Analysing the business model of an Edtech platform – Ulesson
Introduction
I would like to analyze the business model of Ulesson an Edtech platform in Nigeria
ULEESON is an Edtech providing educational content in line with Nigeria – West Africa curriculum ( it’s a great tool in preparing for the West Africa Examination Certificate WAEC exams, it is mostly used by primary and secondary school students, it’s an eLearning platform,
They solve the problem of teacher to pupil ratio which diminish the quality of education, the app also help students study at their own pace, be it fast or slow learner.
Analysing ULESSON business model on :
1. Platformization
– Ulesson make use of a platform-based model for it’s business, it serves as a connector, that connects students with the available educational content and services on their platform such as video lessons, test, questions, and answers, even test results.
platformization has helped Ulesson creates value by helping them achieve their aim of reaching out to students and helping them to successfully learn without physically being in a classroom.
2. Rentiership
ULESSON archives this rentiership by getting money from students who assess the platform in the form of subscription fee, they also get money through data used on their site, this money is what they use to finance and run the business even make huge profit, no wonder they have an excellent customer relation, I got to know this because of my experience with them,there was a day I was looking for a material for a topic in basic electricity so I had to download the ULESSON app, sign up for it, so for some time I didn’t even visit the app, I was so surprised I got mails even phone calls from their staff asking me why I’ve not been using the app, they want me to tell them my experience and if there is any difficulty in using it, I see that as a good marketing strategy and also a way to increase and improve their rentiership.
3. Assetisation
The educational resources developed by Ulesson, which includes their video, painting, question which they get from experts that come together to form the content ( Definitely their will be an agreement of payment with those that created the content) but those contents are considered as ULESSON assets and they must continue to update these assets so they will not be outdated, since this content is the major thing that keeps them going , their content or resources is what brings people to their platform, so for the platform to continue to be relevant, the assets of ULESSON is a determinant
4. Scaling
They achieve this by leveraging on the use of technological tools which allows them to deliver their lesson on line, they can even reach more people without physically expanding their office the only thing they need is to improve their technology to reach a wider audience.
Just like the good customer service relation I explained earlier and partnership with relevant organization such as private or public school, (for my country Nigeria,they will be more comfortable partnering with private school, since it’s a fee paying school and the believe is that they will have parents or guardian who can finance it,) this can also help them get more patronage, just like in one of our reading this week which mentioned Uber and it’s aggressive marketing skills, presently in Lagos Uber as partnered with another company called MOOV, and what they do is import many Suzuki cars that are not so big, they give it to drivers and enroll them under the Uber platform, so now not having a car does not stop whoever is interested in being a Uber driver . I see ULESSON taking the advantage of aggressive marketing too to get more patronage.
For the production and exploitation of scale, they produce educational content that are standard because they produce it with the help or in collaboration with professionals in the field of the subject.
They also exploit scale by their aim which is to give personalized learning to students , which means students can learn at their own pace, be it a fast or slow learner and they use different methods to achieve this.
They also partner with other organizations, all these enhanced scaling.
Conclusion
Ulesson is a good business model that demonstrates how platformization, rentiership ,assetisation and scaling are used for them to achieve their business objective which is basically to help students to achieve academic success and at the same time is the aim any business man or woman.
Reference
1.https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2021.1891422
2.https://logicmag.io/scale/thescale-is-just-unfathomable
3.https://eng.uber.com/experimentation-platform/
4. https://ulesson.com/
Hello there Olubukola. Thank you for this post and your discussion of Ulesson. I am familiar with this platform but I was very interested to hear your discussion of it. I had a few points in response overall (which you can see below) and a few questions designed to just stimulate further thinking on the subject.
Use of the literature: I think we should prioritise this for posts going forward. You were clearly drawing from the Komljenovic (2020) article but I would like to see more explicit connections to the readings for these posts, complete with inline citations (Komljenovic, 2020) and full references at the end: Komljenovic, J., 2021. The rise of education rentiers: digital platforms, digital data and rents. Learning, Media and Technology, 46(3), pp.320-332. Hint: I use Google Scholar to find the article, then click Cite and then choose Harvard. I think this will really bolster the critical arguments you are making in your posts, making that analysis of the Nigerian context even more impactful. So if possible, try to prioritise this going forward.
In terms of ULesson explicitly, I would like to see a bit more criticality here. You did an excellent job of laying out their business model but even in that presentation there was room for critical discussion. Just something to consider for future posts, but in the following consider how this could be presented with a bit more critique:
‘The educational resources developed by Ulesson, which includes their video, painting, question which they get from experts that come together to form the content ( Definitely their will be an agreement of payment with those that created the content) but those contents are considered as ULESSON assets and they must continue to update these assets so they will not be outdated, since this content is the major thing that keeps them going , their content or resources is what brings people to their platform, so for the platform to continue to be relevant, the assets of ULESSON is a determinant’
The fact that these assets are purchased from expert content creators (teachers?) is fine, but one wonders if this duty to update these materials is also equated with payment? What role do these experts have in shaping the learning content and curriculum? Probably little at all and all of this is very difficult to glean from a website to be sure! But a question to be asking as you do these further analyses.
Serving who exactly?: you mentioned something interesting that I wanted to pick up on: ‘for my country Nigeria,they will be more comfortable partnering with private school, since it’s a fee paying school and the believe is that they will have parents or guardian who can finance it,’
Agreed and that is much the same as in many locations in my limited experience, targeting those who can pay essentially. I am a realistic person so am aware of the challenges of reaching all (particularly those in hard to reach locations like rural schools), but something to consider here is the impact that such a targeting can render on existing inequalities (essentially further disadvantaging those who were already disadvantaged). This isn’t the subject of this post obviously but a question that came to mind as I was reading your post. Ulesson’s business model is fairly common, and logical from a business perspective, but how might it further stratify an educational content like Nigeria’s?
Personalised learning: this is a very common focus of edtech, but how is it defined and indeed on what data is that personalised being presented? How does one personalise an educational experience based on limited data points? Again this isn’t the subject of this post but I think personalised learning is something that is subject to critique. What goes into it? What in all of that is personalised?
What are the limitations of data-informed learning (or learning analytics) on providing a personalised learning experience? In my experience, time on site is not a very useful metric of anything, and the sheer volume of data needed to properly personalise is potentially well beyond any of these services. Most of these services are forced to supplement student data with other datasets to offer some sort of predictive capacity (what the student will do next) but rarely is there any accountability or transparency in this process (data integrity).
So again these aren’t critiques of your post per se, but just questions that sprung to mind on reading it! I encourage you to continue to frame these discussions around Nigerian edtech (when possible) and definitely something to consider for a dissertation topic later in the programme. We can chat about it at some point if you would like. Stay well Olubukola!
Thank you so much sir, for your comment, it actually challenged me to do better,while writing the blog I felt somehow restricted looking at the topic but thanks to your new ideas about it, I really appreciate sir and would not mind a chat with you, can I contact you directly on your mail regarding blog issue?
Thanks for your support
Hello there Olubukola. So sorry I didn’t see this before. Happy to chat. Perhaps choose a time that suits you here: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/MichaelGallaghersDigitalEducationBookings@uoe.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/ and then we can meet and discuss. How does that sound?
Thanks, I already booked a meeting with you, I appreciate