Free online tuition for students in Malaysia

Team Edunation: (from left) designer Tasha Ong, artist and videographer Hazman Tumiran, founder Edmond Yap and head of public relations Jennifer Low.

Edunation provides free educational resources which range from test papers to exercise materials and tuition videos.

TRYING to grasp and really understand something you were taught in school usually means books, and more books, and sometimes extra tuition classes. For parents, it means spending more money to make sure their children get good grades.

What if you could get the extra materials and classes for free on the Internet?

Edmond Yap, founder of Edunation, a non-profit company, once encountered an orphan boy who inspired him to create an online platform where school students could get free help.

Yap, 34, a civil engineer, used to visit orphanages to tutor the children there.

“I met this boy named John who was 15,” said Yap. “A month before PMR, he was having trouble with simple maths. It was really sad because he really wanted to learn. I realised I couldn’t help him.

“And I did something I was not proud of. I ran away and never went back to an orphanage. I never saw John again; he’s probably in his early 20s now. So that has been haunting me for a very long time.”

Yap was also prompted by another reason closer to home. His mother had struggled with serious depression all her life.

“It was very tough on us as a family and when I was growing up,” said Yap. “That affected me a lot. For a long time I was always looking for answers.”

Although she finished school, she never had tertiary education, and Yap felt that if she had a chance for a better education, she might have handled things better.

“I wanted to do something but as a civil engineer, I couldn’t,” said Yap. “So I left the profession. And I went into education. I started my own trading business. After a while, I stumbled upon the idea of free tuition.

“I watched a TED.com video on the Khan Academy (the non-profit educational organisation founded by American entrepreneur Salman Khan). I realised we need this in Malaysia – a totally free online ecosystem of educational materials that will help kids.”

And Edunation was born. The website provides free educational resources for students, from test papers and exercise materials to tuition videos. In short, it’s free tuition classes which let students learn at their own convenience, anytime and anywhere.

“It’s based on the Khan Academy,” said Yap. In fact, the Khan Academy is one of the organisations providing support to Edunation, along with Brickfields College and the Multimedia Development Corporation.

“The Khan Academy now has about 4,000-plus videos,” said Yap. “But when applied to our syllabuses, many things are lacking. We had to create our own content. We took what we could; we became their advocate here in Malaysia. We did translations for them, for about 350 of their videos. For everything else that was missing, we created our own.”

After two and a half years, Edunation now has about 1,300 videos. Last year, the website recorded 250,000 views, which roughly means the videos helped about 20,000 to 30,000 students. Yap said this year, one million video views are expected.

“It started out as just an idea, when I was still running my trading company,” Yap explained. “We had absolutely nothing. We went to so many people and organisations and colleges, telling them, why spend so much money on advertising when they can spend it on us. And we really make a difference.

“It’s not hard to see why they said no, because I looked like I’d just left school and I had no track record to speak of. I had no website. All I had was an idea.”

In the early days, when Edunation had no funding, a lot of the teaching videos were made by college student volunteers.

“These were top level students,” said Yap. “In fact, the most watched video on our platform today was done by a student. We started out with people with good intentions who wanted to make a difference.”

As time went on, Yap and his team recruited teachers with 15 to 20 years’ experience. And they made the majority of the rest of the videos.

“These teachers are very experienced,” said Yap. “In a lot of cases, we can trust them. We have never had a challenge with an experienced teacher. With our earlier students, we had to be careful. But these teachers have decades of experience.”

At the moment, Edunation provides materials primarily for students from Form 2 to 5. The focus right now is more on Form 5 students who will be sitting for their SPM exams. Edunation also holds free SPM seminars three times a year, and these are recorded and uploaded on YouTube as well.

“We will handle primary school materials as we go along,” said Yap. “It’s easier with secondary school materials because the students are more mature, and they seriously want to learn and score As. But with primary school kids, we have to entertain them. And for videos that are entertaining, it would cost more and take a lot more effort.”

Even with a team of teachers, video editors, translators and interns, Edunation is still looking for volunteers, especially those who can draft exercise materials. And Yap feels the upcoming school holidays would mean teachers would have time on their hands, and he invites them to volunteer their services.

Yap believes the website is reaching only 1% of students in the country. He said research is being done to find out just how effective Edunation’s videos and materials have been. On Facebook and Twitter, it gets a lot of positive comments and feedback.

“There was one kid who said, ‘Last time, I did very badly in Additional Maths. After watching your video, I became awesome!’ We’ve had a lot of comments like that,” said Yap.

A student on Facebook commented: “Edunation is GILA because give the free tuition and seminar to all the Malaysian students. This is good news for me. Now, I can be smart without spend my parent’s money.” (sic)

“Khan Academy has a million unique visitors every month watching 200,000 to 300,000 videos every day,” said Yap. “Basically we took a successful idea and implemented it in a hyper-customised version, specifically for Malaysian kids.”

Asked what he thinks students in Malaysia really need, Yap replied: “What students think they need are SPM tips and what to study and what formula to memorise. But what our students really need is to truly understand the fundamentals of what they’re learning. Because of our lack of fundamental understanding of what we’re learning, we will struggle later on in life.

“When I went to Australia to finish my degree, I found that the Australians could look at a problem and come up with their own formulas. That can only come from a basic understanding of the real principles behind what we’re learning. I think students really need that. I believe students need a new way of thinking about studying.”

Visit Edunation at www.edunation.my to find out how to volunteer.