When Ashish Rangnekar wasn’t studying for his business school entrance exam, he played games, perused websites, and checked eMail on his iPhone. Now he – and 75,000 other students – can do both simultaneously.
Rangnekar is the cofounder of Watermelon Express, an application available for the iPhone, iPad, and desktop computer that helps students prepare for high-pressure exams such as the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, and SAT using game-playing features, competitions with peers, and analytics showing precisely where students need to improve.
Watermelon Express uses reams of educational and test-prep content from books and open-source websites to create questions for seven subjects.
“There’s a lot of content out there, but when you interact with it, you realize how one-dimensional it really is,” said Rangnekar, who passed the GMAT and is now a student at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “So we start from where [publishers] leave off.”
Bringing study questions to the smartphone screen students glance at every few minutes has caught on in the educational app marketplace. CrushThatTest, an app launched last year, has free digital flashcards as a supplement to students’ textbooks in nine subjects, ranging from U.S. history to psychology.
“I realized I spent too much time on my iPhone just sort of playing around — not the best use of a student’s time,” Rangnekar said. “I knew it would be valuable if I could study on my iPhone … so there was no big vision to begin with. I just wanted to make the engagement part less restrictive.”
Watermelon Express apps range from around $9 to $50 for the company’s Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) app. The app gives students progress reports detailing their improvement in test taking and a scoreboard feature that lets students see how they fare compared to other students using Watermelon Express.
Apps for the “more high-stakes” exams such as the LSAT – Law School Admission Test – and the GMAT – Graduate Management Admission Test – are more widely used than the SAT app, Rangnekar said.
“Students realize that these tests will have a huge impact on the rest of their lives,” he said.
More than 75,000 students in 20 countries use the apps, according to the company, and students can access their Watermelon Express questions on any compatible device, meaning a student could begin a practice exam on her iPhone, go to class, and finish the test later on her home computer.
Watermelon Express operates on seed money from cofounders of Groupon, a website that lists local shopping deals in major metro regions. Rangnekar said he couldn’t disclose how much funding Groupon officials provided.
Watermelon Express was among 10 companies featured by the Venture Capital in Education Summit in New York last May, and the company was recognized as an “education innovation pioneer” at the SkySong Education Innovation Summit last year.
There’s little concern about the penetration of web-accessible smartphones among college students today, Rangnekar said, but many students whose lives revolve around their mobile devices remain unaware of the phone’s educational potential.
“I’m not fully convinced that most of these users know that there are educational tools available on their phone,” he said. “That’s why the bigger concern for me is discoverability – knowing what’s out there for them to use.”
- Research: Social media has negative impact on academic performance - April 2, 2020
- Number 1: Social media has negative impact on academic performance - December 31, 2014
- 6 reasons campus networks must change - September 30, 2014