Elaine and Leo De Velez are in the midst of their second act as professionals — one that’s been in development for nearly two decades. Until three years ago, both husband and wife worked as high-level managers for multinational companies such as Shell, Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. Now they’re jointly running FrontLearners, an edtech startup in their native Philippines.
FrontLearners offers schools an out-of-the-box, end-to-end e-learning solution. Participating classrooms receive a kit that includes a server loaded with content, a router to establish a wi-fi connection, and tablets that students use to follow their teachers’ lessons. FrontLearners provides training for teachers, though the sessions last only a few hours, so the barrier to adaptation is low.
The goal is to bring quality educational materials to students throughout the Philippines, including those in impoverished areas where schools don’t have the funds or infrastructure to invest in many resources.
“Education really opens doors, and from what we experienced, it’s opened a lot of opportunities for us and so when we retired, we said, ‘Let’s go into education and kind of pay it forward to the children of our country,” Elaine said.
A socially-minded second act
Although Elaine and Leo held full-time corporate positions for decades, the seeds of entrepreneurship took root in 1998. That’s when the couple created their first digital education product: math tutorials taught via animated gifs.
“We have almost 18 years experience in e-learning, it’s just that we [weren’t] doing it full-time,” Leo said.
When the time came to retire, they decided to take on a new challenge, one that allowed them to give back in an area that had been critical to their professional successes. But they quickly discovered that running an online company was a radical departure from their experiences in the corporate world and decided to seek support. The partners applied to the IdeaSpace Foundation’s incubator program and were selected for the 2015 class.
“We were very thrilled, because after that, life has never been the same,” Elaine said. “Our start-up life got into the fast lane, suddenly we felt there is direction , there are people who mentor us, guide us, challenge us, there was a lot of networking opportunities. Suddenly, we were in the inner circle of the edtech arena of the Philippines.”
FrontLearners is a for-profit company, but Elaine and Leo said they keep costs low so that schools won’t be deterred by the expense. Subscribers pay $2 per subject per student per year. A school that purchased one subject for 100 students would pay only $200 per year, though Leo said that most institutions buy five subjects (in which case, a school of 100 would pay $1,000 per year).
The servers, router and tablets are all on loan to the schools, which further reduces costs because they don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on equipment. The company also provides training and technical support at no extra charge and allows schools to cancel their contracts at any time.
Only private schools pay for the services. FrontLearners works with major corporations such as Huawei and Samsung to provide its product to public schools at no charge. The corporations’ CSR departments provide the tablets for free, enabling cash-strapped public schools to use the materials as well, the De Velezs said.
“Leo and I are really not educators by training, but we are passionate about education because we believe we are products of good teachers and good education systems,” Elaine said.
E-learning for millions of children
FrontLearners offers course materials in math, science, English grammar, Tagalog and social studies for grades one to 10. For grades 11 and 12, the company provides several science courses, a range of math classes up to Calculus, philosophy and cultural studies. The materials are built in alignment with the Department of Education’s standards, enabling students to sit for national tests that could lead to scholarships and further opportunities. In the future, the company plans to expand into areas such as home economics and other electives, Leo said. Teachers can also upload their own quizzes and additional teaching materials to the servers.
Senior high school classes make up the greatest portion of FrontLearners’ subscribers right now, according to Leo. He said that schools tend to test the e-learning programs among upper-level students before purchasing classroom kits for younger students, which is why the company has invested heavily in developing an array of materials for the older learners.
FrontLearners does not prescribe a specific way that e-learning should be used in all classrooms, but it does sell to schools instead of to individual teachers.
“For e-learning to work, it has to be a holistic process,” Elaine said. “There has to be one policy of the school on how children will use the gadgets.” She noted that school-wide policies address questions about use of technology in the classroom (for instance, teacher-issued tablets might be acceptable while personal smartphone use is not) and equalize access to the e-learning materials across students.
“What we found out is, the inertia is stronger [among] teachers for technology adaptation. Kids have no issues, but teachers have to have an implementing guide,” Elaine said. “Also, there has to be a pedagogy involved, meaning, will there be e-learning two days of the week or will it be X percent of the class is e-learning. And then how do you integrate it with the activities on the subject?”
The content supplied by FrontLearners is created by subject matter experts who work for the company. All have at least a bachelor’s degree, though some hold master’s degrees in their fields. But none are trained educators, and that’s by design.
“We leave the teaching to the teaching experts, meaning the schools,” Elaine said. “We say to the schools, ‘We provide the expert knowledge, you provide the teaching.’”
FrontLearners aims to reduce teachers’ administrative loads, enabling them to spend more time teaching and addressing students’ challenges instead of grading quizzes, tracking grades, or worrying about other learning management duties.
“Engagement with the students can never be replaced by any technology,” Elaine said.
However, Elaine and Leo said that the immediacy of feedback via e-learning quizzes can benefit children far more than studying for a quiz and then waiting days to see how well they performed. An e-learning platform that tells them instantly what they know and don’t know helps them learn faster by cementing the lessons in their minds.
They also hope that their platform will provide Filipino students with the knowledge and critical-thinking skills that will make them competitive in both the domestic and global job markets.
So far, FrontLearners has provided its e-learning packages to 23 private schools, reaching 10,000 students. Elaine and Leo estimate that they have reached 40,000 additional students through corporate CSR partnerships in an additional 32 schools. But their goal is to make further inroads into the private market especially, with the hope of reaching at least 10 percent of the 3 million students currently enrolled in private schools.
“We are not selling e-learning for e-learning’s sake, but we are selling e-learning as a way to enhance the way teachers engage with students and hopefully the outcome is improving the competency of children,” Elaine said.
