200 Maldives connected to distance education at Trukonf

2024: Virtual campus launch for distance learning

Mandhu College has launched a virtual campus for distance learning for students on 200 islands in the Maldives archipelago. The core of the campus was the Russian system of combined communications TrueConf Server. TrueConf (Trukonf) announced this on December 12, 2024.

Mandhu is a private educational college in the Maldives, founded in 1998. The college provides the opportunity to graduate regardless of the geographical location and financial capacity of the students.

The specifics of the island state required a transition to distance education. The main difficulty is the different quality of Internet connection on 200 islands. For a large number of video lectures, virtual meetings, online testing and other conferences with students, Mandhu needed his own local communication system adapted to weak network channels.

At the same time, the college management set the task of deploying a system for distance education locally, so as not to depend on external providers, ensure digital sovereignty, store data on their own servers and minimize the risks of connecting outsiders to video lectures.

TrueConf Server was chosen as the platform for distance education, which the college has been using since 2015 for internal corporate needs. The system was scaled to cover students on 200 islands of the archipelago who choose a hybrid or completely remote class format.

The college offers a hybrid learning format and some students attend classes remotely, participating in online meetings and video lectures, using TrueConf applications on their PCs and smartphones, as well as regular browsers.

For interaction between teachers and students, an address book with division into groups, a messenger and a flexible VKS scheduler, as well as subscriber availability statuses are available. For full interaction, in addition to video lectures, webinars and broadcasts, a common file storage and other tools are used - showing screens, slides, videos, remote desktop management, recording meetings, and working together on content. The built-in messenger is used to announce classes, exchange tasks, documents and other files. In addition, any two-click chat starts a conference with participants, which makes it easier to run video lectures for each group of students.

The AI built into the Truconf applications helps you cope with extraneous sounds and control virtual backgrounds regardless of the student's location and the quality of their equipment.

In addition to the classic video conferencing modes "All on the screen" and "Controlled selector," teachers use a special mode for educational purposes - "Video tutorial," thanks to which students see and hear only the teacher. Auto Selector mode simplifies conference control and automatically displays speaking participants.

Thanks to waiting rooms, educators can control students' connection to classes, as well as use them as a staging area where participants can wait their turn to give a talk or join a discussion without distracting other students.

The TrueConf Server-based virtual education platform covers 200 islands and provides opportunities for distance and hybrid learning, online events, webinars and conferences in an uninterrupted format.