Yeira, a platform that democratizes e-learning technology

A study carried out for Cisco Systems by the consultancy firm Kaagan Research showed Latin America's progress in the implementation of e-learning solutions: 38% of companies in the region use it to train and provide skills to their staff. Statista has similarly forecast a global e-learning market growth of over $240 billion in 2022.

The opportunities for improvement revealed by the growth in this field have been used by Adriana Caballero, a Mexican student on the university master's degree in Education and ICT (E-learning) of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) to promote Yeira. It was one of the projects showcased at the final of SpinUOC 2022, the university's entrepreneurship programme, which was held in Barcelona on 30 June.

For Adriana, this enterprise is already creating the e-learning technology of the future thanks to a platform that enables companies, universities and teachers to create online courses using a variety of tools in a single place. Yeira facilitates interaction, learning and access to metrics in order to assess the effectiveness of both the course content and the process itself.

Much more interesting learning structures can be built as a result of the creators' goal of transforming and facilitating the creation of online courses that, in addition to exciting users, democratize technology to enable any person or organization to create high quality e-learning materials.

"Yeira" is a Hebrew word meaning to illuminate with knowledge. "That's why we chose this name: we want more people to shine with their knowledge, we want courses to be exciting and transformative, because improving education improves everything else: it means creating progress and building the future of humankind," said Adriana in the presentation she gave at the event.

Evolution of Yeira and its e-learning model

The idea was launched in 2016, and its software as a service (SaaS) subscription model is perfect for SMEs, which can start immediately with subscriptions starting at $51 a month for 100 students. Tailored plans starting at $3 per student a month are available for large companies and higher education institutions with more complex needs. Over 50,000 people in 23 Latin American countries have taken courses on Yeira to date, and the online courses of over 180 SMEs, large companies and universities have been improved thanks to the platform.

"We have such a wide variety of resources available to us that selecting just three of them gives you over 100,000 possible combinations. This means that something that would take months to create on other platforms can be created on Yeira in only a few minutes and without any pre-existing technical knowledge: all you have to do is create an account on our website to start immediately and then sign up to a monthly or annual plan after the two-week trial period," said Adriana.

Yeira's competitive edge

In 2020 Yeira added a new authoring tool called Bloom that provides users with a library of three types of learning resources for instruction (videos, documents, presentations and components that make content more interactive, such as buttons, animations and drop-down menus), assessment (reactive components for quizzes), and socializing (areas for posting comments, chat and survey facilities, notice boards, etc.). When these three aspects are present, students can learn by observing, experiencing and sharing with their peers.

Ten years making an impact

The platform, which makes it easier and faster to create, distribute and analyse e-learning solutions, was one of the eight entrepreneurial projects presented at the 10th SpinUOC – the UOC programme developed by Hubbik to foster entrepreneurship, disseminate the knowledge created at the university to society at large and increase employability.