Teamie

Teamie is a cloud-based collaborative learning platform for schools, colleges and universities, and for companies running staff training. The homepage sums it up as "Social Learning Made Awesome!" and "A cloud-based collaborative learning platform that fits into your ecosystem." It has two audiences: education, where it pitches "the power of Collaborative Learning in your school, college or university", and enterprise, where it promises to "Transform your Enterprise Learning & Development and Training programs with Mobile Learning."

What sets Teamie apart from a folder-and-module LMS is its interface. Teaching and communication happen in a social newsfeed, where teachers and trainers post announcements, resources and discussions, and learners respond in the same stream. The rest of the platform, from lessons and quizzes to calendars, gamification and analytics, sits around that feed.

What a school or college gets

A newsfeed for teaching. In one client statement on the homepage, a school that replaced a traditional VLE describes "the concise, friendly, and familiar newsfeed" as offering "opportunities for clear information and discussion", and says that "small, but important features such as locking a post opened up ideas for formative assessment practices."

Dynamic lessons. The same school writes that "Lessons can be dynamic, and existing materials very easily imported and adapted." A teacher can bring existing material into Teamie and keep reworking a lesson during the term. Teamie's own blog lists creating or modifying lesson plans and assignments in real time among the things an LMS like Teamie lets educators do.

Personalized learning. The blog says Teamie lets educators share resources with specific groups of students in a class, or across multiple modules and classes, which is how a teacher differentiates the material for different groups.

Assessment and feedback. Teachers can build quizzes, and the Etiqa Academy statement mentions creating "resources and quizzes using the simple interface on Teamie." The blog adds collecting student feedback and using learning analytics to understand student performance, track progress and focus on learning outcomes.

Gamification and calendars. According to the blog, Teamie can award points and badges for actions and participation, with leaderboards to track them, and a calendar tool shows learners their upcoming events and due dates.

Collaboration. The blog describes collaboration among learners, instructors and peers, and lists the uses Teamie is put to: collaboration and social learning, course management and online learning, assessment and feedback, MOOCs and blended learning.

Recent updates. The homepage's What's New panel shows the platform's named releases. Version 2.25, called Addax and announced on Thursday, March 2, 2023, added Personalized Posts, Recurring Calendar Events and Exporting Poll Results. Earlier entries are an Android app update to version 8.2 in January 2023 and the Yildun release, 2.23, in November 2022.

Mobile apps and integrations

The homepage says: "Learn Anytime Anywhere. With Teamie's iOS and Android Apps, you have the tools to learn and teach from wherever you are." Both app stores are linked, so teachers and students can post, read and respond from a phone as well as a browser.

On integrations, the school statement credits "'single sign on' functionality and deep integration with other systems (SIMS Information Management System, Google mail and apps, Turnitin, to name just a few)." A second school, United World College of South East Asia, says "The deep Google Apps integration allows it to complement and enhance our current practice without requiring teachers to move (again) all their resources or change calendar platforms." The blog adds that an LMS like Teamie builds "a learning ecosystem by integrating with other learning apps and systems." The site footer links to a dedicated integrations page.

Teamie for enterprise training

The enterprise side runs on the same platform. Two of the four client statements on the homepage come from companies:

• Etiqa Academy uses Teamie "to train our agency force and give our agents the flexibility to learn when they want, and where they want," and says Teamie let it "easily deliver & track online learning to thousands of our agents across the country." Agents sign up for e-learning modules, complete training requirements from phones or laptops, and receive announcements "through a simple social interface." The academy also says "the CPD tracking helps our agents stay on top of their training targets," and that it runs a blended training approach.
• Tan Chong Ekspres Auto Servis Sdn Bhd rolled Teamie out to staff "spread across multiple offices and workshops with the goal to enable anytime learning," and credits posting announcements and "support for various content types" with letting it deliver just-in-time learning.

For an L&D team, that adds up to a mobile training platform that can carry existing content, push announcements, track completion and, per Etiqa, track CPD targets.

What the pages state

Customers. The homepage names four clients with statements: Etiqa Academy, Tan Chong Ekspres Auto Servis, St. Joseph's Institution International School and United World College of South East Asia. The St. Joseph's statement, from its assistant principal, says the school "invited more than 16 vendors to demonstrate their products to us," narrowed the field to three, and chose Teamie, which "has become the central resource for the school community with administrators, teachers, parents, and most importantly students all finding the system easy to navigate and to use."

Support. Support is the theme that runs through every statement. St. Joseph's says: "Never have I encountered a support team so responsive and so willing to build their product to match the aims and philosophy of the individual school," and that "Many 'minor changes' that other vendors may have said was impossible, or costly, have been quietly made to our installation." Etiqa says Teamie supported learning requirements "different from the off-the-shelf Teamie platform." The footer links to a help center, FAQs, service levels, a service status page and a contact page.

Pricing. The main menu links to a pricing page, while the homepage itself shows no prices; demos are booked through a "Schedule a Demo" link. United World College of South East Asia says that as a cloud-based solution Teamie comes "at a price that provides real value for money."

Resources. The blog, organized under K-12, Higher Ed and Enterprise, offers a white paper with 24 best practices for implementing an LMS.

Who it suits

Teamie suits a school, especially an international school, that wants its LMS to work like a communication hub for teachers, students and parents rather than a file store, and that already runs Google Apps, a student information system such as SIMS, or Turnitin. The newsfeed, post locking, dynamic lessons and per-group resources make it a practical fit for teachers who change their material through the term. Colleges running blended courses get the same tools plus analytics and calendars.

It also suits a company with a dispersed workforce, such as an insurance agency force or staff spread across workshops, that needs mobile training with announcements, quizzes and CPD tracking.

It suits less well a buyer who wants a course storefront to sell courses to the public, or one who prefers a strictly structured course catalog over a social feed.