OrangeApple transforms its programming courses to a reliable and easy-to-use online platform for children in Taiwan
Time to read: 2 minutes
OrangeApple Children’s Programming Academy is Taiwan’s largest programming education system specifically aimed at children and young adults. Its programming courses focus on critical thinking and practical applications, and to date have been offering in-person courses only. However, the Academy has recently shifted these courses to online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to help facilitate this shift, OrangeApple looked into numerous options and found that the stability of Twilio’s Programmable Video and Programmable SMS platforms would allow them to offer the most comprehensive online courses while continuing to provide more than 10,000 children with access to high-quality education without any interruption.
Given that Programming is the main focus of OrangeApple’s business, CEO, Kevin Shu, got personally involved in order to evaluate the most feasible solutions that would allow the Academy to safely continue offering their courses amongst the global pandemic. Initial research found that options available on the market today were either complicated, had too many features, or were not user-friendly enough. They conducted a few trials of different streaming services from several vendors, however, none could meet OrangeApple’s requirements in terms of communication system uptime, reliability, and high-quality customer service.
“That’s when we decided to find an online solution that was simple, more intuitive, and most importantly, child-friendly. When we discovered Twilio, we found that their video and SMS APIs were easy to work with and quick to set up. It only took us a week to migrate and had we chosen Twilio from the start, it would’ve taken even less time.”
OrangeApple built its own learning platform with a child-friendly user interface by leveraging Twilio’s Programmable video and SMS APIs. Twilio’s APIs helped simplify the online learning process without compromising the most basic and important user functions. All users have picked it up immediately.
“We started off using Twilio’s Programmable SMS platform and thought it was brilliant. It left a great impression on us. We send approximately 8,000 SMS messages a month, mainly to parents to notify or update them on class-related developments, including attendance confirmation, verification codes, etc. When we found out that Twilio also offered streaming services, we were happy, especially to discover that Twilio’s video services were as easy to use as their SMS services. Currently, we are using more than 14,000 hours a month of video capacity.”
OrangeApple’s programming courses are designed for small groups, however, both teachers and students need to quickly understand the new platforms without creating a barrier to learning. It’s important that the Academy focuses on creating a ‘fool-proof mechanism’ so that new users find it simple to use. Given that children have limited patience and short attention spans, it is also critical that the entire process is seamless, and this includes removing any interference in the learning environment such as microphone issues, sudden disconnections, and other factors that are not conducive to learning.
“We used to get two to three disconnections each week, but longer have these issues since we have switched to Twilio’s platforms. Twilio’s streaming service is extremely reliable and stable.”
Twilio’s assistance in uploading the courses quickly and successfully helped ensure children’s access to online learning could continue. Additionally, by shifting the courses to online learning, parents can feel at ease that their children are learnings safely from home.
“Additionally Twilio’s back-end logging and documentation is impeccable. Our engineers were able to quickly adapt to the platform.”
Twilio’s Programmable Video platform has enabled OrangeApple to provide high-quality visuals which is important for improving children and young adults’ learning and understanding process. Twilio’s set of video and SMS APIs have provided the Academy with a foundation on which to expand its educational services and applications.
With the success of OrangeApple’s new online learning program, the hope is that parents will gradually accept that online education can offer their children a rich educational experience. That being said, the Academy’s vision is to expand its online services in the future to additional subject offerings such as mathematics, natural sciences, etc. Twilio’s Programmable Video platform will allow the Academy to offer the high-quality visuals needed to aid in the learning of these types of subjects and will provide OrangeApple with the foundation on which it can expand its educational services and applications.
It’s noteworthy to also highlight that Twilio’s product offerings are affordable and as a result have allowed OrangeApple to reduce its operating costs, and hence offer its courses at lower fees while simultaneously increasing customer satisfaction.
