InteDashboard

Increasingly, the education landscape fails to prepare students for work. Some reasons for this are due to the fact that education institutions still stick to traditional lecture-based systems and ineffective implementation of Team-based Learning (TBL). Knowing how to work in a team and translate the experience to more effective outcomes is a large factor that decides success in our current dynamic economy for almost all industries. The World Economic Forum’s “Skills of 2025” states that skills such as working with people, technology use and development, and problem-solving are becoming increasingly essential in the workplace. Most of these skills are not being taught properly in most higher education institutions.

CognaLearn’s online team-based learning platform, InteDashboard, helps educators to easily implement Team-based Learning (TBL). This is done by digitising processes that in the past would have deterred educators from using TBL. Allowing educators to be more flexible in their curriculum and thus provide a higher quality of teaching that would help to prepare students for the workforce more adequately.

We built InteDashboard to apply, combine and analyze the impact of techniques proven to work in cognitive science research. Our platform makes it easier for professors to deliver team quizzes, cases and 360-degree teammate peer evaluations which helps learners develop skills such as analytical thinking and flexibility—demonstrated when students work on solving cases. Students will also hone active listening and empathy skills as they work in a team. 

InteDashboard provides real-time data dashboards, facilitation screens and immediate feedback mechanisms such as clarification requests and electronic gallery walks to drive engagement, quick resolution of trouble spots and deeper applied learning. We also enable meta-cognition with team review reports, and confidence-based testing that has proven to help increase learner performance.

InteDashboard aims to prepare students for the 21st century workforce with better skills, outcomes, efficiency, scale, and equity. Currently, the use of lecture-based systems has failed to prepare students for the skills needed to succeed in the workforce. This includes failing to apply the knowledge learnt in school into real life issues faced at work and working as a team to problem solve. 

By focusing on Team-based Learning, InteDashboard has been proven to yield positive impacts to institutions who implement it regularly. It has reduced the disparity in grades between top performing students and weaker students, thereby introducing a mechanism to increase equity. It has also been proven that team scores consistently outperform even that of the top scoring individual.This means that students are learning better in teams, as such median grades and more importantly, learning retention increases. Lastly, the overall drop-out and withdrawal rates of students who study at institutions using InteDashboard is reduced, meaning that more students are staying in school. The impacts that InteDashboard brings are both large in scope and varied in nature. This brings a multi-pronged approach to increase employment outcomes and quality of education. Considering the economic impact education has, the impact and importance of InteDashboard is on an individual, community and societal level.

Our leadership team consists of a diverse array of talents, with a majority of them having extensive experience in the field of education. This invaluable expertise positions us uniquely, providing firsthand insights into the dynamics of educational institutions. This will allow us to tailor and refine our platform, ensuring its relevance and utility in the educational landscape.

Before shifting to education, I was the chief financial officer of an airline which had grew from 400 to 800 employees in under 18 months before selling to Virgin Australia for $100 million. The biggest challenge I faced was finding talent for our team. Meanwhile, I was also the alumni career mentor to Columbia and Duke students and knew some talented people who couldn’t find the right job. This seemed like a worthy problem, so I shifted to education.

Then, while serving as the president of the Duke Alumni Club of Singapore, I met Robert Kamei who was then the Vice-Dean of a joint venture medical school setup by Duke and the National University of Singapore (“Duke-NUS”) who mentioned that Duke-NUS was looking for an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (“EIR”) to help commercialize some learning technologies they had developed to implement team-based learning (“TBL”).

Around the same time, I also had the opportunity to teach as an adjunct faculty member at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Asia campus. When I started teaching airline management, I used the same TBL approach used at Duke-NUS medical school. Having just gone from airline CFO to teaching in the classroom, I saw the employability gap between the traditional lecture (and digital lecture) and what my student would need to do at an airline. I also saw the ability of TBL to deliver an authentic learning experience that would prepare my students much better for the workforce. However, I also felt the pain point of trying to implement TBL with existing systems such as Blackboard and Canvas which were not well designed for teams. I had to integrate seven different systems to create an authentic and powerful team-based learning experience. It was clunky, a lot of work and didn’t use data very well. It was these experiences that lead to my role as an EIR in the Centre of Technology and Development (“CTED”) at Duke-NUS and then founding CognaLearn as a spinout form Duke-NUS along with four deans from Duke-NUS: Ranga Krishnan, Robert Kamei, Sandy Cook and Frank Starmer.

Dr. Ranga Krishnan, has written a book (The Art of Learning) applying principles of cognitive science to improve learning (http://tinyurl.com/5b8vw7m8). Another founder, Dr. Robert Kamei, has taught 1,000+ students at the National University of Singapore about “Learning How to Learn” and authored a book on Strategic Learning on the same topic (http://tinyurl.com/dzvdjbe6).

The company has customers in six continents. Our key markets are in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Singapore which comprises more than 80% of our revenue. 

We validated our market with over 100 paying software customers which demonstrates wide applicability from selective institutions like Columbia to more socially mobile ones like the University of South Alabama. We also have state institutions like Ohio State and Texas,  institutions owned by investors(Carlyle Group and Adtalem) and religious affiliated institutions (Creighton and Southern Virginia). 

 About half our customers are in the health sciences (medicine, nursing and pharmacy). However, we also have customers in business, law, social sciences, engineering, math, education which gives us confidence that there is wide applicability of Intedashboard. This is further reinforced by having customers in workforce training and K-12 schools.

We were able to become the dominant player in the TBL niche with more than 80% market share by assembling a team with complementary skills in education, technology and business. We also partnered with organizations with similar missions such as the Team-Based Learning Collaborative to launch our professional development certification programs and Epstein Education to re-launch the IF-AT forms. This distinguished us from others who only focused on technology.

Our growth strategy is rooted in providing exceptional value to TBL educators with our software, professional development events (approximately 50 per year) and with supplying IF-AT immediate feedback assessment technique forms. Our IF-AT and events segments serve over 1,000 potential institutional customers and generate over $200K in revenue in 2023. This creates leads for our software segment while generating revenue. Our seat penetration at existing software customers is less than 1% which creates expansion potential.

Expanding the TBL niche is our current strategic hurdle. TBL is an evidence-based methodology that has been shown to improve learning outcomes, develop 21st workforce skills and increase equity. We have received validation from universities and professors that are willing to take the risk and effort to change and try TBL that InteDashboard provides positive impacts. However, many professors and universities are either resistant or slow to change their teaching methods. Far too many still rely on traditional lectures or digital versions thereof.

The exposure to media and conferences that Solve provides could enhance InteDashboard's visibility. This promotes wider awareness of the benefits of TBL and encourages the general universities and professors to join our community and adopt TBL. 

In addition, the Solve community consists of a pool of intelligent and talented individuals—a valuable network that fosters exchange of ideas, innovation and opinions which will contribute to meaningful progress for CognaLearn.

InteDashboard provides a platform exclusively focused on and specialized for Team-based Learning. For example, at the Team-Based Learning Collaborative annual conference, CognaLearn has been the only software exhibitor since 2016 except for one year (2017). We also worked with organizations (e.g.Team-Based Learning Collaborative to launch our professional development certification programs, Epstein Education to re-launch the IF-AT forms) to distinguish us from others who focused on technology. 

This specialization allows CognaLearn to fully showcase the benefits and effectiveness of Team-based Learning, providing tailored tools and features that optimize collaboration, engagement, and learning outcomes within educational settings.

I firmly believe that TBL supported by our technology can improve outcomes, employability skills and retention for the students that need the most help. The transformative impact brought about by InteDashboard shapes students’ futures in lasting and meaningful ways.

Most education is built for individuals, but most of the world works in teams. This gap leaves many unprepared for the workforce, a trend which will accelerate as AI and digitization eliminate jobs that only require individual contributions.

We make it easy for educators to adopt Team-Based Learning by using our team-based learning software platform, immediate feedback assessment technique forms and professional development events and community. We have team quizzes, case exercises and 360-degree teammate peer evaluations which achieve our immediate goal of promoting students to develop and hone skills essential for the workforce as they problem-solve realistic issues as a team. We provide educators real-time data dashboards, facilitation screens and immediate feedback mechanisms such as clarification requests and electronic gallery walks. These drive engagement, quick resolution of trouble spots and deeper applied learning and increase learner performance. Hence, leading to the immediate goal of better learning outcomes.

When educators adopt team-based learning, there are three positive effects:

1.       Learner knowledge retention typically increases by 20%.

2.       Learners develop valuable teamwork and problem solving skills.

3.       Achievement gaps between underrepresented groups narrow or are eliminated.

We have supported over early adopters at 1,000 universities in 70 countries with their implementation of team-based learning.

There is an extensive research evidence available on Google Scholar for team-based learning (TBL): thousands of results team-based learning (TBL) - Google Scholar, immediate feedback assessment technique (IF-AT): thousands of results immediate feedback assessment technique - Google Scholar and InteDashboard (our platform): 85 results intedashboard - Google Scholar. Our professional development events have a median 9/10 feedback rating and the subject of research as well: Reinventing the webinar with online team‐based learning professional development workshops - Dolowitz - 2021 - New Directions for Teaching and Learning - Wiley Online Library. 

Some of our customers at Columbus State University in Georgia and the University of South Alabama presented research about the impact of TBL in general education classes. General education classes typically have a larger number of first generation and financially disadvantaged students. In this study, non-productive grades (Ds and Fs) dropped from 29% to 4% at one institution and 18% to 4% at another institution.

Impact goal: Help million students improve their learning outcomes 

Indicator: The cumulative count of students who have utilized our InteDashboard platform year-to-date

Indicator: Total number of unique participants in our TBL Professional Development workshops

Impact goal: transform education by helping educators replace traditional lectures with Team-based Learning

Indicator: Total percentage of TBL activities where more teams outperform individuals 

Indicator: Reflection or peer evaluation indicating the skills developed

CognaLearn was formed by deans from Duke-NUS Medical School, a pioneer in TBL. Our founders patented a method to apply and optimize learning techniques based on cognitive science research (Singapore Patent 11201800430X.). InteDashboard is built based on Team-based Learning, a teaching method that has proven by multiple studies to benefit students. A quick search on InteDashboard in Google Scholar shows 72 results, proving that InteDashboard is a well-researched platform. Many of the research mentioned benefits such as data-driven insights that better meet the needs of students, better learning outcomes and enhanced student engagement. As a TBL software, InteDashboard also uses AI/ Machine Learning to optimise workflow and data collection for educators. Recognising the shift of education online but also the benefits of offline teaching, InteDashboard is adaptable to be used in both settings to bring TBL into the classroom.

 Size of 18 total (13 full-time; 3 part-time and 2 interns)

Since 2015, 9 years

A fundamental principle of team-based learning is that a diverse team of students will produce better outcomes than individuals. We apply this philosophy to CognaLearn. We aspire to be a great place to work for a diverse team:  We maintain a diverse team and treat them as well as we can afford. No single race or country is a majority on our team.  Over 90% of our team is non-white.  54% are women. Our team is based in Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, and the United States. In addition, most of our founders are from underrepresented groups. Our team engagement surveys are 40% above the national average. Providing a great place to work for a diverse team is a starting point to contribute to the betterment of a diverse range of communities.

There are three elements to our business model:

1. B2B SaaS: we typical sell annual software licenses to universities on a per student basis

2. E-commerce sales of Immediate Feedback Assessment Forms: we sell printed forms to universities in bundles of 500 forms

3. Fees for professional development workshops and certifications: we charge fees for attending some of professional development events

Over 75% of our revenue comes from B2B SaaS and overall we have a gross margin of 80%.

We have validated our product, need and business model with $1m revenue, 80% gross margin, 20% EBITDA margin and breakeven operating cash flow. We are also the market leader in the TBL software niche with over 80% share. We serve early adopters of team-based learning at 1,000 universities in 70 countries. 100 in software with an 8K ACV, another 900 in our services such as professional development with a $200 ACV which we use as our go-to-market channel. Most of the customers are in the health sciences such as medicine, nursing and pharmacy. However, we have customers in many fields such as business, STEM, and social sciences.

Going forward we have three initiatives (data, community and adoption) and two strategic objectives.

Our first strategic objective is to deepen our competitive advantage in the TBL software niche in two ways:

1. Effective data dashboards. Our platform is effective for real-time data for professors teaching in the classroom. Our customers (including a UK university) have asked us to more easily visualize the data our platform collects to identify struggling students, predict academic performance and demonstrate the progress and impact of active learning.

1. Build a community forum. Our professional development program has conducted over 200 workshops reaching professors in 70 countries. We are the largest provider of TBL professional development. Our largest customer (a Scandinavian university) has asked us to build a community forum to provide pedagogical and technical support to the hundreds of professors that adopt TBL and our platform at their university. 

Not only will these help meet the needs of specific customers they will also promote network effects. The larger our customer base grows the value of our data and community will grow as well which deepens our competitive advantage.

Our second strategic objective is to extend access to our platform by lowering adoption barriers. Currently our product has served early adopters of TBL very well. As we progress we hope to refine and simplify our product to serve mainstream adopters of TBL.