Born English is a network of specialized language training centers spread across different locations in South Korea. They aim to improve the communication skills of middle and high school students, preparing them for higher education locally and abroad. Born English is known for their media-rich curriculum, which trains students to become fluent English speakers through repetition, roleplaying, and other interactive activities.

To accommodate more students in Chungcheongbuk-do, Born English strategically set up two of their training centers—the Eumseong-gun and Jincheon-gun branches—just less than two kilometers away from each other within Chungbuk Innovation City. Since both sites are part of the region’s thriving new technology hub, their directors deemed it necessary to equip their respective learning centers with the latest edtech tools.

“Our specialized English language curriculum is very digital and multimedia-based,” explains Lee Bona, director at Eumseong-gun. Unlike other language centers that rely on traditional books, audio files, and worksheets for training, Born English incorporates other forms of media such as situational videos, cloud-hosted games, and a variety of other digital content to make learning more interesting and enjoyable.

“We check our students’ English proficiency every day through interactive digital activities rather than giving them written exams,” she says. Originally, students were assigned their own learning stations during class. The teachers would first explain the materials to the group and then allow their students to put on their headphones and go through the modules individually. This particular setup still works best when students are studying at their own pace, but the same can’t be said for group classes.

Teachers had observed that students tended to get distracted during group discussions because their attention would always go back to their own screens. Another problem was that if the teachers wanted to check their students’ progress, they would have to approach them one at a time. Since work is done on personal screens, other students are deprived of the opportunity to learn from their peers’ work.

Born English needed a better edtech solution that would allow them to use their interactive learning modules more effectively in group settings.

While going through several edtech options, the Born English directors were immediately drawn to the BenQ Board. The large 4K touchscreen doubled as a multimedia display and whiteboard, allowing teachers to use their existing interactive learning materials for group classes. They also thought that the remote control’s microphone was particularly convenient because it gave them an easy way to access cloud-based tools via the Naver voice assistant. Using the boards also gave their students more chances to interact with each other and practice their English-speaking skills more naturally.

And since Born English acquired the boards at the height of the pandemic, they also found some of its special features such as the germ-resistant screen and video conferencing support very useful. “When the number of absent students got too many, we opted to do online classes from the board using KakaoTalk or Zoom,” says Lee. The BenQ Board’s recording feature also helped them save their sessions so that students would be able to access them in case they were unable to attend class.

“BenQ Boards are very useful because they let us facilitate activities whenever we need to,” says Lee. She explains that the boards now play a vital role, especially in classes where they assess their student’s fluency, speed, and reading comprehension.

For these sessions, they display a block of text on the board and have students read out loud, correcting their tone and pronunciation as they go. To gauge their speed, they open the BenQ Board’s built-in stopwatch and use it to log the time. For comprehension, they ask questions and jot down their students’ answers on the EZWrite whiteboard for further discussion.

“We also have classes where students can practice by following the script of a news anchor,” she says. For this activity, they would play a recorded news broadcast on the board with the teleprompter script just right below it. (They use the same setup for animation dubbing exercises.) Because the BenQ Board has an annotation tool, instructors can conveniently write their observations on the side without interrupting their students as they read the prompter.

“It’s more engaging and convenient to do all this on a much bigger shared display than on smaller personal monitors,” says Lee. Because everything required for their media-rich lessons is displayed and accessible on the same board, their students’ focus is undivided, allowing them to actively participate in the collective learning process.