IYC World Soft Infrastructure: More than Business, A Social Infrastructure Transformation
Technologies that recalibrate classroom instruction and school administration are ubiquitous by means of existence not deployment . the majority of schools have yet to implement technologies beyond a basic level. Reason for this reluctance include a lack of funds teacher confidence on the role of technology in education methods allocation and distribution in school failure to completed how technologies can Accentuate learning and administrations and most importantly a lack of vision and support from school administrators. Managing funds in an educational institution and tracking them into a report almost sounds time goes into meeting such specific requirements. This is where ERP ( Enterprise Resource Planning ) finds its best from of existence and enjoys an edge over traditional methods of management. Over a period of 17-18 years of your practice, we have tried and succeeded to understand how schools can implement” tells krishan Tikoo, Co-Founder and CEO at IYC World Soft Infrastructure.Headquarted in new delhi and established in 2001, IYC world soft infrastructure pioneered technology led whole school transformation(WST) in 2003. The Foundation to WST Was laid as an Acknowledgement that education. The most knowledge intensive of all human endeavour . will witness the most disruptive change due to the knowledge infrastructute. The internate ever since its inception, IYC worlds's services have helped schools reengineer their processes and resource in the context of the contemporary societal needs imperatives and trends etc. “ we as a technology led education organization bring in acompleate educational consultancy right from curriculum to assessment to learning outcome based content as well as cloud based ERP” say Krishan. A decade ago Educational institutional were hesitant towards ERP and therefore An ERP in a Schools was something unusual. In1999 IYC world had brought the notion of ERP to existence. Fast Forwards 18 year this wonder – of – an – Organization for educational institution has brought in cloud based services in a SaaS (Software As A Service) model to the schools. Krishana gives the credits to the experienced drives in organization to have understood the drill to implement these services and institutionalize new work culture in schools.
Addressing the overall system
In the Early Year when technology had just started to infuse into educational system acertain level of disjointedeness existed never the less . this was on account of lack of master database (schools using disjointed piece of software as software islands). When the IYC world team surveyed about the nominal roll of students in a school of repute based in delhi the team received two diffirent versions:
one from admission department and the other from the fee department. Surprisingly enough, there was a difference of 700 students backing a total of 6000 students. IYCWorld set sail on a journey to centralize the database in such institutions and spread awareness about the impactful nature of technology in education. The company brought the ASP model with 'cloud computing', to education in 2002, a lead of almost five years over the competition, globally. IYCWorld offers customized as well as standard implementation of automation of school's administrative and learning processes (Online ERP), digital content for teachers, innovative self-tutoring and diagnostic portal for access at home for students and parents. The organization has also built inter-school and school society administrative and exchange platform (a boon for multi school chains), mobile apps for extensive school parent engagement and ongoing handholding of teachers on an integrated, dynamic, self-controlled and future scalable software backbone.
Since education is about imparting knowledge and the administration part of it is secondary though essential , investing a fortune in software products and solutions is not the best definition to technology’s intervention in education. A suggestion can be argued upon using the same technology products and solutions as a service. Therefore, IYCWorld, after close study, rolled out their products and solutions in a SaaS model that provides on a pay-as-you-go basis. “Basically, you hire the services”, adds Krishan. This approach eliminates the need for a team of tech experts in the school and the need to maintain servers, hardware or even application licenses. This in turn saves the school a lot on their time and money and allows them to focus on their core objectives. Once the school management states its intent and goals, as SaaS service provider, IYC World meets those goals with close proximity. Moreover, IYC World offers its services to a plethora of schools and fetches daily feedback on their products enriching their services on an ongoing basis. The entire solution is automatically available to all the customers on the cloud. The company ensures availability, security of the application and security of the data; as it is a contextual obligation in schools. Like in other equally data intensive industries, SaaS in education too, helps an institution to quickly run and have an application at a minimal cost without any botheration of ongoing maintenance and periodic upgrades.
When the Education itself Calls for an Amendment
However, an ERP can do only so much so as to ease the administration and the process implemented to allow seamless bestowing of education. Now, to drop down to the real factors obstructing the provisioning of education, IYCWorld had to think out of the box. Since, that is and has always been IYCWorld’s basic sentiment towards education. Via the yearly interactions with principals in IIT educational conferences, the IYCWorld core anagement were enlightened that every student has a learning gap. Primarily, science and mathematics are two such subjects that over time build up in terms of topics and concepts. Besides, the test goes on increasing. Worst case scenario, if one skips a class or falls short to understand, keeping track with the proceedings of the subsequent class becomes a
dilemma. This leads to the widening of the previous year's learning gap, which urgently calls for a remedy. there fore,IYCWorld started a
different content based approach. The first move was to enable video content by converting CBSE books thereby giving some benefits. This however, does not address learning and assessment at core learning outcome (micro conceptual)level. Having invested heavily into development of video content we realized its shortcomings and decided not to market it and went back to drawing board. IYC World’s single minded focus to address the key learning led to the development of learning outcome mapped curriculum based content, activities and exercises. The organization’s approach to new way of learning got vindicated by government’s focus on assessing learning outcome of students both in India. A similar affair exists with the governments of UAE and rest of the Middle East where IYCWorld operates.
Seamless Learning
IYCWorld, connecting each dot of the education system, intends to provide the complete blueprint of the teaching process to a teacher who might not be able to complete the entire syllabus at one go. The company is doing this by structuring a complete guideline of the content, assessment, and activity of any particular period or term. The IYC team has divided the entire syllabus in classes 1 to 12 into approximately 10000 period plans. These period plans are different from lesson planning. If a chapter is to be taught, the teachers make a lesson plan which is completed by them and known by only the teacher, HOD and the principal. Parents and students on the other hand, are not aware of the lesson plan or how and what is to be taught whatsoever on a particular period on a particular day. When lesson planning is replaced by period plan (shared online with students and parents), students and teachers both know the lesson to be taught for a particular day. Hence, if a teacher is absent, the substitute teacher will know exactly what to teach, since the period plan (one learning outcome in one period) is tied with learning outcomes. At the same time, this brilliant approach also gives the students and parents, an opportunity to pre read and understand the fundamentals of the lesson before they enter the classroom. In a 40 minutes class the teacher cannot teach everything and neither miracles happen in this context. Each learning outcome is converted to a digital file to have learning outcomes based content. So, as student comes preread, ready with the content, period plan becomes an experience rather than a commitment.
Just the Right Solutions
IYCWorld SoftInfrastructure has few solutions or modules in place to further make the process of imparting education, simpler. Krishan quotes George Santayana (an American philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist popularly known for his aphorisms) saying, “A child educated only in school is an uneducated child”. This typically hints to the role of parents in a child’s education. “Parenting is a serious business”, adds Krishan. Popularly, parents tend to forget about their wards educational progress once he or she is enrolled in the school. To put things in perspective, IYCWorld’s app called, ‘Parent School App’ is designed as a virtual school resource for parents. The app has simple to understand learning outcome, mapped resources and exercises to allow parents to handhold their child by plugging their learning gaps on day to day basis. Similarly, ‘Perfecten’ is an App-based, 24 x 7, class 10 board exam preparatory resources for Math and Science. It helps aspiring class 10 students to secure good marks through conceptual learning and not rote learning. It offers math and science syllabi divided into over 235 learning outcomes (micro-concepts)- to help students know the exact things required knowing, focusing upon, and preparing for the board exams.
IYCWorld has a vision of Internet-based education as the driver of social infrastructure transformation across the globe. The company looks forward to becoming the ace player in Education-led social infrastructure transformation, globally, as well as the global leader in creating knowledge society schools in the developing world. With such a strong objective to evolve the current schooling system into knowledge society schools as places of exchange and collaboration between students, IYCWorld projects the future of India into a more promising, brighter and sharper one. We as a nation need to turn our demographic advantage into national asset and what better way than addressing the learning needs at grass root level.
The second constructive measure is in the way students are assessed in the country. In PTA (Parents Teacher Association), student's mark sheets are scrutinized stating that his/ her mathematics is weak, which at best is postmortem with no remedial road map to students and parents. Krishan chooses to think otherwise on this approach to assessment obviously because calling a child weak in a subject is a general statement. Mathematics on the whole comprises of many sub-topics; geometry, algebra and calculus etc. The visionaries at IYCWorld disliked this generalization and decided to eliminate the same and as a better option produce a different kind of score card that will bring in a complete roadmap to the student. The company converted the entire CBSE curriculum from 1 to 12 with learning outcomes. Each chapter has clearly defined learning outcomes. If one reads about electricity in class 10th, the student will be presented with 10 different learning outcomes which must be understood. These learning outcomes are micro concepts of each chapter which ensure students understand finer nuances of the topic being taught and avoid rote learning. Following this IYCWorld projects a Micro Progress Report that provides students with a concrete roadmap BY identifying their weak learning outcomes. “We converted entire learning into learning outcomes and started doing assessment on a learning outcomes basis. The remedial and everything is based on the leaning outcome”, adds the CEO.
IYCWorld’s single minded focus to address the key learning led to the development of learning outcome mapped curriculum based content, activities and exercises
Seamless Learning
IYCWorld, connecting each dot of the education system, intends to provide the complete blueprint of the teaching process to a teacher who might not be able to complete the entire syllabus at one go. The company is doing this by structuring a complete guideline of the content, assessment, and activity of any particular period or term. The IYC team has divided the entire syllabus in classes 1 to 12 into approximately 10000 period plans. These period plans are different from lesson planning. If a chapter is to be taught, the teachers make a lesson plan which is completed by them and known by only the teacher, HOD and the principal. Parents and students on the other hand, are not aware of the lesson plan or how and what is to be taught whatsoever on a particular period on a particular day. When lesson planning is replaced by period plan (shared online with students and parents), students and teachers both know the lesson to be taught for a particular day. Hence, if a teacher is absent, the substitute teacher will know exactly what to teach, since the period plan (one learning outcome in one period) is tied with learning outcomes. At the same time, this brilliant approach also gives the students and parents, an opportunity to pre read and understand the fundamentals of the lesson before they enter the classroom. In a 40 minutes class the teacher cannot teach everything and neither miracles happen in this context. Each learning outcome is converted to a digital file to have learning outcomes based content. So, as student comes preread, ready with the content, period plan becomes an experience rather than a commitment.
Just the Right Solutions
IYCWorld SoftInfrastructure has few solutions or modules in place to further make the process of imparting education, simpler. Krishan quotes George Santayana (an American philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist popularly known for his aphorisms) saying, “A child educated only in school is an uneducated child”. This typically hints to the role of parents in a child’s education. “Parenting is a serious business”, adds Krishan. Popularly, parents tend to forget about their wards educational progress once he or she is enrolled in the school. To put things in perspective, IYCWorld’s app called, ‘Parent School App’ is designed as a virtual school resource for parents. The app has simple to understand learning outcome, mapped resources and exercises to allow parents to handhold their child by plugging their learning gaps on day to day basis. Similarly, ‘Perfecten’ is an App-based, 24 x 7, class 10 board exam preparatory resources for Math and Science. It helps aspiring class 10 students to secure good marks through conceptual learning and not rote learning. It offers math and science syllabi divided into over 235 learning outcomes (micro-concepts)- to help students know the exact things required knowing, focusing upon, and preparing for the board exams.
IYCWorld has a vision of Internet-based education as the driver of social infrastructure transformation across the globe. The company looks forward to becoming the ace player in Education-led social infrastructure transformation, globally, as well as the global leader in creating knowledge society schools in the developing world. With such a strong objective to evolve the current schooling system into knowledge society schools as places of exchange and collaboration between students, IYCWorld projects the future of India into a more promising, brighter and sharper one. We as a nation need to turn our demographic advantage into national asset and what better way than addressing the learning needs at grass root level.
