Veeting Rooms Improves the Business of Distance Learning for OEP
In an increasingly global economy, tomorrow’s well-educated and highly skilled professionals need an early start at mastering international interactions. Online Education Partnership (OEP) provides a vital service for families that want to ensure their children are prepared to attend the best schools at home or abroad. The company delivers virtual tutoring for students along with advisory services to help families reach their educational goals.
Founded in 2015, the organization is managed by Director Rebecca Merrett. She shared a brief history of OEP. “We started in 2015 by bringing together high-quality tutors in the U.K. with Hong Kong based students. Delivering tutorials online allowed us to offer a broader range of subjects and greater expertise. It was also very convenient for parents and students to learn from home on their own schedule. We quickly realized that we wanted the freedom to innovate and develop our own software based on the feedback from tutors and students over hundreds of hours of online lessons.”
Slow Software Held OEP Back from Progress
One of the key frustrations Merrett’s team faced in delivering the best quality tutoring experience was their selected video-conferencing partner. They found that the software simply didn’t have the capacity to provide seamless real-time communication. High latency wasn’t just making lessons difficult to provide, it was preventing OEP from making inroads in its chosen market.
“We were using another solution, but it wasn’t working. It was too bandwidth heavy and too slow. We couldn’t get traction in the market due to laggy connections.”
To fulfill the organization’s vision of a Best of Breed distance learning platform, they needed a WebRTC solution to provide a highspeed video link, an interactive whiteboard, screen sharing, document sharing, and more. Merrett began exploring options. Veeting Rooms was recommended to OEP’s Chairman, Richard Howorth, and the company decided to take advantage of a free trial. Rebecca soon found that the software and the culture of service at Veeting were both a good fit for OEP.
“The Veeting Rooms team was very responsive and hands on. We felt strongly that it was important to work with a vendor who has the same level of quality in their work that we have in ours. When we came back with suggestions, they came up with solutions and implemented changes. But they gave us straight talk and didn’t promise anything they couldn’t deliver.”
A Laser Focus on Enabling Users and the Business
For this online tutoring service, the implementation of a new video-conferencing and whiteboard solution needed to accomplish several objectives:
- It had to have low-latency to ensure that video streamed smoothly
- It needed to integrate with the company’s automated booking system to eliminate manual scheduling tasks
- It needed to accommodate how tutors wanted to use the software to improve educational interactions
- It had to be affordable to serve as a core part of OEP’s software infrastructure and operations
Reliable, highspeed and high-quality video was already part of Veeting Room’s solution at a low cost, which made it immediately stand out from competitors that Rebecca researched. Integration with the scheduling system was accomplished easily as well. One area for customization was the addition of a laser pointer—a useful tool for tutors to communicate visually with students. To streamline the user experience, OEP also requested that the rest of the rich feature set be pared down to the essentials. “During the trial period, we looked at what features the tutors actually used, and those were the ones we selected for the final version.”
Which Features Were Favorites for OEP and End Users?
According to Merrett, the whiteboard with its options for both freehand drawing and text entry was at the top of the list. Screen sharing which allowed tutors to pull up and share online videos with ease was another top contender. But enabling business operations and promoting growth remained the most important benefits. “We can’t run the business without it, since we make our revenue from connecting students and tutors. And it’s important that it integrates with our booking system, since we are handling several hundred sessions a month. Trying to use a platform like Skype would mean having to manually connect tutors and students. It just wouldn’t be realistic.”
Overall, quality, reliability, functionality, and affordability proved to be deciding factors for OEP in choosing Veeting Rooms. As the organization grows to serve the needs of their target market, Online Education Partnership can rest assured that their WebRTC partner is ready and able to support their growth initiatives.
