Like many developing countries, Indonesia has progressed on making education more accessible to its young population. Now the country struggles to improve the quality of education (World Bank). This is especially pertinent for fundamental subjects such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), where Indonesian students score very low in global comparison (PISA). Given the acceleration of globalisation and automation, this underperformance puts Indonesian students at risk of unemployment, and the country at risk of stagnating economic development. To counteract the lack of quality education, supplementary education is increasingly used to improve students’ grades. However, rising tuition fees and long commutes make these services unattainable for students from low-income and rural backgrounds, creating a new access gap.
CoLearn provides affordable and high-quality online education to K12 students in Indonesia. The company was founded in 2018 and focuses on online STEM education, ensuring that after-school learning is accessible to all Indonesian students, even those in remote locations. CoLearn is committed to build its students’ confidence in STEM subjects to set the foundation of successful future career paths.
To develop students’ understanding of STEM subjects, CoLearn created Tanya - an automated doubt solving solution (ADS) with a database of over 600,000 comprehensive and verified videos. These videos facilitate learning by providing students with fast answers anytime and anywhere. In comparison to their competitors where classes are usually pre-recorded, CoLearn offers paid live online classes. These classes are designed to replicate student-teacher interaction and encourage attendance by having the same classmates every lesson. The company closely tracks students’ attendance, participation, and assessment results to improve student performance and its own educational offering.
CoLearn’s ambitious mission to improve the quality and accessibility of STEM education and simultaneously build students’ STEM confidence has its fair share of challenges. For example, motivating students to engage in deeper learning beyond the ADS. As such, co-founders Marc Irawan, Sandeep Davaram and Abhay Saboo greatly value TNB Aura’s support
CoLearn provides accessible and high-quality online STEM education to over 4 million users monthly, and the Tanya user base doubles every 6-12 months. According to a survey conducted by CoLearn, 79% of respondents saw an improvement of grades after using their services. Moving forward, CoLearn hopes to continue its mission to improve STEM education in Indonesia through their free services and by increasing enrolment in live classes.