Teachly

Virtual learning is an underwhelming experience for both students and teachers. With so many potential distractions at home and on one’s devices, it’s extremely difficult for students to pay attention and stay engaged during class. And as an instructor, it can be pretty disheartening to spend hours talking to dozens of faceless screens. We want to solve this problem by making the online class experience more interactive for both sides.

We chose to design a video calling web service tailored for classrooms because we felt that the popular group calling apps such as Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet fail to address many of the issues faced by students and teachers.

For example, in a virtual classroom, there are few opportunities to meet and talk to other students. To solve this problem, we’ve designed the Groups feature, which puts students into random or premade groups where they can chat and discuss questions freely during class.

We’ve also designed a Whiteboard Mode that lets teachers see what their students are working on. This could be especially useful for subjects like math and physics, where showing your thought process is important.

Note: The audio cut out of our video unfortunately for some strange reason. Sorry for the inconvenience — hope you like the interactive prototype!