When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, more than 93 per cent of households in the US with school-aged children were engaged in some form of distance learning. Given the global reach of the pandemic, the effects in Canada were similar and, for higher education, every college and university pivoted to online learning.
The pivot was challenging for the majority of teachers (and students) as many only had experience with teaching in the physical classroom. Such challenges, however, create entrepreneurial opportunities. Carleton University, through the Innovation Hub, is collaborating with Blindside Networks, a local high-tech firm in Ottawa, to do foundational research and design on how virtual classrooms could – and should – evolve over the next few years.
Blindside Networks was founded by the creators of BigBlueButton – a software that originated at Carleton University in 2007. Today, BigBlueButton is the world’s dominate open-source virtual classroom system, localized into over 55 languages and designed into the core of many popular learning management systems. In particular, Moodle – the world’s most popular learning management system – is building BigBlueButton into the core of the upcoming Moodle 4.0, to be released this month.
With the help of the Innovation Hub, Blindside Networks wants to build upon the success of BigBlueButton and accelerate it towards the future of virtual classrooms.
“While the pandemic pushed everyone online, the platforms for holding live online classes are still evolving,” said Fred Dixon, the CEO of Blindside Networks. “Part of the challenge is that teachers are intimately familiar with the physical classroom, but the sudden move to online was challenging and unfamiliar. The curriculum was the same, but the online environment is very different from the physical one.”
“Working with the Innovation Hub, we want to profoundly understand the physical teaching environment, and teaching mindset, and then translate that into a virtual classroom in a way that overcomes the existing challenges of online learning. This is not an easy task. We wanted to get bright students to work on this, challenge them, and see what they can come up with.”
He added that Blindside Networks couldn’t have “asked for a better environment” for this project, because not only is Carleton University the birthplace of their software but the university is “living and breathing the subject every day.” Also, because the students have been online for two years, they can relate to the existing challenges of virtual classrooms and bring fresh ideas and perspectives on how to overcome them.
Through the Innovation Hub’s Launch: Ideas program, Carleton University students can earn academic credit, or complete a co-op or internship placement. The program matches multidisciplinary teams of students with fully fledged companies that require a real, innovative solution to a current challenge.
Amirkhashayar Ahadpour, Technology Innovation Management student and team lead for this project, explained that the student team has conducted research on existing in-person and virtual teaching methods, done interviews with teachers and professors from many different countries, and are now working on developing a prototype design for Blindside’s review.
“I love the environment that the Innovation Hub provides us with, and really appreciate the opportunity to experience a real work environment through the project,” Amirkhashayar said.
He added that this experience also helped cement his interest in working with a tech firm after graduation, and he’s hoping to find one that will have the same entrepreneurial environment as the Innovation Hub.
“This partnership has given us the ability to pull together a purpose-built team that is multi-disciplinary and is going well so far,” said Robert Hocking, entrepreneur-in-residence at the Innovation Hub.
Prospective partner companies looking to engage a team to tackle a challenge are encouraged to fill out an expression of interest to explore how the Innovation Hub and Carleton students can help.
Carleton students interested in pursuing a co-op placement or internship, or earning academic credit through Launch: Ideas, can apply online via the Innovation Hub website.