betterU Education Corp. has signed a five-year partnership agreement with Swift eLearning Services Pvt. Ltd., an e-learning development company in India. The Canadian firm trades on the TSX Venture Exchange and in Frankfurt. It announced the deal from Ottawa on December 30, 2017.
Under the agreement, the Canadian company will help SWIFT run an online marketplace for e-templates. It will hold the libraries of both firms. Together they include hundreds of templates for online content, built over several years. The templates are meant to make course development faster and cheaper while raising quality.
The same templates will also be sold on the betterU global education marketplace. They will come in bundles with ready-made, pre-designed and animated course structures, lesson pages, assessments, learning games and interactive elements. The bundles also work with the leading global authoring tools.
Work on the library started several years ago, when betterU CEO Brad Loiselle met the head of SWIFT. He wanted to share his idea of automating course development. Now both companies are ready to take that effort further.
India and other emerging markets need a great deal of quality online content. Since demand is high, many corporations, government agencies and schools there hire e-learning developers to move their material online. So the partnership aims to save these clients time and money with ready resources. Because betterU focuses on linking education to employment, it sees training content as a key support for the education system.
Loiselle, who is president and CEO, recalled that SWIFT showed strong interest when his team first approached it about the library. Since then, he said, SWIFT has added hundreds more templates. As a result, the library now ranks among the largest in India.
SWIFT provides custom e-learning services that blend technical and subject expertise. Its work covers custom courseware, rapid e-learning tools, translation and localization.
The Ottawa company describes itself as a global education marketplace. It wants to give people access to quality education from around the world. It also hopes to close the gap between schooling and jobs. Its offerings include flexible KG-12 programs that complement schools and access to courses from leading educators. It also provides skills training for better careers and then connects learners with job openings.
