Company:Students Circle Network

Students Circle Network

Type	Private company
Industry	Education Social network Student networking
Founded	Kyrenia, North Cyprus (2010)
Key people	Gossy Ukanwoke, (Founder) Samora Reid, (CEO) Chika Uwazie, (VP of Channels) Amby Uche, Products Development
Website	studentscircle.net

Students Circle Network is an international, educational social network for college and high school students, providing free course resources, peer to peer learning, study groups and support services. It was started in the Kyrenia-area of Northern Cyprus in 2010.

It is an OpenCourseWare consortium member and lists over 10,400 academic courses from over 200 OpenCourseWare member universities around the world, free to students in business, computing, engineering, sciences and humanities.

History

The network was started as a personal project of Gospel Ukanwoke, in Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus, in 2010, as a collaboration tool for students at Girne American University. Gossy Ukanwoke has been referred to as the Mark Zuckerberg of Nigeria by Forbes and as "Africa's top technology entrepreneur".

The network became popular in other campuses in Northern Cyprus and, after it was featured on Venture Capital for Africa and African Innovators, was opened for students in West Africa. Subsequently, it attracted participation by Brazilians after it was featured in Hoje Em Dia of Brazil and other European news sites. The network opened to all students across the globe on December 1, 2010.

In April 2012, Gossy Ukanwoke the Founder of Students Circle Network stepped down from the active management and operation of the network to focus on the creation of a new online university - Beni American University with a goal of creating affordable education for African youths.

Students Circle Network appointed Samora Reid to take over the operations of the social network. The network has since then focused more on making free non video resources available for students and less on the social interactions.

Membership

Students Circle Network has members from over 120 countries and 200 universities. Membership is open to students, researchers and teachers. The network recently launched introductory courses for high school students

Features

Social network: As a social network, Students Circle allows its members to create personal profiles, private message, chat, share multimedia content, create networks and check into academic contents.

Academic resources: Students Circle presents aggregated courses from all OpenCourseWare consortium members and creates social interaction and learning collaboration around that content. Academic resources are divided into graduate courses, undergraduate courses, language studies, and introductory courses.

Study groups: There are over 15 study groups in different academic disciplines that allow students to schedule live online study sessions with each other. This live chat is powered by Tiny Chat and provides creative space for peer-to-peer learning.

Social games : Social games are an integral part of the network allowing students to interact over games.

Awards

• 2013: Students Circle Network won the Best Non-Video Free Courses: Education-Portal.com's People's Choice Award in March 2013.
• 2012: Students Circle Network was a finalist at the Future Africa Awards in the Innovation in Education Category

Partnerships

In addition to the OpenCourseWare member universities, Students Circle Network also partners with non-OCW member universities, including

• InfiniteGraph
• Girne American University, North Cyprus
• Encipher Group

External links

• Students Circle Network: Students Circle Network
• YNaija: Students Circle Network takes Global Education by the horns.