Strategic alliance set to drive its regional expansion

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Jamaican e-learning solutions provider, One on One has finalised an agreement with Community Systems Foundation (CSF), an American non-profit organisation, to implement its National Digital Education Eco-System across several new markets.

The system, which combines the power of One on One’s award-winning Learning Management System (LMS) and the Open Education Management Information System (OpenEMIS) software, is currently being used by the Bahamian government to manage its education framework, allowing administrators a full view of its education system at any given time. In addition, the system provides the Bahamian authorities with the ability to power a hybrid education system.

This development with CSF forms a significant step in One on One’s mandate to position itself at the forefront of the effort to digitise education systems within the Caribbean and the Latin American region, particularly in small island states looking to transform their education systems. One on One began operations in 2013 in Kingston, providing customised e-learning solutions for government agencies, corporates, and individuals and went public last year through an initial public offer of shares.

OpenEMIS, which was conceptualised and designed by CSF, in partnership with UNESCO, is a platform that allows for full integration of a country’s education system. The platform, which is currently being piloted or adopted in 31 countries worldwide, was created to be used primarily by government administrators and policy makers to collect, manage, and analyse data on the education ecosystem.

Additionally, OpenEMIS is designed to produce indicators critical to the monitoring of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), which centres around the global movement towards quality education as established by the United Nations. The platform gives users the ability to access timely and accurate reports on performance of teachers, students, as well as other resources using the data collected.

Through the platform, administrators will be able to set up programmes, assign resources, and track their progress through system-generated reports as needed. The system was successfully adopted in The Bahamas, with the support of CSF, whose team provided backstopping to One on One in the on-the-ground execution of the implementation.

Bahamian experience with OpenEMIS

Since 2020, the Bahamian government has been using the platform to manage the resources in all its public schools nationally at the primary and secondary levels, which, when combined, stands at approximately 250 schools. As at December 2022, the Department of Education was able to generate over 40,000 digital reports on time, which marked a major milestone in the government’s efforts to fully digitise its education and record keeping systems.

This was a major project milestone for all stakeholders and puts the Bahamas education system as one of the most digitised systems, globally. This result sets the foundation for continued partnership and collaboration between One on One, CSF, the Bahamas Telecommunication Company (BTC) and the Bahamas government.

One on One plans for OpenEMIS

On the heels of having delivered on these contractual obligations and seeing a strengthened working partnership with CSF, One on One is now looking to seize the opportunity to offer the implementation of this system in other countries across the region. With this in mind, One on One and CSF have agreed on an expanded scope of their partnership, which saw both parties finalising a contract in December 2022.

Speaking on the successful run in The Bahamas, Dr Ricardo Anderson, One on One’s research, development and digital innovation consultant and the lead on the project, commented: “We are truly pleased with the outcome of this partnership in The Bahamas, which began in 2019 as a response to the devastating effects of Hurricane Dorian.”

Anderson added: “We were committed to leading the Department of Education’s effort to digitise its education system and being able to deliver on this commitment is a significant win for everyone involved. With the learnings from this project, along with the support of our trusted IT solutions partners, CSF, we believe that we can effectively and efficiently complete these EMIS implementation projects across numerous countries in the region.”

The CSF Team was equally enthused by the partnership and the prospect of transforming education in the region with its executive director, Jon F. Kapp saying, “the CSF and One on One partnership model represents a promising approach, ensuring authorities have the high-level technical assistance where and when needed to support the transformation of education systems to deliver better learning outcomes”.

For his part, Ricardo Allen, One on One’s CEO, remarked: “One on One’s vision is to enable as many countries as possible to digitalise their education system as a way of insulating against any short-medium term disruption in the administration of learning. We are looking to expand our reach in 2023 on the back of a successful IPO in September 2022, which provides a solid capital base for us to take on larger scale projects across the region.”