Personalized Learning with Mindspark

"Few children in Africa perform at their expected grade level and it is impossible for school teachers to handle the widely varying levels of ability and the heterogeneity in the classroom. As a result, low-performing students are permanently left behind (and possibly drop out) as they do not receive the academic support they need."

 High teacher absenteeism, a one-size-fits-all approach, rote learning, and limited support for struggling students create a vast disparity in learning levels within classrooms and across schools. This is especially true for students from poorer families, who often lack basic foundational skills. The situation is even more stark in tribal communities, where literacy rates can be 30-40% below the national average. The pandemic further exacerbated these inequalities due to limited access to digital technology and unpreparedness for remote learning.

The Root of the Problem: Traditional Methods Fall Short

Traditional education often struggles to cater to individual student needs. A single teacher managing a large class with diverse learning styles can't effectively personalize instruction. Rote learning, focused on memorization over understanding, fails to equip students with critical thinking skills. This leaves many students, especially those starting at a lower level, falling behind without the support they need to catch up.

Our Solution: Personalized Learning at Scale

Mindspark addresses these issues head-on by providing personalized adaptive learning (PAL) specifically designed for students in government schools. This innovative tool tailors learning to each student's individual needs, ensuring everyone is challenged appropriately.

Empowering Students Through Individualized Learning Paths:

• Accurate Assessment: Mindspark diagnoses a student's learning level, creating a personalized starting point.

• Adaptive Content: Interactive questions, based on decades of research on common misconceptions, address specific learning gaps.

• Differentiation for All: Struggling readers receive voiceover support, while advanced learners face progressively complex challenges.

• AI-Powered Support: Mindspark leverages AI to assist students in refining reading comprehension and creative writing skills.

Equipping Teachers to Make a Difference:

• Real-Time Data Insights: Dashboards provide teachers with a clear picture of student usage, performance data, and areas requiring attention.

• Targeted Instruction: This data empowers teachers to tailor their classroom instruction and offer targeted support to struggling students.

• Focus on Learning, Not Busywork: Mindspark frees up valuable teacher time by handling individualized instruction, allowing them to focus on fostering deeper understanding.

Beyond the Classroom: A Ripple Effect

Mindspark's impact extends beyond students and teachers, fostering positive change within the education system:

• Transparency and Accountability: Usage and learning data provide school administrators with insights to identify areas needing targeted support, promoting a more transparent system.

• Data-Driven Policymaking: Valuable research data from Mindspark usage informs future educational policies and interventions.

• Prioritizing Cost-Effective Solutions: Mindspark's success as a proven and affordable program can guide policymakers in prioritizing effective education technology solutions.

Mindspark tackles the critical issue of unequal learning outcomes by providing a scalable, personalized learning solution for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. By empowering students, equipping teachers, and fostering transparency, Mindspark paves the way for a more equitable and effective education system for all.

Ei Mindspark is a personalized adaptive learning (PAL) tool that enables Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL). It is an inquiry-based and gamified software that itemizes the local syllabus. It diagnoses student’s learning levels and offers interactive questions to help students learn concepts at their own levels. These questions are based on two decades of research on common student misconceptions in languages and math. Mindspark caters for students with varying learning capacities. For students struggling with reading skills, it offers voiceovers for support, while it challenges higher-performing students with more complex questions. Mindspark also integrates AI to assist students in improving their reading comprehension and creative writing skills.

Implemented in schools, students access Mindspark individually in shared computer labs in their weekly timetables. Real-time dashboards empower teachers to monitor student usage, their performance data, and identify areas for remediation. This proves valuable in resource-constrained public schools dealing with large class sizes and diverse learning levels. RCTs conducted by J-PAL have shown a linear correlation between usage and improvement in learning outcomes.

Administrators benefit from Mindspark dashboards, as they can oversee regional variations in learning outcomes and devise strategies for improving the overall education system. Therefore, Mindspark improves student learning outcomes via two pathways: (1) Directly by student usage (2) Indirectly by enhancing teacher capacity. Mindspark also has sequential benefits, boosting student motivation and attendance rates.

Mindspark has shown comparable effects to TaRL in-school treatments as well as teacher monitoring and incentives interventions, yet has achieved results in less time. Unlike teacher dependent TaRL initiatives, Mindspark scale-up is not contingent on quality human resources, and the layer of technology makes it scalable in any context.

Mindspark is an adaptive learning solution designed to specifically address the needs of students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. These students often face a multitude of challenges that hinder their educational experience. Despite strides in school access, significant issues persist. High teacher absenteeism, rote learning, and a lack of personalized attention contribute to a vast gap in learning levels within classrooms and across schools. This disparity is particularly severe for students from poorer families and rural/remote areas, with tribal communities facing a literacy rate 30-40% below the national average. The pandemic further exacerbated these inequalities due to limited access to technology and unpreparedness for remote learning.

Mindspark tackles these challenges head-on by:

• Personalized Learning: It tailors lessons to individual student needs. This is crucial for students who may be starting from a lower baseline or learning at a slower pace.

• Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL): By adapting content to the student's current understanding, Mindspark ensures they are neither overwhelmed nor bored, fostering a more engaging learning experience.

• Actionable Insights for Teachers: Mindspark equips teachers with valuable data on student progress. This allows them to identify areas needing improvement and adapt their teaching strategies accordingly.

• Continuous Improvement: Insights from student usage and assessments are used to refine Mindspark's content and questions, while research in pedagogy further informs its development.

Mindspark's impact extends beyond students, positively affecting the education system as a whole:

• Transparency: Data from Mindspark usage helps identify schools or regions needing targeted support, leading to a more transparent and accountable education system.

• Research and Policy Development: Data generated by Mindspark is valuable for research purposes, informing future educational policies and interventions.

• Prioritizing Cost-Effective Solutions: Mindspark's success story can guide policymakers in prioritizing proven and cost-effective education-technology solutions.

Mindspark isn't just a product; it's a solution built by a team that comprehends the very issues it aims to address. Our 350+ members hail from diverse backgrounds in education, assessment, and large-scale government projects across India. This ensures we have a deep understanding of the education system's complexities and the challenges faced by government schools.

Our team includes teachers with years of classroom experience, curriculum and textbook developers. They understand the specific needs of students and the realities of resource-constrained schools.

Our team includes:

• Teacher Trainers: They understand how to effectively use technology in classrooms, ensuring Mindspark complements, not replaces, teachers.

• Field Staff – The Backbone of Implementation: This dedicated group is the heart of Mindspark's reach. They navigate the toughest terrains, carrying servers and tablets from village to village, ensuring no child is left behind due to lack of internet or electricity. Their proximity to the communities allows them to understand the specific challenges and contexts students face.

Mindspark isn't a solution designed for marginalised communities – it's a solution designed with them. We partner with both official and local entities, ensuring Mindspark aligns with government education goals while incorporating the insights of those closest to the communities. We actively seek input from communities. This ensures Mindspark addresses their specific needs and preferences, not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Mindspark is used by more than 500K students in India, UAE, South Africa, and Mozambique in public and private schools. In India, it is used in 10 languages in 15 states through three models.

1. Mindspark positively impact around 15K students across public schools in Gauteng, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and Mpumalanga and the North West Province in South Africa in collaboration with MSDF, GIDF, Click Learning and Jet Education Services.

2. Partnerships with 10 NGOs serve 195K students in rural, tribal and urban fringe areas of India, highlighting Ei’s commitment to collaborations, leveraging the expertise of NGOs to provide last-mile delivery.

3. Mindspark directly serves 207K students in government schools. Ei's staff work with education officials, oversee Mindspark sessions and support teachers. This approach is used for process discovery and government advocacy.

4. Mindspark serves 100K children at home or in community centers to ensure learning continuity beyond the schools (e.g. holidays, severe weather, political activities). It also provides an option for school dropouts and those forced to stay at home for family care, labor work or long funerals.

Mindspark's adoption in public schools prompted the Ministry of Education to issue a guidebook for Indian states, detailing PAL implementation strategies, with Mindspark as a notable case study. This demand, seen in large-scale procurement projects (e.g., Rajasthan bought computers for 5000 schools) and increased PAL contracts (e.g., Andhra Pradesh partnered with three EdTech providers). In research, Mindspark is recognized in reputed publications (e.g., American Economic Review, World Bank's "Smart Buys" report, Stanford Social Innovation Review).

We are applying to Solve because we recognize the immense potential for collaboration in addressing the complex challenges facing education today. As an organization committed to promoting equitable access to quality education, we believe that partnerships with entities like Solve can amplify our impact and accelerate progress towards our goals.

Developing and implementing innovative solutions on scale in education requires significant investment of resources, both monetary and non-monetary. By partnering with Solve, we hope to access a network of potential collaborators who share our vision and are willing to provide the necessary support to fuel our growth.

Navigating the legal and regulatory landscape can pose significant challenges, especially when operating in multiple countries with diverse legal frameworks. By partnering with Solve, we hope to gain access to legal guidance and support that can help us navigate these complexities more effectively. Whether it's ensuring compliance with data protection regulations or navigating licensing agreements, we believe that having access to legal expertise can help us overcome these barriers and operate more efficiently and effectively.

Cultural considerations also play a crucial role in the success of our initiatives. Education is deeply rooted in local contexts, and understanding the cultural nuances of the communities we serve is essential for designing effective interventions. By partnering with Solve, we hope to gain insights into the cultural dynamics of different regions and communities, allowing us to tailor our solutions to better meet their needs. Whether it's adapting our curriculum to reflect local languages and traditions or incorporating culturally relevant teaching methods, we believe that cultural sensitivity is key to the success of our initiatives.

Educational technology is a rapidly evolving field, and staying at the forefront of innovation requires continuous research and development. By collaborating with Solve, we hope to gain access to technical expertise and resources that can help us enhance the effectiveness and scalability of our solutions. Whether it's leveraging emerging technologies or optimizing existing platforms, we believe that working with Solve can help us overcome these technical barriers and drive innovation in education.

Overall, we see Solve as a valuable partner in our mission to transform education for all. By providing access to funding, technical expertise, legal support, and cultural insights, Solve can help us overcome the various barriers we face and accelerate our progress towards creating a world where every child has access to quality education. We are excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Solve and leverage our collective strengths to drive meaningful change in education.

Based on research: Using pedagogical research and rich data from 22 years of assessments conducted in government and private schools, Mindspark captures specific misconceptions and helps overcome them proactively while enabling learning. 

Assessment for learning: Diagnostic tests in Mindspark detect misconceptions and proficiency in concepts and put students in personalized remedial paths that consist of questions and activities.

Real-life examples: To pique interest in learning a new concept taught, Mindspark facilitates learning by creating the need to learn the concept either by showing real-life situations and/or posing a problem that is efficiently solved if the targeted concept is understood. 

Intelligent responses: Mindspark has sophisticated and intelligent responses like response-specific feedback & alerts, numeric and non-numeric parsers to interpret various forms of student answers (like 'two' or '2' or '4/2' or '2/1' are the same)

Intelligent feedback: Step By Step solver in Algebra, Exponents, Real numbers and Trigonometry allows Mindspark to provide very specific and contextually relevant feedback messages, at each step. This granular data is further used to develop insights.

Games and enrichment activities: Mindspark has pedagogically oriented games that ensure the engagement of children and enrichment activities allow children who have learned a concept to explore beyond the typical curriculum.

Teacher interface: It ensures teachers have complete control over what concepts the class needs to learn, and how that can be effectively timed (in sync with classroom teaching). Further, teachers are provided with student and class level insights with recommended action points based on class performance. 

Ei’s vision with Mindspark is to use data on student learning and misconceptions to create an adaptive learning tool that can help each child learn at a level and pace most suited to them. Through an artificial intelligence algorithm honed over the years, the software helps remedy learning gaps and misconceptions through questions, activities, games, and challenges that are tailored to each user. Mindspark content is mapped to national policy and local context which can therefore meaningfully complement in-class instruction. Mindspark empowers teachers by allowing them to both control the activation of topics and use student data to understand progress and learning gaps. With real time automated data collection and analytics, Mindspark enables a transparent, easily accessible data dashboard to measure and track on the agreed M&E framework (on inputs, process, outputs & outcomes). This allows for effective monitoring and enables data-based decision making at both the micro (student and class) and macro (systemic) level.

Our impact goals for Ei Mindspark are centered around enhancing learning outcomes, promoting equitable access to education, and fostering personalized learning experiences for students. To measure our progress towards these goals, we employ a variety of metrics, including:

1. Academic Performance: Tracking improvements in students' academic performance in subjects like math and English through pre and post-assessments.

2. Engagement Metrics: Monitoring student engagement with the Mindspark platform, including frequency and duration of usage.

3. User Feedback: Gathering feedback from students, teachers, and school administrators to assess satisfaction levels and identify areas for improvement.

4. Reach and Access: Evaluating the expansion of Mindspark into new schools and regions to ensure broader access to quality education.

5. Long-term Impact: Assessing the long-term impact of Mindspark on students' educational trajectories, including graduation rates and higher education enrollment.

By regularly evaluating these metrics, we aim to continuously improve the effectiveness and reach of Ei Mindspark to achieve our impact goals.

Ei has been integrating Machine Learning and Generative AI into its products, particularly Mindspark, to enhance adaptivity, personalization, engagement, and feedback for learners. These technologies analyze student responses and interactions to tailor the learning experience. For adaptivity, ML algorithms adjust the difficulty level and pace of learning, ensuring each student receives content suited to their skill level. Personalization is achieved through the creation of customized learning paths based on individual progress and needs. This approach enhances engagement by providing real-time feedback, interactive exercises, and adaptive challenges, keeping students motivated. Additionally, the use of ML enables Mindspark to offer immediate and detailed feedback, helping students correct misconceptions and reinforce learning. Ei's goal is to further develop its expertise in ML and Generative AI to improve the teaching of foundational skills in a self-learning environment, focusing on refining adaptivity, personalization, engagement, and feedback mechanisms for enhanced learning outcomes.

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With over 22 years of experience, Ei has collaborated with 10,000+ schools to administer 15 million assessments and assisted 15,000+ teachers for classroom remediation. It is also working with India’s largest board, CBSE to reform its Grade 10/12 school leaving exams and working with public schools in South Africa to enhance learning outcomes for public schools students ~ 13K. Ei’s work has been recognised by UNESCO, Harvard Business School, RTI International, and Stanford Innovation Review among others. For its EdTech tool, Ei was selected as one of 15 finalists in 2017 by the Qatar WISE.

The business model of Educational Initiatives revolves around providing educational solutions and services. It includes revenue streams from various sources such as:

1. Sales of educational products and software like Ei Mindspark and Ei ASSET.

2. Offering training and professional development services for educators.

3. Consulting services for schools, governments, and other educational organizations.

4. Licensing of proprietary educational technologies and assessments.

5. Partnerships and collaborations with governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders in the education sector.

6. Subscription-based models for access to online learning platforms or resources.

Overall, Educational Initiatives generates revenue by delivering high-quality educational solutions and services to meet the needs of schools, educators, and learners.

Few of our funders include MSDF, Amazon, P &G .

Our plan for achieving financial sustainability revolves around diversifying revenue streams, optimizing operational efficiency, and fostering strategic partnerships. To accomplish this, we have implemented several key strategies:

1. Diversification of Revenue Streams: We aim to reduce reliance on a single source of income by expanding our portfolio of products and services. This includes offering customized solutions for schools, educational institutions, and government agencies, as well as exploring opportunities in new markets and sectors.

2. Operational Efficiency: We continuously seek ways to streamline our operations and reduce costs without compromising on quality. This involves leveraging technology, automation, and data analytics to improve efficiency across all areas of our organization.

3. Strategic Partnerships: We actively seek partnerships with like-minded organizations, institutions, and funders who share our mission and values. These partnerships enable us to access new markets, tap into additional resources, and leverage complementary expertise to maximize impact.

As evidence of the success of our financial sustainability plan, we can provide the following indicators:

1. Revenue Growth: We have seen steady revenue growth over the past few years, reflecting the effectiveness of our efforts to diversify revenue streams and expand our customer base.

2. Profitability: Our focus on operational efficiency has led to improved profitability, with healthy margins across our product and service offerings.

3. Funding and Investment: We have successfully secured funding and investment from various sources, including grants, venture capital, and strategic partnerships, demonstrating confidence in our business model and growth potential.

4. Customer Retention and Satisfaction: High customer retention rates and positive feedback from clients indicate the value and quality of our products and services, contributing to long-term sustainability.

Overall, our financial sustainability plan is underpinned by a commitment to innovation, adaptability, and strategic growth. By continuously assessing and refining our strategies in response to market dynamics and emerging opportunities, we aim to ensure the long-term viability and impact of Educational Initiatives.