MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

Teach A Class Foundation

One-line solution summary:

Peer to Peer virtual coaching platform to teachers in India to learn emerging edtech tools.

Pitch your solution.

Education technology solutions are growing in markets like India however there is a massive gap in teachers ability and skills to use these products in classrooms. Without proper coaching and training, the products are rendered ineffective.

We want to make coaching accessible to every teacher in India and leverage the massive change to online ( due to covid ) to drive adoption of virtual coaching as a viable option.

Our solution is a peer to peer, cohort based coaching for teachers all done virtually. Teachers who have experience using tools in their classroom can sign up to become "Guides" and run cohorts of teachers who plan to use the same tool. This creates an experience marketplace where supply and demand some from the same pool of teachers and makes the solution sustainable and scalable.

Solution already scaled during Covid and made over 20,000 teachers successful in their class.

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

As the world reels under the ongoing pandemic, India was no exception. Lockdown has impacted the Indian education system as well, where the physical classes have largely moved to remote learning, and the Edtech tools becoming the key to run the classes virtually. However, lack of training and adequate knowledge on such tools have proved to be a major barrier for most teachers in India to organize quality online classes with creativity and effectiveness and create quality lesson plans. This, in turn, adversely affected creating a positive environment for students to learn, test their critical thinking, and thus embrace the new teaching ecosystem.

We are solving the scale challenges in offline training solutions by creating a marketplace for "experienced" teachers to share their practices and training with peers, virtually. This has already scaled to 20,000 + teachers. This peer-peer cohort model of coaching allows everyone to participate in sharing their best practices with each other without incurring the high costs of in-person training. This makes everyones classrooms more equitable as students have access to skilled teachers who can use the ed-tech tools.

What is your solution?

Teach A Class provides a platform for teachers where they can attend the Free Live classes to build on their capacities on Edtech Tools and learn to implement these tools into their classes to improve the learning capacity of the class. Besides serving as skill and expertise development on educational tools, our series of Live sessions facilitate peer learning and interaction with other teachers to build a quality virtual class system. Teach A Class has three main components:

Firstly, it has the Tool Repository which contains the 30+ best teaching tools, which have been identified based on the needs of Indian teachers. It provides all the basic information about the tool which can help a teacher to get acquainted with the tool and as per their requirement build the initial understanding of it. This library is growing as more teachers from the community participate in voting on solutions that they need help with.

Second component is the LIVE interactive delivery of coaching in cohorts. Through organizing a live session for the target teachers, here we provide hand-hold support to help the teachers learn about the tools from basics with live practice.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Teach A Class endeavors to work for Indian Teachers from low cost schools by understanding that they lack access to such training sessions or avail courses and associated opportunities to build on their expertise on modern Edtech tools.

All our Edtech tools and classes are curated and designed based on the evolving needs of the teachers and school leaders, which are identified through conducting surveys and interviews. Conducting Live polls during our sessions particularly helps to understand the satisfaction level of the teacher with our sessions and the usefulness of the tool for their classes. Our classes provide practical step-by-step guidance for a teacher to start conducting virtual classes, design engaging activities, create lesson plans, manage a classroom, organize tests, in addition to tracking and evaluating students’ progress with ease and effectiveness. Overall, our innovative and inclusive tools involving real-time datasets, creative videos, and interactive live sessions facilitate access to quality learning experiences led by our trained expert educators. This is done under the broader umbrella of the 3 Cs: collaboration, cooperation, and communication with all stakeholders in the education sector including teachers, students, and their families.

By design our solution is inclusive as it has teachers from all income levels and geographies attending the classes. All they need is a phone with data connection. By empowering these teachers we are indirectly improving the lives of students attending government funded schools and low cost private schools in India.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Support teachers to adapt their pedagogy, facilitate personalized instruction, and communicate with students and their families in remote and hybrid settings.

Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.

To create equitable classrooms, the only way to achieve it in schools in India impacted by COVID is by providing an inclusive platform where teachers from anywhere can participate in up-skilling themselves.

COVID accelerated the need to use ed-tech in the classrooms, however the skill gaps to use these tools only widened based on access to good trainers.

Our solution created a marketplace for teachers who had experience using ed-tech tools to become "peer instructors" to other teachers who had to use similar tools. We saw cohorts being created by teachers based on their experience and skill level.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth.

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.

Answer: Our solution launched during COVID, we build the marketplace of teachers on the supply side to teach skills and served over 20000+ teachers who have joined as learners. This program ran for over 12 months and has been growing at 20% Month on Month. We have now implemented a new booking system to activate more teachers from the community to come online and become "creators" or master trainers.

We also have onboarded 30+ edtech tools based on community demand and are working on a business model where the tool vendors pay us to deliver training for their tools. We are still refining the sponsorship model, but have already seen the impact on the end users ( teachers ) and students in their classrooms. Our plan is to now grow this platform to sever 1million teachers by 2022.

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Neil D'Souza