Success Stories
Mobile learning for the EU
The Challenge:
The EU LLP (Life learning program) project has made mobile learning and language acquisition one of their major goals. In order to promote daily on- the- go learning and make interactive language courses easily accessible to potential learners of Bulgarian, Greek, Maltese, and Russian, the EU LLP asked Marathon Group to join their consortium.
Our solution:
Marathon Group designed a product that is based on a diary, which provides daily practice of four different languages. The work involved, designing the product, holding international meetings, training the writers, creating authoring tools, recording and integrating the content and media, final QA, so that the product will be delivered on time.
Mobile travel book
The Challenge:
Cornelsen, one of Germany’s largest educational publishers, decided to launch a retail line of mobile solutions for multiple platforms. They needed a company that could understand how an existing series of travel books can be transformed to mobile learning solutions. They were looking for a company to create an international product based on the EU curriculum that would be provided for German travelers learning twelve different target languages.
Our solution:
Marathon Group designed a creative solution which provided a full interactive course with 18 different interactive engines, a glossary, a scoring system, a dashboard that shows online progress and a tip book on grammar. All 12 languages were delivered on time. This product won first prize as best app in the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012.
Academic courses & teacher training
The Challenge:
Laureate is a leading international network of quality, innovative institutions of higher education. Laureate network of more than 70 accredited campus-based and online universities offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 780,000 students around the world. Being an international, academic community that spans 29 countries throughout the world, Laureate was looking to create a unified academic based EFL course that would be accompanied by an extensive online teacher training course similar to DELTA and CETLA standards. The mission was to build a 350 hours course for students and a 230 hours training course that would suit globally and reach all different cultures that Laureate Universities serve.
Our solution:
Marathon Group of designers and writers created a course that teaches both EFL and academic skills from beginners to high intermediate, thus solving two problems: teaching English as a foreign language and training students how to study, use the library, and get ready for exams and more. The SCORM packaged product was created so that it can be presented on Black Board and moodle. It is continuously being customized by Marathon Group so that it can be reused and sold to multi cultures.
Teaching pronunciation and intonation to young learners
The Challenge:
Giftedspeech is an American company seeking for a brand- new approach to teaching the basics of the international sound phonic system in an audio visual, game-like way that doesn’t require reading or writing skills, or special assistance from the parents. Marathon Group was chosen to decipher the problem and meet the challenge.
Our solution:
Marathon Group created software that exposed children to animated stories and interactive practice games that presented a bank of sounds that don’t exist in American English. Children were equipped with a toolbox of sounds common to the world’s ten most commonly spoken languages. Foreign words were strategically embedded in the narrative and these words contained the sounds common to the major languages (Spanish, Mandarin, and French). Results and success were immediate and measurable, and parents and teachers could monitor scores. Marathon Group was involved in creating the concept, writing and doing the graphics of animated stories, creating the interactive games, and finally linking the product to the website. Thus, providing a turnkey solution to Gifetedspeech
Testing products
The Challenge
Eurognosi is the largest private educational chain of schools in Greece with 36, 000 users across the country and outside it. About 40% of the students take the Cambridge Certificate tests. The management of Eurognosi was looking for an online solution to decrease expensive face- to- face teaching and increase practice, test simulation situations and measurable rates of successes.
Our solution:
We designed the practice and simulation FCE test and built a CLMS that could register, control the weekly lessons and tests as well as monitor each user. The content was written by the professional team of test writers at Marathon Group, and the product was delivered in less than a year from the time it was perceived.
Interactive video solutions
The Challenge:
Papagei is German digital publishing house located in Hannover. The company aims at adults who want to learn languages without going through the tedious path of traditional text books, teachers and online curses. They created a bank of video based immersion language system that introduces an intuitive, subconscious language learning experience. When the company decided they needed to expand and create thousands of semi automatic interactive online activities, they looked for a solution. .
Our solution:
Marathon Group took the challenge of providing thousands of interactive practice items in German and English.
Using a parser that divides the words of the video scripts according to frequency, part of speech, grammatical structure and key words, writers were able to analyze the scripts and fill in the templates automatically. The content was transferred to presentation engines and quality content was presented within a very short time.
K-12 on-line first lnguage practice
The Challenge:
Prim-Ed, an Irish-Australian publishing company, specializing in English and Math K-12, has a wide range of published books. They were looking for a company that could create interactive content to complement their highly successful spelling series. They needed experts in language teaching as well as interactive content developers to create multi-leveled series of products (6 levels). And they needed it very fast because they wanted to market it for the beginning of the school year.
The Solution:
Prim-Ed chose The Marathon Group to create the CD ROMs to accompany their spelling book series. Marathon’s skilled team of professionals created colorful, fun interactive spelling games. Each of the six CDs has a variety of different age-appropriate activities that were tailor-made to the Prim-Ed target audience.
Interdisciplinary Combination
The Challenge:
Positivo, Brazil’s largest educational company, wanted to expand their business and reach beyond Brazil. They developed a hardware device that uses blocks instead of a mouse to activate the computer. It is intended for use with young learners who play and study together around a single table. Positivo was looking for a company that had the technological know-how to understand the hardware functionality and the capability to develop EFL software for teaching pre-reading and reading to Young Learners ages 4-9.
The Solution:
Positivo gave the project to The Marathon Group because of the company’s expertise in combining technology and the mechanics of reading for EFL learners whose native language has a non-English alphabet. They wanted a company familiar with the EU curriculum and the American curricular demands. Marathon Group’s ability to combine pedagogical needs with those of the market enabled the development of the exciting young learner hardware and software called eBlocks. Today Marathon Group serves as its European distributor.
Mobile language games
The Challenge:
Kaplan, one of the largest global educational companies, requested a vocabulary acquisition game that would engage learners at all levels, teach new words and market Kaplan as an innovative company.
The solution:
Marathon Group together with the Kaplan team invented a series of games called TRANSIT. The game takes place in the underground. Standing passengers get to sit down if they get the vocabulary task done correctly. The doors of the train open and close making the time and task more challenging.
