Guru.lk chosen to produce country’s first official e-textbook

At the signing of the agreement between Headstart and the Educational Publications Department from left: Headstart Manager Institutional Sales Jayalath Munasinghe, Headstart CEO/Director Hasitha Dela, Educational Publications Department Commissioner General I.M.K.B. Ilangasinghe, Educational Publications Department Asst. Commissioner K.D. Bandula Kumara and Educational Publications Department Asst. Commissioner D.L Kasthuriarachchi

Guru.lk, Sri Lanka’s leading eLearning portal has been chosen by the Educational Publications Department of the Ministry of Education to produce the first official e-textbook to support the Government’s efforts to promote learning in a digital format in schools.

The assignment, awarded via competitive tender, requires Guru.lk to develop original content for the GCE Ordinary Level Science syllabus, using visually stimulating graphics, videos and interactive content that maximises the effectiveness of engaging and collaborative learning via computers, tabs and other devices.

This approach is intended to enable students to learn much more in a shorter time span with the assistance of their teachers as well as through self-study, and lead to greater use of the computer labs in schools across the country. It is also scaled to accommodate the use of students’ own digital devices in the future. This is in line with the Government’s vision to digitally empower its citizens for development to trickle down to the masses.

The introduction of e-textbooks will also improve the quality of learning experience for students, and update and upgrade teacher knowledge. The ease of distribution will facilitate wider access to students, and the platform makes amendment and updating of content easy.

Commenting on the award of the first e-textbook assignment to Guru.lk, Hasitha Dela, CEO of Headstart, the company that owns Guru.lk, said: “It gives us great pleasure to be selected for this project of national interest. Headstart and Guru.lk have always strived to improve the quality and accessibility of education for the masses. Being selected as the official e-textbook provider in the very first such project by the Educational Publications Department is the best opportunity to achieve a goal we have had from the day we started our company in 2009.”

The introduction of e-textbooks is seen as an important step in the Government’s efforts to get ICT in to education to keep up with global requirements, and as a milestone in the local educational publications field as it will change the way education is delivered to students. 

Headstart, the owner of www.guru.lk has been developing content for the ICTA/Ministry of Education on school curricula since 2009. The company was a tech start-up with a project named ‘Vidunena’ under which the GCE A/L Science curriculum was provided to schools in an E Learning format, through an ICTA grant. The company now owns the largest e-learning content portal in Sri Lanka with more than 235,000 learners and 1,000 plus lessons to choose from. The content knowledge pool includes university academics, teachers, business leaders, corporate trainers and soft skills trainers, and is the largest such education-related talent pool in Sri Lanka. 

The company also provides e-learning content and platform solutions to corporates, institutions, the government sector and the general public under the brand names Guru.lk and Headstart Ltd.