The Caribbean eLearning Race has heat up! Digicel has just launched LearningHub.Online with new partner Shallette East Founder of GoGsat.com, in direct competition to pioneering elearning gamification site Edufocal.com. So there are lots of questions to ponder.
If we want to be dramatic, we can ask – did LearningHub just kill Edufocal? Then we can ask these follow up questions – Is this a zero sum game where the big winner will take all of the market? Or will this be an Uber vs Lyft kinda of a game in this space for a while?
The game is: LearningHub.Online was launch last week in Kingston,Jamaica and is a gamified educational platform offered only to Digicel Caribbean customers courtesy of a partnership between the telecommunications giant and the 10 year-old GoGSAT.com site. Them versus Edufocal in this online learning and testing space.
The LearningHub.Online gives primary and secondary students islandwide access educational content and support relating to examinations such as Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE), at their fingertips. The basic services is now free, but there are paid bronze, silver and gold packages coming soon.
Some of the Questions We’re Asking
So where does this leave the four year old Edufocal.com founded by Gordon Swaby, which pioneered gamification to elearning platforms in Jamaica and the Caribbean? Did this partnership between the pioneering GoGsat.com and Digicel, a move to stave off Edufocal’s rising competition? Is it a pre-emptive strike as there has been serious talks on the Jamaican government phasing out Gsat test in a couple of years from the education system?
We don’t know, yet, but we do know that Edufocal the super popular and entrenched Jamaica-founded elearning platform will not go down lightly. Having spoken to its charismastic founder Gordon Swaby who was just featured by the BBC for his company, he told SiliconCaribe.com “I’m not worried, I have plans that may surprise a few people.” So as we look forward to the market moves by these Caribbean eLearning players, what else is popping online in this .edu space? Here is a snapshot.
A snapshot of Caribbean eLearning Platforms shows the following
Notesmaster is an award winning freely accessible e-learning network for Open Educational Resources, founded in the Caribbean in 2010 and has over the last 18 months expanded big time to the African continent. It has also and also just release a new website and fresh visual rebranding.
CaribbeanTutors.com
Since June 2007,
CaribbeanTutors.com (the region’s first online school) has taught thousands of students in 12 Caribbean nations, with the largest enrolments coming from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana. These students are primarily 15- to 18-year-olds studying any number of up to 13 CXC (Caribbean Examinations Council) subjects. (
Source a 2010 SiliconCaribe blog post.) CaribbeanTutors offers
Private Tuition for CXC CAPE SEA and SAT. Then there are sites and services such as
Caribbean Elearning and One-on-One Educational Services. Since writing about them in 2011, CaribbeanCampus.com has since hit the deadpool.
We’ll continue to watch keenly as to what unfolds with LearningHub, Edufocal, Notesmaster and new players on the horizon.
