GapoWork

GapoWork - the communication platform for schools, providing comprehensive online teaching tools.

1. The problem we are solving:
- It is estimated that 135 million students across the region would lose access to education without Online studying.
- When digital transformation in education becomes mandatory under the impact of Covid, millions of students and teachers have difficulties in teaching remotely because they are used to traditional learning methods.
Our product was born to solve those problems, we create opportunities for students to have equal access to quality online education, providing learning management tools and training for teachers and schools.

2. Solution
We bring tools to support educators, school leaders, and students with a comprehensive system of communication and interaction: from online teaching to communication networks.
We transform the whole school from an offline model to online model flexibility. All teachers and students are present, interactive, and engaged through the comprehensive communication tool which we provide.
- All members have a personal account. They can chat and connect with everyone in the school through the communication tool system. Besides, we integrate other utilities such as Zoom, Mini task, Survey... to help schools, teachers, and students be more connected.

A platform that both supports online classes and connects students/teachers with the school's cultural movements is really a solution that today's education needs. We make products not only for domestic use, but we will also bring this meaningful product to the world, first to countries in the same region: Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and/or Malaysia.

1. The cause and scale of the problem that we are solving:
- We started a project to create a product that helps improve connection, interaction with business. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we realized that schools and students had problems with online teaching and learning such as operating costs, difficulty in operation of online learning, low technology skills, lack of teaching and learning management tools... Therefore, we have developed more features to support educators, school boards, and students to solve these problems. 

- According to the statistics of the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam in 2019-2020, there are about 2.858 high schools with more than 2.6 million students, 10.770 elementary and middle schools with more than 5.6 million students in Vietnam. If the Covid-19 pandemic continues to get worse, it will affect not only 8.2 million students in Vietnam but also millions of students in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia who can suffer from its access to quality study opportunities.

(Survey information: https://bom.to/IIW2gP)

2. Factors related to the solution:
- Our products will provide tools to support online teaching and learning, communication, internal interaction, organization of programs, school-wide activities, thereby dealing with problems that hinder the educational process of schools and students.
- Second, we have a 24/7 support team to solve users' questions when having problems in the teaching and learning process. This helps us capture users' difficulties and promptly handle them anytime, anywhere to ensure the best quality product experience.

- We provide solutions for schools: From primary school, junior high school, high school, university, private schools, educational centers, organizations.

- They are facing difficulties when the pandemic lasts, the demand for online teaching and learning is increasingly strong, but many schools, students, and teachers are still unable to adapt to the digital transformation revolution in education. Besides, the economic problem makes schools a headache on how to optimize teaching aids.
- Our market research team consists of education specialists with more than 15 years of experience who have gone somewhere to survey the needs and problems of schools, teachers and students. We understand what they need, so the product we bring is the right solution at the right time.
- We provide tools to support online teaching and learning, communication and interaction within schools, thereby solving the needs of schools and students. Besides, the easy-to-use friendly interface also helps them quickly grasp and overcome technological obstacles.

- 24/7 user support system is also a strong point so that we can grasp the problems and difficulties of users at all times.

- The problem we are solving, the solution we offer and the population we want to target are almost 99% suitable for this Challenge
- It is estimated that 135 million school-going students across the region would lose access to education without homeschooling. Our products create opportunities for students to have equal access to quality online education, easily applied to schools, whether in the city or the countryside.

- Learning management systems, personalization, training and professional development opportunities are what we bring to schools and students. This is one of the main goals of this Challenge.

- We offer solutions: Bring tools to support educators, School Boards and students a comprehensive communication and interaction system: from online teaching to communication network. We transform the whole school from an offline model to online model flexibility. All teachers and students are present, interactive and engaged through the comprehensive communication tool which we provide.

The Team Lead is the CEO. Besides, we are oriented by G-Group - A financial technology group with 11 subsidiary companies, 30 million users

In the complicated situation of the Covid 19 epidemic in Vietnam and globally, digital transformation in education is necessary. If schools, teachers, and students can not adapt, education will stagnate, and students might lose the opportunity to have a decent education, affecting future generations.

- The transformation to the online teaching and learning model is a current trend, and certainly not only at this time, but the form of online teaching will also gradually replace the traditional education in the next 5-10 years.
- Our product is the opening for this 4.0 education revolution. We provide solutions so that schools can adapt to the current situation, even in the future when the epidemic can break out unexpectedly, teachers and students can adapt immediately without panic.
- The pain points that teachers and students are facing (lack of teaching management tools, insufficient technical knowledge, etc.) will be handled by Gapowork.

- We have approached many schools in Vietnam, from primary school to university or private schools. Currently, schools have used GapoWork products as an operating platform in online teaching and learning. More than 17,000 teachers and students are already using GapoWork.
- The results show that online teaching activities have become more effective, the quality of teaching sessions is better. Besides, the school saves a lot of time in notifying the regulations and timetables to students.

Our product is software which can be used flexibly on computers and mobile devices.
We give each school a workspace, creating an internal social network for teachers and students to work. Each member has a personal account where can exchange, interact, post to share with other members. Each class can create a group, which can help students update information in real-time. 

+  Zoom integrated on GapoWork has all the features of Zoom business on the market, such as recording lessons, poll votes, QnA, etc and supporting create online classrooms for up to 300 people, unlimited meeting time.

+ Chat system, General group, Video call, Livestream support extensive interaction. They help teachers and students easily exchange information quickly and conveniently, connect more multi-way.
+ Recognition feature: this helps administrators to recognize teachers, teachers to record students. With timely recognition, people will be motivated to strive more in teaching and learning.
+ Survey feature: Every semester, teachers will need to send a survey to students and parents about the quality of teaching. It usually takes time and costs to print, but you can do this on GapoWork extremely quickly, get instant feedback. 
+ Organization chart feature: it helps the school easily manage the teaching system. School leaders can quickly access the information of each teacher and student. Teachers can easily add a list of courses and classes to a general group, chat group with just a few taps without adding each student one by one.

The use of social media for collaborating learning has a significant positive association with online knowledge sharing behavior (β = .583, p < 0.001), meaning thereby that the more intense use of social media for collaborative learning by students, the more knowledge sharing between peers and colleagues. Also, interaction with the teacher seeing the significant statistical positive association with students engagement (β = .450, p < 0.001), telling that more conversation with teachers leads to a high level of students engagement. Similarly, the practical interpretation of this result is an expected 4.5% increase in students’ participation for every 10% increase in interaction with teachers. Interaction with peers has a significant positive association with students engagement (β = .210, p < 0.001). Practically, the finding revealed that 10% upturn in student involvement, there is a 2.1% increase in peer interaction. There is a significant positive association between online knowledge sharing behavior and students engagement (β = 0.247, p < 0.001), and finally, students engagement has been a statistically significant positive relationship with students’ performance (β = .972, p < 0.001), this is the clear indication that more engaged students in collaborative learning via social media leads to better students’ performance.
Link research:https://slejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40561-020-00118-7

We bring tools to support educators, school leaders and students who have difficulties in teaching remotely because they are used to traditional learning methods.

We use the Monthly active user (MAU) index to measure the way against the target KPI.
That is the number of active users in a month across the entire platform. In addition, we are also interested in the following two indicators: Active ratio of total employees of a school/organization, Time on platform, Customer service rating.

- In 2022, we have a target of 1 million MAU on the platform. In 2023, we have a target of 5 million MAU, going global in the next five years.
- Our mission is to provide schools and organizations with comprehensive online learning and teaching solutions, helping to increase internal connections between organizations and promote equality in learning opportunities for students in Vietnam in general and the region in particular.
- Vision: GapoWork will be the first choice when schools and organizations look for an effective online teaching and communication support platform.

- The limitation that we face is the lack of internet systems, computer and phone equipment in remote schools, many areas do not have wifi to use the platform. Organizations, the Government and the Ministry of Information and Communication, will find a solution to overcome this problem. 

Collaborate with NGOs and third parties to reach more schools in the area. Contact the volunteering units to be able to bring wifi and combiner to schools in remote areas. If this technical infrastructure problem can be solved, deploying GapoWork will become very simple.

1. A brief history of the organization: 

- G-Group - a Financial Technology Group, was born in 2016. We focus on investment and development in finance and technology, operating with 11 subsidiary companies and a team with more than 1000 employees. Currently, our product has about 30 million users.
We initially developed this platform for business only, but then we found that schools and students also faced difficulties in teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Schools need a solution to improve interaction and connection between teachers, parents, and students. Therefore, we built and developed this product with easy-to-use, friendly and close-to-user interfaces that help them quickly grasp and overcome technological obstacles.

- We started to work on this project in 2019; Gapowork was published in May 2021.

2. The driving force behind developing our solution is:
- Realizing the need for a technology solution to support connection and interaction for the school and student network. However, schools, students, and teachers are still unable to adapt to this digital transformation revolution. They face difficulties as the pandemic drags on, the demand for teaching and learning online is increasing. Besides, the economic problem makes schools struggle to optimize ed-tech tools to support teaching.

- We provide tools to support online teaching and learning, communication, and interaction within schools, thereby solving the needs of schools and students. This solution we bring to schools: From primary schools, junior high schools, high schools, universities, private schools, educational centers, organizations."

- Our team has about 200 people.
- Besides, we are oriented and supported by G-Group - a financial technology group with 11 subsidiary companies, 30 million users. 

- Our team is a collection of experienced and enthusiastic people. Each member has their strengths and comes from the cultures of companies in the technology industry. We have a common goal of creating a product with real value for the community, and we have worked and devoted ourselves to that goal.
- We own an IT and Product team with more than 100 people who are true warriors and ready to work day and night regardless of holidays to ensure progress.
We have a strong, experienced Business Development team in the field of Edtech and B2B. We also have a dynamic Marketing team, many ideas, and an understanding of market insights. Besides, we own a dedicated customer care team, always support customers 24/7, they are hardworking bees, always want to bring the best to customers. In addition, our Back office team is also very respectful, who build and develop a strong corporate culture. We respect the three core values of the company: Listening and sharing, User focusing, and Integrity. With a strong in experience and culturally unified, it is not too much for us to claim that we can accomplish all goals.

Our Team Lead is the CEO, named Ha Trung Kien.
He is the founder as well as co-founder of some outstanding projects in Vietnam, such as:
- CPO of Appota
- CPO/CEO of Appota Pay
- COO, Head of Product Technology of Trust Circle/Oriente
- Co-founder of DK Online Network Solution from
- Vice President of Applistar Corp in Hanoi/Tokyo

Appota - a company that raised $10 million in Series C funding, Appota focuses on building an entertainment ecosystem that consists of 6 key business sectors: Game Publishing, Advertising, Online Entertainment & Esports, e-wallet.
Trust circle is a fintech company acquired by Oriente, Gpay is a payment intermediary company, an e-wallet invested by KBbank of Korea..

We recently became a strategic partner with Zoom Global - the globally popular group meeting application. Besides, we also provide free Zoom service on the GapoWork platform for 1000 businesses and schools, large schools such as Can Tho University, Vietnam National University, Thuyloi University, and many primary, secondary and high schools nationwide.

We reach out to Union members in 64 provinces and cities by cooperating with the Ho Chi Minh Youth Union Central Committee, currently, GapoWork is the preferred platform for deployment within the central union system. In addition, the Ministry of Information and Communications also uses GapoWork to communicate about the Covid epidemic to its subordinates.

We took part in the Octava Social Innovation Challenge to spread the product to Southeast Asia - a potential market that we will hit soon. 

The barrier is that in remote areas, the internet system and computer/ phone equipment are scarce. We need partner organizations to support us. Our product can also interact with potential customers through the contest and learn more experiences from other ed-tech products.

- Network connections (government, private sector, implementation communities)
- Public Relations (branding/marketing strategy, social and global media)

- Product / Service Distribution (e.g., expanding client base)

As mentioned above, the problem we face is the lack of the internet, computer/telephone, and infrastructure in remote areas. Therefore, we need the support of the government and public community organizations to help schools and students in remote areas have the opportunity to use the product.
Besides, in the regional markets, we cannot fully understand the customer insight, which will become simpler when organizations or 3rd parties provide know-how about the market. Thus, the activities to reach target customers, such as branding, global media, etc., will be based on that to implement.