Dynamic Technologies group company CloudSmiths has once again put the Salesforce platform to excellent use for education and skills development. MyTopDog, an online education platform, recently collaborated with CloudSmiths to improve and optimise their e-learning system.
MyTopDog is the biggest online education platform in South Africa. Its 3.5 million students are offered a customised learning and support programme, as well as the renowned CambriLearn online education platform, which prepares students for Cambridge International qualifications.
The education company was “positively astounded at CloudSmiths’ ability to optimise their communication and learning system”, says founder of MyTopDog and CambriLearn Ryan Swartzberg. We weren’t really looking to address particular challenges, but when a friend at CloudSmiths explained what it does, I was blown away by how much easier life could be.”
Previously, students received assignments by e-mail; now they are able to interact via a digital platform. The learning portals for MyTopDog and CambriLearn are built on Heroku, part of Salesforce, which provides each group of users – students, teachers and parents – with their own portal through which they can access their customer dashboard.
Learners are able to consume content, attend lessons and interact with each other via the MyTopDog community. Teachers have their own set of tools according to their roles and parents can log in to track their child’s progress, monitor attendance and view feedback on assignments. Assemblies and parent evenings are co-ordinated with the Salesforce native app EventSpark to ensure these events run smoothly. Swartzberg reports that the changes are “breaking down silos between teaching and sales so we can operate more like a school and less like a business”.
“Our feedback is 99% positive,” says Swartzberg. “And as the platform captures more data, the company is getting smarter about understanding the impact of various interventions on learning outcomes. Salesforce is helping us tie our data together from a teaching perspective to make smarter decisions.”
Jason Timm, CloudSmiths’ CEO, says the journey with MyTopDog is revolutionary for the education company. “Looking ahead, with its new and evolving platform, MyTopDog and CambriLearn can recruit the best teachers and empower them to work from anywhere. Expanding syllabuses will be a simple process. Teachers will be able to add more grades and also offer additional support to parents on issues that affect their child’s academic development.”
By offering more flexible and personal learning from anywhere, Swartzberg is leading the way to promote equality and make high-quality education more accessible, which is an exciting prospect when it comes to shaping the future of work in South Africa.
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