Previous EdTechX Award Winner Showcase — Seneca Learning
“The way most people learn is completely wrong,” says Stephen Wilks, co-founder of Seneca Learning and winner of the 2020 EdTechX Impact Award. With the EdTechX Startup Awards approaching again, we spoke to Stephen to learn about Seneca’s journey since receiving the Award.
Launched in 2018 by Stephen and his co-founder, Lukas Feddern, Seneca is a free online learning platform that applies cognitive neuroscience to make learning more efficient and enjoyable for school children. The inspiration behind the project grew from the pair’s realisation that most people don’t learn in an effective way. “Whilst at university, we became more and more interested in how we learn, and how we can learn more efficiently. The more we learned about Neuroscience and Psychology, the more we realised that what most people do is completely wrong,” said Stephen. “I was one of the people using the worst possible learning techniques and I wanted to fix this for everyone. If we could build a free system to allow people to learn more effectively, we thought that would be a good goal to aim for.”
Today, Seneca’s free platform is helping over 5 million school children learn more efficiently. To quantify the efficacy of their methodology, the company ran a randomised control trial which revealed that students who used Seneca scored 105% higher on the final test, compared to the students who learned using traditional methods. Stephen believes it was the scale of Seneca’s impact in terms of number of people, and the evidence-based approach to the impact that were potentially two factors that won them the EdTechX Impact Award. “I think we try to think of Impact as helping a large number of people. Impact can have more easily measurable dimensions in terms of number of people, but also the efficacy of learning, and lots of people feeling more positively about their learning,” he said.
“Our primary goal is to create a free personalised education for every child in the world” — Stephen Wilks
The Seneca team have had a busy year since winning the EdTechX Impact Award with schools across the UK, USA, Brazil and Mexico using Seneca to support their students with remote learning during lockdowns, as well as working with governments to support schools in their countries and states. The structural change in the schooling and examination systems brought on by the pandemic globally meant that Seneca had to build an entirely new platform and interface to support parents and teachers during the school closures, putting financial strain on the company. At the same time, however, it also increased the positive impact their offering had on learners. “We would love to have this positive impact on more children in more countries,” said Stephen. “Our primary goal is to create a free personalised education for every child in the world.”
Stephen’s advice to startup companies in the edtech space is to be outcome oriented. “If you want to achieve something, have clear milestones and accountability mechanisms to ensure you get there. Then persuade as many people who are goal-driven and outcome-oriented to join your team,” he said. He also strongly encourages other edtech startups to enter the EdTechX Awards. “It is a good opportunity to analyse and think about your project in terms of impact in relation to other initiatives in the space, which gives you an opportunity to zoom out and think more broadly. “
Find out more and submit your application to the 2021 EdTechX Startup Awards here >>
