Frontrunner Learning Centres are a respected Australian afterschool tutoring and learning franchise that help students from grades 1 through 12 reach their potential academically. Frontrunner provides a unique free assessment to help determine each student’s needs, then customises a suite of both online and offline resources to meet those unique needs. Currently, Frontrunner operates a network of six learning centres throughout Australia.
Frontrunner has its own suite of online learning tools that it provides as part of its learning programs, but those were designed to complement the students’ in-person tutoring sessions at one of their six centres. So when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred and mandatory quarantines went into place, preventing students from attending, Frontrunner found itself in a distressing position.
“Overnight, nearly 100 percent of the parents called to cancel their students’ next term and ongoing tuition,” said Jeffrey Quinn, Principal and Founder of Frontrunner Learning Centres. “Without being able to attend their individualised tutoring sessions at our centres, it didn’t make sense for them to continue paying for our program. Just like that, our business was gone.”
Establishing a Remote Learning Program
Frontrunner immediately realised it needed to establish a completely remote learning program so that it could continue to provide its students with ongoing education while also protecting them throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. They not only needed the ability to schedule direct tutoring sessions with students over the video, but also the ability to provide all of Frontrunner’s software applications – some of which are proprietary – to all students, no matter what devices they were using at home.
“Our entire business runs on a series of desktop applications and paper-based activities, and without them, we are not able to deliver our unique education programs to our students,” said Mr. Quinn.
For the ability to quickly and securely deliver their legacy applications to all of their students on any device, Frontrunner turned to Cameyo.
“We were able to go from starting our trial, to getting it set up, and running our applications on Cameyo all within a day – with no technical expertise,” said Mr. Quinn. “I went from losing all of my students to being able to deliver the rest of the term’s programs virtually. This was a huge relief as our parent’s pay in advance so we could give them the sessions they paid for already plus show them that, through the simplicity of Cameyo, their children could still be helped to get in front and stay in front academically.”
Frontrunner is now hosting all of its education applications on Cameyo, making it simple for students to access those applications no matter what device they are using from home.
“Simplicity is key because if the delivery system adds complexity to the student’s experience, that could easily distract from the learning process,” said Mr. Quinn. “But it really couldn’t be simpler with Cameyo. All I do now is provide students with a link to the applications they need to access via Cameyo, and they can use the full desktop version of the application from their browser. I can then walk them through the lesson virtually over Zoom, all while knowing they have seamless access to the applications they need for those lessons.”
The Results
By quickly responding to the crisis and launching its entire learning program as a distance learning service with Cameyo, Frontrunner was able to go back to all of the parents who canceled and let them know their students would be able to finish their semesters online. Within days a large percentage of parents had re-enrolled their students, and more are signing back up each day.
“Without Cameyo, we would have lost our entire business,” said Mr. Quinn. “Even though we’re still working on getting the rest of our students back, we wouldn’t have been able to offer the online program at all without Cameyo’s platform. Cameyo literally saved my business.”
In addition to helping to deliver an online learning experience in the near-term during the COVID-19 crisis, Mr. Quinn has also realized a new opportunity that Cameyo can help the centre pursue.
“First, we plan to expand the use of Cameyo out to our franchisees to help protect them from losing their students as well,” said Mr. Quinn. “And I also plan to use Cameyo to offer new remote learning programmes moving forward, which enables me to open up a new revenue opportunity by serving students who can’t physically make it to one of our locations.”
“Frontrunner Learning’s Studybetter TeleTutoring and Homeschooling franchises – with the help of Cameyo – will keep our students in front of their screens and their online schoolwork so they can stay ahead,” said Mr. Quinn.
If this sounds like it would benefit your students, please contact Mr. Quinn at [email protected].