, create foundational or prerequisite study for cohorts of mixed abilities, assign a video “viewing list”, or upload lecturers’ own content to provide context to existing videos or questions. Launching this week, the first set of courses on Boost covers Foundational Mathematics, including College Algebra, Calculus I, and Calculus II, as well as Introductory Statistics and Probability.
Katharine Jackson, Proprep CEO commented, “We care deeply about equality of opportunity, and want to give every STEM student access to trusted learning tools which will enable them to excel. I am delighted that with Boost we have a new platform to foster this goal.”

About Proprep: Proprep is a subsidiary of Kvasir Education, listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange as KVSR. More information about the platform and their resources can be found at www.boost.proprep.com.

This blog post has been guest-written by Anita Muathe, in honour of the UN’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Anita is one of the 2021 recipients of Proprep’s Bridging the STEM Skills Gap Scholarship. She studies Forensic Science at the University of Central Lancashire.

In 2015, the United Nations declared 11th February – today! – to be the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The day’s purpose is to promote full and equal access to participation in science for women and girls. This is in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 1 (to end poverty) and 5 (to achieve gender equality).

Representation matters

It’s important and meaningful that an entire day has been set aside to acknowledge women in science. Despite much social progress, many still believe that women are less intelligent, rational, or competent than men, and so do not make capable scientists. Research on biological factors shows that the gender gap in STEM is not the result of innate differences in ability between the sexes. So why are maths and science still seen as “boy subjects”?

Studies suggest that girls’ disadvantage in STEM is a result of the socialisation process. Damaging stereotypes are both explicitly and implicitly passed onto girls from a young age. When I was in high school, I was definitely expected to excel in languages and arts-based subjects, instead of maths and natural sciences. We also had fewer female role models to look up to. Even in our own school, the science and maths departments were dominated by male teachers. This can be particularly discouraging for young girls, like me, interested in pursuing science-based careers.

Even if they perform just as well as boys in school, fewer girls will choose to take up science courses in their higher education. According to UNESCO data, women represent only 35% of all students enrolled in STEM-related fields. Girls’ confidence, interest, and willingness to engage in STEM subjects is often undermined.

Even when women do make it into scientific job roles, they are treated differently from their male counterparts. According to UNESCO, women in STEM do not advance as far as men in their careers. They are published less, and paid less for their research. This indicates that improving access to science education for girls is crucial, but not enough.

Why we need women in science

We need equal representation and participation of the genders in STEM, because many global challenges depend on science for their resolution. Pursuing climate action, sustainability, clean energy, infrastructure and economic growth, can and should involve equal contribution by female and male scientists.

A gender imbalance leads to biased one-dimensional research and proposals. Leaving out women and girls is leaving out half of the world’s population. Girls are the greatest untapped population to become the next generation of STEM professionals.

In addition, women are globally more deprived than men. Poverty, poor healthcare, lack of education, lack of access to clean water and sanitation, and inhibited economic growth impact women to a greater extent. Solutions to these problems must include female innovation. Our intelligence and creativity, as well as our ambition to advocate for disadvantaged women and girls, make us crucial agents in achieving development goals.

Marking this day allows us to reflect on ways to address the disparities faced by women and girls in science. We can thus begin to make changes to address the inequalities in science careers for women. We can also revitalise young girls, empowering them to follow their science dreams.

Katharine Jackson appointed CEO of Proprep UK

TEL AVIV, Israel, Sep 1,2021On behalf of all at Proprep and Kvasir Education, we are thrilled to welcome Katharine Jackson as our new CEO of Proprep UK and head of UK operations. Katharine brings extensive experience in the education and digital sectors, previously having served as Executive Vice President of SAGE Publishing, a higher education academic publisher. In this role, she led SAGE’s international activities during a period of outstanding growth and digital transformation.In the words of Itay Koppel, Kvasir Education CEO: “We congratulate Katharine on joining the company. We are confident that she will greatly contribute to our activities in the UK, and to our preparations for the start of the university academic year.”From Katharine herself: “I am so excited to be joining Proprep at this time of significant change in higher education. The quality of Proprep’s content and its deep technical expertise are a compelling combination with which to address the growing appetite for blended learning, utilising technology to improve educational outcomes.”

The pandemic has brought the importance of online learning into the spotlight, as well as highlighting the higher education institutions that struggled to quickly adapt and offer effective online support to their students. As we slowly emerge from the pandemic, we’re seeing how universities’ teaching methods have been impacted, and what important lessons have been learned.

It’s hard to believe that a year ago, the term “blended learning”, where online education is combined with traditional classroom-based methods, was virtually unheard of outside of the world of academia. But when the first lockdown was announced in March 2020, universities were forced to rapidly shift their teaching and learning resources online, subjecting their existing digital resources to the ultimate stress-test. This presented a whole host of obstacles for both students and lecturers.

As an online learning resource provider, whose innovative processes provide students studying STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) modules in university with video tutorials customised to their exact syllabus, Proprep was already ahead of the digital learning curve.

The beginning of the revolution in digital learning

Before Covid-19, teaching methods were already in need of an overhaul. A 2014 meta study confirmed that students studying STEM degrees using passive learning methods such as traditional lectures were 1.5 times more likely to fail.

However, adopting an active learning model and putting the student at the centre of different teaching methods such as flipped, blended and online classes achieved far better learning outcomes. Multiple studies demonstrated that video is a highly effective educational tool, and shorter videos in particular allow students to process information more efficiently and have improved memory recall.

This research confirmed the methodology that Proprep (which launched in the UK in 2019) was already using to develop its study tools. Proprep placed short online video tutorials at the cornerstone of its successful blended learning model, which also includes online workbooks, study guides and practice questions and solutions.

Focusing on STEM subjects, and using award-winning artificial intelligence and a team of seasoned professors with more than a decade of experience, Proprep built a vast library of more than 50,000 online video tutorials: all between five and seven minutes long. Proprep continues to add to this on a weekly basis and can develop resources customised to a specific university module, which includes 75 to 95 video tutorial hours and around 1,200 practice questions and study guides, in less than 20 minutes.

This technology has already achieved incredible results in Israel and the USA, with more than 500,000 students and lecturers relying on this innovative method to create learning materials.

Breaking down learning barriers

Suddenly, complicated STEM topics once deemed difficult to teach or learn could be carefully dissected into bite-sized videos that students could access at any time, from any device. This allowed students to learn at their own pace and ensured they had access to information that is laser-focused in its relevance to the student’s specific course.

Universities were initially hesitant to adopt this dynamic approach to learning, but the pandemic forced their hand. Proprep’s response to this mass exodus to online learning was to open all its resources to students, free of charge, for the entire academic year. Having already partnered with 25 student unions around the UK, Proprep also reached out to multiple universities to offer them access to its learning resources and analytics to track students’ learning activity.

Keeping the student at the centre of Proprep’s study resources helped demonstrate to universities and academic professionals alike that Proprep supplements students’ learning, rather than trying to replace the lecturer.

This saves lecturers valuable time by enabling them to offer additional, reliable resources to their students via fresh learning content across a wide range of mediums. This means Proprep can support universities as well as students, in equal measure.

The future is active blended learning

As we cautiously approach normality, with a confirmed date set for students to return to campuses, this gives universities an exciting opportunity to embrace their newfound digital literacy. By continuing to fine-tune their online offerings, giving students access to active blended learning tools and recognising the capabilities of third-party tools such as Proprep, universities can reach incredible milestones. The barriers to difficult subjects can be slowly lowered as they become more accessible, with dropout rates reduced while students’ academic results improve.

Gone are the days of having a job for life. In the 21st century careers are constantly changing, making certain skills obsolete in a matter of years. Continually changing your profession will soon become the norm, so being able to teach yourself new skills is essential.

Students learning critical thinking and problem solving skills at university will help ensure their ability to easily evolve and adapt to their workplace. For students and universities, a bright, post-pandemic future of enhanced digital learning is on the horizon.

Find out more about Proprep’s customised learning resources firsthand by going to proprep.uk  in the UK and proprep.com in the US

This article was originally produced and published by Business Reporter. View the original article at business-reporter.co.uk