EduBrite

December 17, 2009

Top 4 Challenges for Education in India

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 8:54 pm

India is the largest democracy with remarkable diversity among its population of 1.2 billion which makes up about 17% of the world’s population. Almost 70% of Indian population is rural. The adult literacy rate stands at about 60% and this is significantly lower in women and minorities. Education in India comprises of government, government aided and private institutions of which nearly 40% are government. With the population growth rate of 1.5%, there is tremendous pressure on the education system to provide quality education at affordable price and improve the literacy rate.

Education in India faces following primary challenges:

Quality

Maintaining standard of education in more than a million schools nationwide, offering training programs to teachers, and keeping good balance with education system worldwide is a big challenge. Schools vary in size and resources and are forced compromise in the all round development opportunities they must provide to students.

Access

Having infrastructural constraints and social issues, it becomes harder to make education accessible to all segments of the society (women, minorities, poor).

Cost

The cost of education is very high even for the people and places where it is accessible. E.g. the competitive pressure on students & parents forces them to opt for private tuitions & trainings to supplement the school education.

Social & Cultural

The ethnic diversity in India poses challenges to implement consistent education nationwide. There are more than 300 languages spoken in the country and makes it difficult to offer education tailored to specific social segment. Educating women in some societies is a big issue. Children of poor families are forced to work and miss out the learning opportunities. Illiterate adults have very limited opportunities to get educated at later age in their lives.

Online Education System’s Advantages

An educational system augmented by online components presents unique opportunity to solve multitude of challenges in quick time at affordable budget. Here is an overview of advantages of an online system.

Improve Quality of Education

  • Computer aided adaptive testing
  • Encourage collaboration among students, teachers, parents, alumni, activists & institutions
  • A consistent grading system to measure and rank Students, Teachers, Schools & Universities
  • Reward all round development of students
  • Promote alternate education & ideas
  • Continuous improvement by statistical feedback

Improve Accessibility

  • Online & open information portal accessible anytime from anywhere to everyone
  • Bring the books & other resource (videos of lectures, speakers) online
  • Promote distant learning initiatives to spread the education in rural areas
  • Provide online courses to students with special needs.
  • 24×7 schooling for those who cannot attend regular schools during daytime

Reduce the cost of education

  • Services at lower cost via online solutions
  • Encourage “learn yourself” and “community learning” via online system, promote volunteers by providing common infrastructure at lower price
  • Tools for teachers, schools & exam boards to offer courses and conduct examinations & assessment
  • Measurement of returns and guidance on future spending

Social

  • Online system creates anytime, anywhere engagement model
  • Online Learning from home opens the doors for girls to get education if social & cultural reasons are preventing them.
  • Promote vocational courses and self paced learning for adults
  • Bring culturally diverse India on a common learning platform which is offered in all languages

Challenges in implementing Online System

  • Planning and implementation experience
  • Short term cost overheads (online & offline must run in parallel)
  • Electricity & Communication infrastructure
  • Social issues (to some extent)
  • Logistical challenges like training of educators & students
  • Technology constraints

November 15, 2009

Share your Scores via Embeddable Score Stickers

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 8:04 am

EduBrite CAT series 1 finishes today and we launched another social learning feature “Embeddable Score Stickers”. These stickers can be added by students in their own blogs or websites and display realtime information about their score. Sharing scores with friends and parents becomes easy and realtime this way. Here is an example how it appears on my blog http://tenplustwo-blog.blogspot.com/2009/11/personalized-score-sticker.html…

To add the Score Sticker, just signin and copy the Embed Tag displayed on the Home page next to the score widget, and paste in your webpage code or blog (by opening the source view.. the steps would be different depending on the blog you are using, but look for how to embed flash in any blog you are using)

ScoreSticker

November 11, 2009

Online exams in social learning network

Filed under: EduBrite Solution — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 8:42 am

EduBrite’s CAT Mock tests event is a new experiment to conduct open online exams in social learning network. A social learning network allows multiple learning communities to coexist on the single platform and users collaborate online for learning needs. Online learning activities are typically supported in the form of “forum”, “notes”, “ask a doubt” or “share a lesson”.

More recently, social learning platforms (e.g. edu2.0, learnhub) started providing online testing integrated with social learning which allows community members to contribute and share online tests. The tests  (also called quizzes in some systems) in these systems not only a dead html or pdf (which is how it exist in most web sites today), but they are interactive forms which allow students to take tests online, and are integrated with backend learning management systems to generate instant assessment of the student’s performance. Students can share their test attempts with community and compare ranks with each other.

EduBrite is providing what could be seen as natural progression of this online testing in social learning environment by allowing educators to conduct realtime online exams. The difference between an exam and online tests mentioned before is primarily the event’ness associated with the exam and the element of competition. An exam has a specific begin and end date and is taken by all students concurrently.

Online exam comprises of tests which are contributed by community. Exams are subscribed by the students using common subscription mechanism on the web such as invite. The subscription management depends on the kind of exam being conducted.

The current CAT Mock Tests event on mba.edubrite.com comprises three tests and offered as free subscription model. Students just need to login to the site and subscribe to the event which is running at that time. Once subscribed they can appear in the tests anytime they want from any place they can have internet access. They could take the test from a cyber cafe or from their home and if needed can pause the test and resume when convenient. Naturally this format is very convenient for the students as well as well ideally suited for conducting mock exams before the real exam (similar to opinion polls before the real polls in elections). Mock exams in a social network can provide ranking and percentile feedback to students among a wider base than what any specific school or training institute can provide. And naturally the comparison aspect in this format is closer to the real exam,

So where is the catch…

Let’s look at some of the challenges in conducting online exams in social learning network:

1. Unproctored environment, so is prone to abuse

2. Unknown and variety of operating environments under which test takers may appear in the exams (browsers, operation systems, hardware such as notebook, PDA, smart phones), so difficult to provide consistent user experience to all test takers

3. Challenge in running the exam for a fixed duration due to various technological reasons which could cause outage in specific geographical regions

It is obvious that technological constraint today will not allow conducting formal exams (in their current format) in social network environment. But despite those constraints I see a lot of promise here, especially when it comes to providing realtime, actionable and much more accurate feedback to students and help them prepare for the final exam. It is even better if the final exam is also conducted online by the specific exam board as students can practice their online test taking skills upfront. It may even be possible to review some exam formats and design them to suite the delivery via unproctored social network environment using new methods of test delivery and combination of various security and privacy advancements in future.

Check out mba.edubrite.com to experience this online exam happening somewhere in the cloud today.

Event Announcement

November 8, 2009

CAT 2009 Online Mock Test Event by EduBrite

Filed under: Uncategorized — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 10:42 am

CAT is just around the corner and this year it is looking quite uncertain to students due to complete online format of the exam. IIM has published a few tutorials but students will agree that having mock tests is the best way to bell the CAT.

EduBrite launched its new online social learning network mba.edubrite.com with the online mock test series to help students get free access to mock tests and online exam experience. Signup is completely free and single user account can be used to access all community sites or microsites on EduBrite’s network which also includes TenPlusTwo community for schools and colleges (www.tenplustwo.com).

 

The online test series offers three tests available in an online exam format which will run for about a week. Students can take these tests in any sequence anytime during the event. Tests can be paused in between to allow break (note that real exam would not allow any breaks).

EduBrite would be conducting two events (each running for a week) to provide maximum benefit to large community of CAT aspirants. Two events will allow students from all over India to plan when they would like to appear for the tests before the exam (as CAT final exam is scheduled over a week starting end of Nov). Students can appear for both events (if they like) to see their progress week over week. Detailed analysis of each test will be available to students once they finish the test showing section and question wise feedback. At the end of each event, rankings and percentile scores will be available. Nothing can come close to this to get ready for final D Day which could be anytime Nov 28 – Dec 7th (details available on IIM website http://www.catiim.in/)

mba.edubrite.com is powered by EduBrite’s collaborative learning platform (which also runs TenPlusTwo, a social learning network for Schools and Colleges), where all the community features like groups, forums, polls, events and messaging are available to all members.

CAT Mock Tests Series

April 27, 2009

New Appearance

Filed under: TenPlusTwo Feature — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 5:26 am

Today we are releasing tenplustwo.com with new UI. Along with the significant changes in the colors, layout and navigation menus; what we have also done is changed the Home page a lot. Users can now get their messages, friends, recent tests, comparative performance index on the home page, along with indication of how much effort they are putting in each subject.

The comparative performance index is calculated on weekly basis, and is dependent upon the percentile in last few weeks. Students should strive to keep this number in the higher ranges.

home-new

HomePage

Messages, Friends, Updates

Messages, Friends, Updates

April 12, 2009

Analytics

Filed under: TenPlusTwo Feature, TenPlusTwo Solution — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 6:41 pm

One aspect of online social learning platform which is most important to students is, Analytics. Students can see their progress week-over-week. They can analyze the areas they are doing well and where they need to work more. In social learning network, analytics enables students to compare their performance with their friends and other users in the network. This is perhaps the most valuable feedback students can get which is not available to them in schools or in coaching centers.

In the first version of the Analytics feature, TenPlusTwo is providing several analytical views to the students which show weekly trends from various perspective. Student can compare themselves with other students by going to Comparison mode in any of the views.

  • Cumulative Percent - this view shows the weekly trend for the overall % score of user on any subject, exam or region. Cumulative score takes into consideration, all previous week’s scores on the same subject, exam or region.
  • Weekly Percent – this view shows the weekly trend for the % score of user on any subject, exam or region in that week. Students should work taking tests regularly every week, to have weekly percent consistently in the upper region.
  • Weekly Percentile – this view shows the weekly trend for the percentile if user on any subject, exam or region. The percentile is calculated based on how student’s scores this week compare against scores of all other users for the same subject, exam or region in last 26 weeks (6 months). Students should try and keep their percentiles consistently in the upper region.
  • Weekly Wrong Answers – this view shows weekly trend for the wrong answers selected by the student. Since many exams have penalty for the wrong answers, students should try to take this view as a measure of how they could loose points in the final exam, if they don’t read the questions properly, before answering them. It can also help them put a check on temptation of guessing the answers in multiple choice questions. Not to mention – keep this trend low
  • Weekly Correct Answers – this view shows the weekly trend for the correct answers selected by the student, students should try to consistently keep this up.
  • Weekly Not Attempted – this view shows the weekly trend for the number of questions which is not attempted by student. This trend could be in the higher region when you start taking tests before completing the entire syllabus, and it is perfectly okay. But as you complete the syllabus, see that this trend should consistently go down, and you understand entire syllabus well to answer most questions. So try to keep this in the lower range.
  • Weekly Total Tests Taken – this view just shows the consistency of your effort week over week. Ideally you should try to maintain good balance of tests you take every week so you cover all subjects, and exams you are targeting to appear. This will help prevent not to overdo one area and ignore the other.

analytics-1

analytics-21

January 20, 2009

TenPlusTwo Tour

Filed under: TenPlusTwo Feature, TenPlusTwo Solution — Tags: , , , , — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 7:32 am

January 19, 2009

Online Exam Marketplace

Filed under: TenPlusTwo Feature, TenPlusTwo Solution — Tags: , , , — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 3:38 am

First, let’s define it

A marketplace in general is a place where sellers and buyers meet and do commerce. TenPlusTwo provides first of its kind Online Exam Marketplace which empowers the Test authors (Publishers, Coaching Institutes, Schools, Teachers and other Educational Bodies) to sell their tests online in the form of not a downloaded test, but like an online exam. The difference between a downloaded test (available on many websites today) and an online exam is that the former is like any regular product selling on e-commerce sites, whereas the later is more like a subscription to an online event, which is conducted at specified time (in the cloud) and subscribers from anywhere take the exam at the same time.

Who is the buyer?

Students who are preparing for the engineering & medical entrance exams are consumers of these online exams, who need to practice as much as they can before the real exam. Stakes are high, and the students need high quality tests which tests them as much as the real exam and at the end they can get as much as real assessment of their standing among all students taking the exam.

So what exactly someone need to host an online event?

First and foremost, you need to have your own authored tests which you want to host in the form of online event. You can work with TenPlusTwo team to upload your tests. Creation of tests for TenPlusTwo is easy, all you need is familiarity with popular word processor like MS Word or any other HTML editor. You need to create the tests using the template TenPlusTwo support provides. You or someone from TenPlusTwo team can setup your event, at the date and time you specify. An event can have multiple tests which can be conducted at different day/time.

Subscription Model

The event subscription model allows various choices to conduct the events. You can sell the event subscription as a whole or each test in the event can be sold individually. You can set maximum number of subscribers for the events. Access level for the event can be either Free, By Invite or Paid.

  • Free Events

If you are looking to expand your brand name to more students in the country, free events could be a great means to do so. Students always look to get as much practice tests and assessment of their ranks as possible, you could create the tests (could be short or full length) and put them as free online events. This model is suited for small coachings and teachers who conduct private tuition.

  • By Invite Events

This subscription model allows you to have a controlled event which is visible to only the users you invite. This is suited for coachings or schools who want to have free tests only for their own classes.

  • Paid

Paid events are the fully commercial form of events, which require authorization codes for subscription. The authorization codes are issued when someone purchases the event. Paid events are great means to do business in the online exam marketplace which is running 24×7x365.

Selling Events

You can provide all the event related information like the course content, sample questions (just to give a flavor of tests you have prepared) and any other info using the news and articles about the event. The buyers and sellers can engage in discussion using the comments on events or the private messages. If there is a value in the content you are selling and the price is right, you will surely going to find buyers for it. Marketplace allows sellers of every size to compete and provides choices to the buyers. You can use the same test to conduct multiple tests.

Is it cutting into my existing revenue?

Absolutely not, the online exam should be seen as another revenue channel, if you run a educational institute. It will help you reach out to more students nationally. It may even help you minimize your cost by eliminating manual evaluation of answer sheets and allow you to conduct multiple events using same question bank.

When is the right time?

As the exam season is approaching, this is the right time to conduct online exam events. Get in touch with TenPlusTwo support to learn more.

event2

January 18, 2009

Effective Collaboration using TenPlusTwo

Filed under: TenPlusTwo Feature, TenPlusTwo Solution — Tags: , , , — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 7:59 am

Educational eco-system comprises many different actors, these actors are

  • Students
  • Teachers
  • Parents
  • Counselors
  • Schools
  • Coaching Institutes
  • Publishers
  • Exam Boards
  • Government Agencies
  • Corporate world

TenPlusTwo aims to provide an effective collaboration system which each of the above actors can use to maximize their participation in the overall educational process. Communication is an essential means to collaborate effectively. Online communication is the a great means which can be used by all the above actors in the internet age. Everyone uses e-mail for communicating with friends, family and colleagues. E-mail is one of the most popular e-mail application till date. But with success comes price. Today everyone is spending a lot of time cleaning the huge amount of spam e-mails they receive in their Inbox. The e-mail channel has become one of the easiest to use for mass marketing and spamming. E-mail is point to point communication method, which limits collaborative needs of a larger group.

The web2.0 brings new tools for collaboration in the form of wikis, blogs and various forms of commenting system including wall, scrapebooks etc. TenPlusTwo provides an easy to use wiki and blog system and extends it to meet the needs of an online educational system which students and teachers can use for posting solutions to tests and questions, making and sharing notes and the usual articles and news postings.

Making groups or communities for students, schools, teachers or any other educational bodies will bring all the actors on the same platform and open up the inter and intra actor communication channel, e.g. student-student, teacher-teacher, parent-teacher, student-coachings. Groups employ another way of communication which are Forum & Polls. These are very effective for a teacher to communicate with a group of students, as it builds a persistence knowledge base which is not point to point. Questions posted by one student are seen by everyone in the group and they all benefit from the answers to those questions.

TenPlusTwo also provides a unique commenting system which turns each online test and question into an implicit discussion topic, by allowing users to post comment for them. Each question can be discussed online and it builds a persistent trail of opinions and thoughts about the question’s solution. You can view a question in context of a test or independent of it, but the discussion comments always follow it.

Solutions is another unique feature which allows everyone to post their own method of solving a question/test by posting solutions. Different minds can have different methods to solve a particular question, an example is difference between modern arithmetic and vedic mathematics. When students see these unique ways of solving a particular problem, it also helps them build greater understanding of the subject.

questioncomments

TenPlusTwo is just a platform which opens up all the above mentioned tools for use by everyone involved in the education field. No tool can be successful without use by the intended audience. Needless to say that if the tool fills a need the users will definitely use it.

To summarize, here are salient features which position TenPlusTwo as an effective communication/collaboration platform for education

  • Secure Messaging
  • Groups & Schools
  • Forums
  • Polls
  • Comments
  • Blogs
  • Solutions
  • Wiki (News/Articles)
  • Ratings
  • Tags
Forum

Forum

Polls

Polls

Indian Schools Network on TenPlusTwo

Filed under: TenPlusTwo Feature, TenPlusTwo Solution — Tags: , , , , , — Ajay Upadhyaya @ 12:25 am

Indian education system is one of the biggest in the world. There are hundreds of thousands of schools at various levels and they all are facing a big challenge  today which is about relevance of their own existence. Today I find 11th and 12th graders spending more time of the day in alternate educational bodies like Coaching Institutes and Private Tuition and attending schools only to meet the minimum attendance requirement. There are many reasons for this like competitive pressure on the young shoulders to clear the various professional entrance exams, as well as in many cases the school teachers not putting the school classes in their priority. What we really need is to develop all round personalities of the students which is possible in only in the regular schools system (provided they play honest role in doing what is expected of them). Attending round the clock coachings can prepare students for cracking a particular exam but I doubt how it will help them build all round personalities without sports, exhibitions, debates and all other activities which school (can) provide.

One solution to this problem could be to enable the schools to hook on to the latest trends in social and technological spaces which attracts the young students so much. All schools, small or big should have access to publish information about their campuses and communicate with other schools. All school teachers in 21st century should be able to freely communicate with students and other teachers in the country. Technology can make this possible, and TenPlusTwo provides a means to achieve this on the social learning network platform.

Today there are more than 10,000 schools information is added in TenPlusTwo, which is more than just a directory of schools. What it means to these 10,000 schools is that they all have access to put their profile on the internet, publish news, organize events, conduct student/staff surveys, provide a discussion forum, communicate with students, teachers, parents and other schools freely without having to pay for any IT department or infrastructure. TenPlusTwo is building the social learning network to provide a cloud where all the small and big 100s of thousands of primary to secondary schools get connected and a free flow of information starts which helps the whole educational eco system in the country.

school

Here is how I see TenPlusTwo playing a crucial role in (re)asserting the role of schools.

  • Bring all the school staff, students, alumni and parents on a network which is not bound by the official boundaries and school charter
  • Help teachers and students to communicate using the modern ways of 21st century and help them better understand each other
  • Enable parents to get more and up to-date information on school their kids are attending and competitive environment in front of them
  • Bring alumni and counselors to the schools network and have them open dialog with students and teachers. Alumni who are in various industries should be able to help the students and teachers by providing practical career counseling
  • Provide all the technological tools to schools, once the they have access to a free to use platform, I’m sure adoption is just a matter of time
  • Last but not the least, the schools network of TenPlusTwo is first of its kind in the world just like the unique educational ecosystem of India

When you use TenPlusTwo, make sure to associate yourself to the schools you attended or are attending. If you don’t find your school in the system, just go ahead and add it, adding school is simple. We have added only 10,000 schools as a seed but we know this is just about 1% of what is there in India. So take a lead and bring your school to TenPlusTwo. Also complete your school membership profile, it will be something other TenPlusTwo users will look at first when they want to know about you. If you are not studying anymore, you should still add yourself as alumni to establish your link with your school you attended a while ago.

schoolprofile

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