TRANSFORMING EDUCATION
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood- Daniel Burnham
A Social Movement
All that we do here is based on the belief that given the right opportunities any student can be superlative.
We aim to create engineers that can compete with the best in the world. We also believe that the only way for online learning to be successful and to truly scale is through grassroots community action.
There are some key aspects to our approach
It is our belief that this enterprise can be completely student driven, our aim to satisfy the promise of online learning, which is to hand students the keys to their own destiny.
We aim to create engineers that can compete with the best in the world. We also believe that the only way for online learning to be successful and to truly scale is through grassroots community action.
There are some key aspects to our approach
- Group learning - We believe that it is important to learn in groups, from our experience in the industry and academic setting, what we've found is that working in groups increases the rate at which we learn and remember concepts. . Most online learning schemes of today have great content but are highly dependent on a student's intrinsic motivation. Working with a group ensures that students stick to a schedule and remain motivated throughout the course. Another reason that group work is important is it reduces the psychological barrier to entry that some students face with an unknown quantity like online learning.
- Mentorship - This is something that we're still studying and tweaking as we work with students. For every course that forms a part of this curriculum we start out by having a mentor that works with students to guide them through the course. Having a mentor has proven to be of value in the work that has been done till now. This guidance currently happens through video conferencing. However our goal in the long run would be to create a self sustaining system in universities where groups of students who have taken the course before help students who are taking the course for the first time.
- Identifying the right set of skills - We work with the placement departments of universities to identify the right set of skills that are needed by industry and focussing our initial efforts on courses that provide this. We're also working on tools that might make it easier for universities to capture the information on the skill sets that their students gain through these courses to enable them to market themselves to recruiters and to also make it easier for recruiters to identify the right set of students.
- Creating a structure - The aim is to create a community of students and mentors in a university, the community and its representatives keep track of what courses are available and as courses become available students that are interested in exploring that course sign up in groups. These groups are then associated with mentors from the students who have taken the same course earlier and who are willing to volunteer their time in this effort. Part of the work involved is to create a structure and tool flow that would make managing this effort easier, including tracking the progress of groups, tracking available mentors, deciding on a methodology to make communication easier. We're working to use Blackboard software and Google tools for educators to ease this process
- Growth - In the long run we intend to use the surplus mentors that this process generates to continue the growth process at other universities, this involves codifying procedures and methodologies to make it easier to initiate this process in a new university.
It is our belief that this enterprise can be completely student driven, our aim to satisfy the promise of online learning, which is to hand students the keys to their own destiny.