HONG KONG, Sept. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Award-winning Hong Kong start-up EXL Inc, founded in 2017 after receiving seed funding from local venture capital fund Beyond Ventures, has reinvented the way computer programming is taught remotely, as well as in a conventional classroom.
The developer of intelligent learning technologies has unveiled the groundbreaking CodingRooms.com solution at a time when instructors worldwide have been struggling to teach programming remotely.
The result is the world's first virtual classroom for teaching programming online and in socially-distanced schools.
Led by 20-year-old CEO and Co-founder Sasha Varlamov, EXL has already signed up more than a dozen top-tier universities, tutorial centers and schools that will now be using CodingRooms.com to teach programming in the 2020-21 academic year.
A single browser-based platform combines chat and direct messaging with Zoom-like video and audio-conferencing, as well as a presentation capability and multiple Google Doc-like interactive coding "notebooks".
CodingRooms.com enables instructors to teach a huge range of programming languages such as Python, C++, Java and JavaScript.
In the course of a typical class session, a teacher can stream and present, while students watch him/her actually coding in real time. Conversely, students have their own individual notebooks that the teacher can see and interact with. The entire class session is video recorded for later reference from the cloud, and can also be stored in a saved state.
A unified instructor dashboard can accommodate up to 500 students in a live class and enables a teacher to see every student's code, answer questions and take control of each integrated development environment (IDE) – and all in real time. An IDE is an application that provides computer programmers with comprehensive facilities for software development. The CodingRooms.com IDE, however, has the intelligence to offer suggestions, while checking errors and documentation.
Sasha Varlamov said: "We hold years of experience in developing intelligent tools for computer science education, and now look forward to ushering CodingRooms.com into every programming classroom around the world. It wasn't until COVID-19 hit that we, as educators, fully realised the challenge of teaching online, but the results of our efforts are now giving rise to new opportunities. For example, CodingRooms.com is being integrated into the new standard pedagogy as an enabling facility likely to endure long beyond the pandemic crisis."
He added: "As well as disrupting today's economy, COVID-19 is changing the entire framework in which we will build the economy of the future. I'm talking about a future in which software and technologies such as artificial intelligence will dominate the global economy. In this regard, coding is becoming the new literacy, so I believe work being done today at EXL will become a foundational aspect of the educational experience of the future."
Aimed at university professors, lecturers, teachers and individuals engaged in teaching programming or computer science, CodingRooms.com is offered at US$49.99 per month for virtual classes involving up to 50 students, and US$199.99 per month for up to 500 students.
Since its inception in 2017, EXL's vision has been to provide teachers with the most advanced tools to help students learn effectively and efficiently. The company won honours in the ATEC Startup Competition at last year's Asia Technology Entrepreneurship Conference (ATEC), an entrepreneurship event organized by the Hong Kong alumni associations of Harvard, Columbia and MIT, as well as the South China alumni association of Stanford.
About EXL Inc
EXL Inc is a venture-backed EdTech start-up that aims to be the go-to platform for computer science and programming teachers and students. Since inception in 2017, our vision has been to provide teachers with the most advanced tools to help students learn most effectively and efficiently. Our team is laser-focused on delivering the most efficient, valuable and engaging learner experience possible, while maintaining a degree of scalability. The EXL Inc product roadmap religiously adheres to these principles, while facilitating interaction and adding functionality to increase engagement. For more information on EXL Inc and CodingRooms, please visit www.exlskills.com and www.CodingRooms.com respectively.
