Coimbatore : Amrita Learning App, a finalist in the Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE competition, emerged as the winners and were awarded 1.25 lakh USD.

Amrita, one among the 108 other registered teams, was adjudged to be providing the best ways to accelerate adult literacy in the US using mobile solutions, by US-based XPRIZE, which provides effective, proven educational apps into the hands of learners around the country for free.

Amrita is one of four teams selected for demonstrating significant improvement in language skills in both Native Speakers (NS) and English as a Second Language learners during a 12-month test period.

The competition will now move on to the next phase, the Communities Challenge, where in the final four apps will be scaled up to enrol one million users across the US.

The Communities Competition challenges communities and organisations across the country to empower adults with low literacy skills to download and use a free, effective, convenient and private mobile learning tool.

A 3 million USD grand prize will be awarded to the app that shows the best performance across all adult learners over a 15-month, 12,000-person field test, which is currently being held in Los Angeles, Dallas and Philadelphia.

The Amrita Learning App was developed by an 18-member team from the university’s Center for Research in Advanced Technologies for Education (Amrita CREATE), led by Dr. Prema Nedungadi.

“We are thrilled to have demonstrated significant increase in learning levels across dicate this app to Chancellor Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, whose vision of education for life skills, compassion-driven research and global reach inspired and influenced the design of the app.

We hope to scale this to millions of learners in the USA through XPRIZE and through the Barbara Bush Foundation, founded by former first lady, Mrs. Barbara Bush, who literally defined the family literacy movement, Prema said.

Amrita Learning App is already available to the public for free on the Google Play Store.