With schools and school boards continuing to shift to online formats throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, online educational resources are seeing a large spike in users to help supplement their learning.
MindFuel, a national education technology leader that brings STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to life for students, teachers and parents, has been providing no-cost access to all of their K-12 STEM education resources, and saw an average 207% increase in Canadian users from during March through May 2020.
The most significant increases occurred in Northwest Territories at 1475%, Yukon at 550%, Quebec at 237%, Ontario at 202%, and British Columbia at 124%.
The total number of virtual classrooms supported during the learn-from-home period exceeded 60,000, with the most dramatic increase occurring in Ontario and Quebec on MindFuel's student engagement platform - Wonderville French. In order to support educators and parents to adapt to distributed learning, MindFuel created a series of instructional webinars focused on building a community of learners through distance education, critical to student engagement.
In 2018 alone, globally, MindFuel delivered 3.9 million STEM learning experiences across 14,000 communities in 195 countries. In 2020, MindFuel is expected to increase that number significantly.
"COVID-19 has caused a massive disruption to in-classroom learning, and we don't want to see children's learning suffer or fall behind. To ease this burden on teachers, students and parents, we have been providing easy access to all of our online educational platforms," said Cassy Weber, CEO of MindFuel. "Our programs are developed by educators for educators and have been designed to encourage curiosity and inspire students through interactive games, real-life and animated videos, comics and more. We're providing libraries of resources to allow students to dive deeper into STEM subjects that pique their interest and most importantly, to ensure they remain engaged in their learning, while supporting educators and parents in their shift to distributed learning."
While some provinces have recently reopened schools, it remains unclear what the new school year will look like for Canadian students in terms of in-classroom learning. MindFuel is preparing for additional educational supports for the anticipated continued increase in demand for virtual teaching and learning tools. Throughout the summer months, MindFuel's STEM learning resources will remain available to parents and year round schools.
"While families await further information on return to school plans, it is clear that online learning will be a large component of this system," said Weber. "We are ramping up our online supports so that we can meet anticipated higher future demands from parents and teachers."
