Educational Initiatives – Pratham Infotech Foundation

Today, more children than ever are enrolling and attending school. But classroom attendance does not translate to meaningful learning. The 2018 ASER survey indicates that the average Grade V student in India is at least two years behind in grade appropriate learning.

A key challenge to improving classroom learning is the highly heterogonous nature of classrooms with students different learning levels. This problem is exacerbated by teachers rushing to complete curricula due to the rigid school systems. Additionally, millions of students are 1st gen-learners having limited home support.

Under the QEI-DIB, Pratham Infotech Foundation (PIF) and Educational Initiatives (EI) have rolled out Mindspark – a pedagogy-based adaptive learning software that integrates regular classroom teaching and building capacity of schools.

Evidence shows that computer-assisted personalized learning solutions could be a promising approach to help address this challenge. Mindspark has a demonstrated track record, showing impressive learning gains in rigorous studies. “The progress made in language and Math by (Mindspark) pupils was greater than in almost any study of education – and for a fraction of the cost of attending a government-run school”. – The Economist (2017)

EI-PIF ‘s vision is to use data on student learning gaps to create an adaptive learning program that is aware of how students learn and to remedy gaps through tailor-made questions, activities, games and challenges. Mindspark works in step with the curriculum, and allows teachers to both control the topics and use data to understand student progress and learning gaps. Using automated data collection and analytics, Mindspark enables a transparent, easily accessible data dashboard to measure and track progress on leading metrics.