Education plays an important role in nurturing vital skills and shaping the personality. Rising from the typical monotony of the traditional system, one passionate educationist, Swati Mishra, Sales Head at AcadPrime, has emerged as a dynamic change maker in revolutionizing the basic learning pedagogy.
Swati has identified the prevailing teaching methods and the challenges faced by the students, teachers and parents. She strongly felt the need to bring about a drastic change in the teaching system. Developing innovative ways and means in AcadPrime, Swati introduced a different and modern approach to learning that ensured good involvement of the students and presented learning attractively and interactively, thereby making the learning process simpler and enjoyable.
In an interview with the Insights Success team, Swati enthusiastically regaled about her company AcadPrime, her journey in the education sector, challenges faced and countered and her vision for the future.
Swati, please tell us about the AcadPrime since its inception.
AcadPrime is an interactive online education platform that enables students to learn live from India’s best educators. It provides a platform for online connecting the Three Dots (students, parents, and teachers). We aim to deliver a fully transparent, secure, and easily accessible educational service digitally.
Our name, ‘AcadPrime,’ demonstrates the purpose of our conception – Acad stands for the academy, and Prime stands for excellence, so the meaning of AcadPrime is an academy of excellence. Academy of excellence, where any and every knowledge seeker can tap into knowledge givers through our platform in a personalized way from anywhere.
Please tell us about your professional journey.
I began my journey in CBSE board school APS Allahabad as a tutor, where I was allotted classes from 9th to 12th std for teaching the key science subjects of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. After that, I worked as a CSIR-CIMAP (Central Institute of Medicinal Plants, Lucknow) researcher. I was associated with Prof. Ram Raja Sekharan (presently the Director of CFTRI) there. Along with this, I did my internship at CDRI Lucknow. In 2010, I went to Japan and later to Taiwan with my spouse as he was pursuing his post-doctorate. There I met many researchers and many other people.
On returning to India in 2015, I joined Jaganantha Vidyalaya, a CBSE school, as a tutor for 11th and 12th std students, for a month as I had a small child to take care of. Then, I joined a start-up I2Global School in Kelambakkam, Chennai. I was appointed as a Centre Head of this Preschool until February 2018.
Then I joined Mount Litera zee school, Chennai as a Relationship Manager, also in its post-launch phase. Before COVID-19, I worked as a Centre Head at Kidzee Padur Playschool and Pre-School till May 2020. In June 2020, I joined uFaber Edutech Pvt Ltd as an IELTS Trainer. Then in early August 2021, I worked as a Senior Sales Consultant at Oasis Global Technology Centre, Chennai.
In August 2021, I joined the AcadPrime EdTech start-up as an Academic Counsellor. I got promoted to Sales Head in January 2022. I have learnt a lot about pedagogy in innovative learning as well as the holistic development of a child.
What was your inspiration behind venturing into the education arena?
My inspiration is my goal to bring gender equality and the right to education for all. I started taking tuition classes in the early stages. I strongly feel that a change is required in our mentality about the education set-up. We always categorise weak and bright students. But they should be classified as slow and fast learners. Personalized attention and more practice are required for slow learners. If we give personal attention to the students, we can see much improvement in them. I always believed that every child is unique.
What initial challenges did you have to surmount to ensure AcadPrime’s success rate reached greater heights?
Teaching has increasingly become more difficult with time, and student success is falling at an alarming rate.
Based on my experience, below are listed a few of the most common challenges faced by teachers today:
Inspiring Students to be more Self-directed Teachers are having a tough time getting students to be more self-directed. They are looking for a way to ease the pressure of students by keeping them interested and making sure that lesson practices and the homework delivered are fun, accessible anywhere, targeted to improve their weaknesses and ensuring that learning takes place in a more conducive, less-tense, less-pressured environment.
- Improving Learning Outcomes
Designing learning outcomes that mean something and are an effective way to measure student potential and success is a big challenge. Meeting those learning outcomes and having solid indicators to prove this, all the while easing the paperwork and the excel sheets of the teachers, have become unthinkable. Even if these are done well, teachers still don’t get that 360° view of how good their students are. In addition, finding the right way to automate this process so that real-time results are needed is of prime importance.
- Differentiating and Personalizing Teaching
What works for one student does not work for another. Teachers have recognized this but have few ways to test and ensure that different skill levels are being evaluated. A new wave of assessments and how teaching is conducted is important. Teachers are looking for new question types, media-enhanced exams and the like; diversifying teaching and keeping it simple at the same time is a hard-to-find balance.
- Getting Students to do their Work Outside the Classroom
What students do at school is just a fraction of the effort that needs to be put in for academic success. Teachers have the extra pressure of having students put in the extra effort outside the classroom. Students still have found no proper incentive to deal with this issue. Teachers are looking for a way to encourage students to learn while having fun and not make it seem like pursuing knowledge is tedious.
- Finding the time to keep up with Administrative Tasks
It takes a lot of time and work to come up with a curriculum, teach, be engaged with classrooms, come up with questions for assessments, spend time (and sometimes weekends) correcting and grading these assessments, and then having to spend hours filling out reports, analysis, strengths, weaknesses, and other performance indicators. Teachers are looking for ways to be eased this burden so that they can focus on teaching and promoting the importance of education and learning.
- Understanding Changing Technology
With the advance of the internet and changing technology, teachers have been finding it hard to find easy yet effective systems and platforms to run their classrooms.
- Parental Involvement
Having the parents of students informed and involved is one major area that teachers and admins have a hard time keeping up with. Teachers are looking for an easy way to have parents be a part of their child’s journey, have a good understanding of their skills, and monitor their performances regularly.
Education is considered a tool of empowerment. What efforts do you and the institution take to ensure that education is provided to those needing it?
A truly, interactive online education has emerged as a main 21st-century education model that ensures an equitable and knowledgeable world, with experts from all over the globe contributing towards learning needs from any part of the world. This borderless education model has taken different shapes in the last couple of decades and moving towards a better outcome. It is accessible to all. We have customized learning for all kinds of learners.
What USPs highlight AcadPrime’s uniqueness in the industry you are catering to?
We aim to deliver a fully transparent, secure, and easily accessible educational service digitally. With our tutors in India, we cater to Indian and Global students and bring in global education standards and learning practices across our student base, one of our unique contributions to the Indian education sector as a start-up.
As an experienced professional, what would you like to advise the budding aspirants willing to enter the business world?
It is a place that should be taken up by only those people who have a passion for shaping the future of the country. Consistent passion is required for this particular field. People with a fixed mindset should not acquire this field in the long run.
How do you envision AcadPrime’s operations with the emerging technologies and automated tools that are revolutionizing the business world by enabling innovations?
AcadPrime and I are mainly focused on ensuring quality content and engagement in learning are consistently improved. Also, our focus is entirely on ensuring that education provider shows results of improvement to parents and students and holds accountability for the results, which is currently an area most of the EdTech companies are looking to address.
Awards, Accolades, and Accreditations:
- Employee appreciation award for diligent staff from Kidzee
- Best teacher award -GLObal teaching excellence award
- Best Guru award-GISR organization
- Foxclues 100 women icon award by India prime awards
- The real superwoman-educationist certificate
- BBA-Gems of India-Bharat Achievers Award-2022-top 100 Legends.
- INNOVATIONS AWARD-Best Educator Award
- Raising Star Award -Ufaber Edutech
