Val-Ed Initiatives

Ensure that tech tools designed for educators accommodate all proficiency levels

For any technology solution to achieve its end goal, a key factor that must taken into account is the proficiency level that the users have with tech and different tech channels via which the solution can be accessed by them. For instance, we realised that one of key driving factors contributing to low numbers of educators filling out completion reports and feedback forms at the end of lessons was lack of access to and limited proficiency in working with laptops and other machines. This led to the realisation that enabling access to these resources via tablets and phones could easily remove this barrier.

Furthermore, facilitating structured communication between the platform and commonly used tools like WhatsApp could further reduce the barrier and drive up the compliance numbers. Our solution design inherently enabled multi channel access and created the bridge needed to ensure that proficiency levels of all kinds of users were catered to.

Facilitate collaboration between educators & content developers

Creating engaging, effective, and relevant educational resources requires strong synergy between the people using the resources and the ones creating them. This collaboration ensures that learning materials are aligned with both curriculum goals and the practical needs of students. 

A key challenge being faced by the client was non-compliance by educators in providing regular feedback on the content and sessions conducted by them to the content team. This, in turn, was due to a lack of an easy, low effort way to provide this feedback. We created a quick and easy form for the educators to provide feedback after each session. A key aspect of this was making the form available via their phones to reduce the barrier of needing to access multiple devices. By fostering ongoing dialogue between these two groups, educational content could now be continuously refined to maximize its impact.

Another process that benefited greatly from automation was that of tracking content readiness for lessons being created by the content team. By creating a dashboard that helped the team visualize how ready the content was for each grade across all planned lessons, we helped them unlock higher efficiency and more robust process management.

Schedule lessons dynamically for educators considering diverse teaching needs

Lesson planning is a complex and often tedious task, owing to the time constraints and diverse teaching needs of each educator. To further add a layer of complexity to this task, we needed to ensure that the schedule made for an educator had room for frequent re-scheduling and accommodating all the upstream and downstream changes that flowed along.

We created a scheduling module that allowed for administrators to set up schedules at grade levels and gave them the flexibility to make large cascading changes with minimum manual input. This ensured that the scheduling team could quickly turn around updated and relevant schedules for multiple educators across multiple schools, thus enhancing accuracy and efficiency of the team significantly.

Leverage tech to enable adapting to various learning styles within a single classroom

Different learners resonate with different modes of learning. Videos and infographics can engage visual learners, while podcasts and voice recordings benefit auditory learners. Interactive simulations and hands-on activities support kinesthetic learners, enabling them to explore concepts through experience. Leveraging technology to adapt to various learning styles within a single classroom empowers educators to create a dynamic, personalized learning environment. It was clear that a healthy mix of all of these learning methodologies thoughtfully sprinkled across lessons would make for a very engaging and fruitful learning session for young learners.

The platform enabled educators to access all of the above kinds of resources for each topic at relevant checkpoints during the process of lesson delivery. This helped them ensure that all students, regardless of their preferred learning styles, receive the support and resources they need to succeed in the classroom.

Create a more intuitive interface for educators, promoting seamless operations

An intuitive interface makes systems easier to use by allowing users to navigate and complete tasks quickly without confusion, reducing frustration and errors. Constant struggles for the educators were around accessing an updated lesson plan, schedule and corresponding content to deliver the desired lesson. Also post delivering a lesson, relaying back their feedback to the operations and content team was an area that needed a major overhaul.

Our guiding thought was to build a system that enhanced productivity, fostered creativity, and promoted a more efficient and enjoyable experience for educators and students alike. With those objectives in mind, we worked with the operations team, content creation team and the educator team to develop an interface that enabled easy access and feedback mechanisms to ensure that the lessons were geared towards promoting seamless learning experiences.

Solve program progress visibility for leadership & management

Visibility empowers leadership and management to proactively guide any program to success. Increased stakeholder visibility not only fosters accountability but also helps in aligning goals, improving efficiency, and ensuring that program objectives are met on time and within scope. We had multiple detailed brainstorming sessions to articulate what adequate visibility without information overload might look like for the management.

A key challenge to overcome while designing the management dashboards was to harmonise data inputs for different visualisations across automated and manual data channels. Deep thought also went into what order the visualizations should be made available on the dashboard basis available data, stakeholder requirement and the development plan.