Educational Initiatives
 | |
| Industry | Education, Educational Technology |
|---|---|
| Founders | Sridhar Rajagopalan, Sudhir Ghodke & Venkat Krishnan N |
| Headquarters | Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India |
Number of locations | India, USA, Singapore, Dubai, Kuwait, Bangladesh |
Number of employees | 200 |
| Website | www.ei-india.com |
Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd. (EI) is an Ahmedabad based consultancy working in educational research and assessment in India.
The company is headed by IIM Graduates Sridhar Rajagopalan, Sudhir Ghodke and Venkat Krishnan N and its aim is to promote an atmosphere of quality within India's primary school system. It pursues this by raising concerns related to the quality of learning, providing services related to assessment, professional development of teachers, curriculum and pedagogy, and influencing educational policy, especially in the realm of assessment.It takes a systems approach in order to improve the quality of learning. It uses a cycle of problem discovery, cause identification, solution implementation and feedback (which may lead to a deeper level of problem identification), a positive spiral towards improvement.
Through its interactive tools such as Mindspark (digital self-learning program), ASSET, Detailed Assessment, CCE Certificate Course, Teacher Evaluation Program, Teacher Sheets and more, Educational Initiatives assists thousands of teachers in improving their students' achievements.
Their U.S. division, Educational Initivatives Group, Inc., based in Lakeville, Minnesota, owns video game publisher GameMill Entertainment.
History
Established in 2001, Educational Initiatives believes in making a difference in education through personalized. Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd. (EI) is an educational assessment and research company working to improve the quality of student learning in our schools. EI is India’s largest and arguably only organization outside the Government, focused exclusively on measuring and improving student learning outcomes.EI works both with leading private schools across the country and government school systems. EI was founded by 3 IIMA alumni who started and ran Eklavya School, Ahmedabad for 6 years before starting EI in 2001. EI team includes alumni of prestigious institutes like the IIMs, IITs, Harvard Business School, University rank-holders at Masters Levels in Science, Arts and the Humanities and teachers with several years of school experience
EI is also working with leading organizations such as the World Bank, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Google, the Azim Premji Foundation, Duke University, USA and is conducting large-scale assessment projects with various state governments. EI has been recently recognized as an official Supplement Educational Service provider in Texas, USA.
Vision and Mission
EI’s vision is ‘a world where children everywhere are learning with understanding’. EI has created and administers the ASSET Test (India’s largest diagnostic assessment test) to private schools from CBSE, ICSE and State Boards covering 3.5 lakh students all over India, UAE, Kuwait and Singapore every year. It also works with government schools from states across India and has conducted large scale benchmarking studies for more than 1 crore students. EI’s adaptive learning platform Mindspark is used by about 60,000 private and 5000 government school students across the country and beyond. EI’s partners include the World Bank, UNICEF, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, McKinsey, Harvard University, University of Newcastle, several state governments in India, Royal Govt. of Bhutan, Govt. of Maldives and CSR like Google, Wipro and Torrent. EI has been invited to present papers in prestigious forums such as the National Council of Educational Measurement, New York (2008), International Language Testing Association, Hangzhou - China (2008), Bankinter Foundation, Madrid, Spain (2011), Global Partnership in Reading, Bangkok (2012), Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Singapore (2013). EI team members are on board of several educational committees for Govt. of India and several state governments related to Teacher Education, ICT in Education, Drafting RTE model rules, National Assessment Strategy, SSA Joint Review Mission and NCERT's Advisory Board for Educational Surveys and Maths Source Book team.
Culture
"It’s not how fast you run in the stadium, it’s that you do your best, we’re looking for people who want to give 100 percent."
Value Staff Opinions : "People are not just productivity units. We believe in democracy because the future is as secure as people are with working together."
Hire Wisely : Culture starts with hiring. “It takes almost a year to find out what people who work for you are like" Education is the key to sustainability of your culture while you are growing.
Forget About Weaknesses : "We hire people for their strengths and then manage them to fix their weaknesses"
Ask, Don't Guess : We can't guess what's important to employees. We have to give them ways to communicate with us. And we have to get out of our comfort zone as leaders. The more personal you can be in any situation, while being professional, that’s the way to do it.
Nurture Young Leaders : "Interviewing a younger candidate, we’re interested in understanding their expectations before we explain what we do. If we can’t hold their interest, there’s not a lot that can bring them back. Being more explicit in our expectations is what has to happen."
Share Responsibility : "We put a tremendous amount of responsibility on those we hire, and make sure that that’s what they’re craving,” “We try to talk people out of working for us. When they say yes this is what I want, those are the ones who shine.”
“Look to the Future”
ASSET
ASSET is the scientifically designed diagnostic test, which stands for Assessment of Scholastic Skills through Educational Testing.
Through multiple choice questions, ASSET focuses on determining the level of conceptual understanding in students and not how much they have memorized. The test generates detailed reports for students indicative of their progress and topics that require attention and improvement. The teachers receive a special report which indicates the class performance as compared to the other divisions as well as other schools on a national level. The reports are accompanied by an instructional supplement suggesting the future course of action for both students as well as teachers.
Every year more than 3.5 lakhs students from over 1000 schools in India, Gulf and Singapore take the ASSET test.
Mindspark
Mindspark is a computer based program that revolutionizes the study of Mathematics. It focuses on self-learning with a curriculum integrated database. An interactive product, from the makers of ASSET, Mindspark has been derived from the belief of personalized learning. It is specially designed to assist the user to learn at his or her pace.[1][2]
Students learn best at their own pace. Mindspark enables children to learn and understand at their own pace, without rushing them through the syllabus. With an active and detailed database, Mindspark monitors the level of understanding in each concept and patiently helps the students when they are in doubt by resolving errors and misconceptions through explanations.
For example, if a student from the 8th grade does not have clarity on the core concepts of Algebra, the system automatically offers inputs in the form of questions that will help build the fundamentals of Equivalence (which is a critical point into understanding Algebra).
Currently more than 100+ schools spread across India have integrated Mindspark along with their Maths curriculum teaching.
Detailed assessment
Detailed Assessment, a topic-wise testing tool, aims at providing immediate feedback to teachers on the current level of student understanding on the topics taught and completed in the classroom. DA is a futuristic assessment tool that formulates customized assessment programs in accordance with the school curriculum and presents immediate detailed feedbacks on individual student performance.
Detailed Assessment reduces the stress on teachers by preparing the assessment papers according to the curriculum taught in the class and provides test results and feedback within 48 hours of the assessment.
Research projects
- Student Learning Study: is a bench marking study of student learning conducted by Educational Initiatives (EI), with financial support from Google.org, USA. The test was developed in 13 languages and administered to more than 1 Lakh students in about 2399 schools in 48 districts in the 18 participating states and one Union territory. This is a diagnostic study which provides granular information on the quality of children’s learning and this provides insights that can help various stakeholders – ranging from policy makers to curriculum designers to teachers and parents – take appropriate steps to improve the educational quality.
- UNICEF Learning Assessment Study for Quality Education: Assessed mathematics and language acquisition among primary school children in the UNICEF quality package schools in 13 states of India. The tests were standardized across 9 languages and involved very intricate development cycle involving language experts from all over India.
- Bhutan Annual Status Student Learning Study: This study was done in partnership with Royal Education Council and Ministry ofEducation Bhutan. Nearly 34000 students in classes 4, 6 and 8 are tested for learning in Language, Maths and Science in 424 schools.[3]
- Andhra Pradesh Randomised Evaluation Study: Done in partnership with Harvard University, Azim Premji Foundation, World Bank and the Government of Andhra Pradesh, this is a longitudinal study across 8–9 years and covers currently 100,000 elementary school kids and measures the impact of various inputs (e.g., block grants, additional teachers) with outcome-based teacher incentives.[4]
- Assessment of Student Learning in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – RGSM, Chhattisgarh: The test was developed in Hindi and administered to approximately 3 lakh students in about 1900 schools in 16 districts in Chhattisgarh states. The tests have already been conducted for students of class 3 to 8 for Language and Maths and the report submitted to RGSM.
- Municipal School Bench marking Study : Supported by ICICI Bank, this study assessed learning in 35,000 municipal school students from class 2, 4 and 6 across the 6 biggest towns in five states- Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.
- Teacher Needs Assessment: is a census study that has been initiated by the Royal Education Council, Government of Bhutan. In this project all teachers of Bhutan are assessed for their general ability, competence in subject knowledge and pedagogical practices.
Reviews
“Though we know from our findings that learning levels are low, this type of study was long overdue. Studies like these should be done on a regular basis – to know where we are moving. Government is also introducing studies like PISA and maybe TIMSS at a later date. I hope findings of this study are made use of.” - Mr. S. C. Khuntia on EI’ ‘Student Learning Study’, Joint Secretary, Bureau of School Education, MHRD
“The Annual Status of Student Learning (ASSL) study carried out by the Royal Education Council with the support of Educational Initiatives provides comprehensive feedback on the quality of the student learning in Bhutan today. The study also provides details for strengthening conceptual learning in students. I am confident that the ASSL findings will augment the various strategic steps taken by all us collectively to strengthen the quality education in Bhutan.” - Lyonpo Thakur S. Powdyel, Minister, Ministry of Education, Royal Government of Bhutan
“Wipro and Educational Initiatives have partnered in the Quality Education Study to understand popular schools in India better. The study has taken a year of hard work by the team that has worked on it. We hope that this study will trigger more debate and further research and help in expanding our understanding of quality education.“ - Azim H. Premji, Chairman, WIPRO
Education Initiatives’ recently released Student Learning Study (SLS) provides a fresh and insightful assessment of student learning across 18 states of India in both urban and rural schools, reaching over 100,000 students in Classes 4,6, and 8, covering 13 languages. This is one of the largest studies of its kind in any country of the world, using a methodologically rigorous testing cycle. Most significantly, SLS sought to assess students’ understanding and ability to apply what they had learnt (“learning with understanding”) as opposed to just their ability to recall information or use formulae or procedures. Test items including both “straightforward” questions (such as what might appear in a textbook or traditional exam) and “non-straightforward” questions which assessed students’ ability to apply their learning. In turn, these questions were linked to specific learning competencies. The results of the SLS are more interesting in some respects than those of the National Achievement Survey (NAS) of NCERT or Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) administered by Pratham, an NGO.
- Excerpt from the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’s 12th Joint Review Mission Report, 2010 (This is the “education for all” programme of the UN)
Education Initiatives Pvt. Ltd. based out of Ahmedabad, Gujarat was awarded the project ‘Achievement Testing Students in Chhattisgarh’...The student assessment study covered 3 lakh students approximately from classes 3 to 8 in language and math from 16 districts of Chhattisgarh. Education Initiatives carried out sampling test development, training of master trainers, data analysis, report presentation, students interview videos, post analysis workshops, capacity building workshops for the state during the course of the project. This is to confirm that the project was successfully completed to the satisfaction of the Rajiv Gandhi Shiksha Mission, Raipur, Chhattisgarh. - K. R. Pisda, Mission Director, Rajiv Gandhi Shiksha Mission Raipur, Chhattisgarh
References
- ↑ "Mindspark: Improve your Math Skills". Mindspark.in. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
- ↑ "Educational Initiatives » What is Mindspark ?". Ei-india.com. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
- ↑ "Educational Initiatives » Bhutan Project". Ei-india.com. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
- ↑ "Educational Initiatives » Andhra Pradesh Randomized Evaluation Study (APRESt)". Ei-india.com. Retrieved 2010-11-23.