Envision

Making high school STEM in India more inclusive, interdisciplinary, and innovative.

Envision aims to harness the potential of technology in making Indian high school STEM more inclusive, interdisciplinary, and innovative. We aim to use a website as a reserve of information about what we do, how we do, and why we do something like this. Our solution aims to build a mobile and web application for students to get access to the experimental science curriculum made by Envision's educators, these would include interactive and easy explanations of scientific concepts and DIY experiments related to the concepts with the most frugal and safest materials available at home. Post the lecture and experiment, to test the students' knowledge and understanding we would have games and interactive quizzes like they have in Brilliant, it is not like a test, which assesses your facts, but your understanding of the topic. Our app will also have a mentorship platform where students will be asked about their goals and interests, and as per those responses, our team will match them with the mentor who does pretty similar work like they aspire to do. We would also like to harness the power of Discord to build a powerful student community with students from all over India.

The problem we intend to solve is the lack of academic excitement in secondary and tertiary STEM education in India. Science is perceived to be a tough subject, a subject which is only meant for the studious. Well, that is so not the case, the teaching of science in Indian schools (both government and private) is very bookish. It kills academic excitement. The expectation from the student is to not learn the real science governing a phenomenon but to cram the content written in the textbook for marks and grades. Students just have a dopamine rush to score marks but not learn. This leads to fundamentally weaker concepts in students with great grades also. Fundamentally weaker concepts give a lack of interest and then people don’t want to take it up further, People who take up STEM in higher secondary schools take up professional careers like medicine and engineering as they are more pragmatic career choices. Nobody wants to do STEM research or outreach! The reasons for this problem include; lack of skilled teachers (there is a difference between knowledge and skill), zero mentorships for STEM careers by real-life STEM professionals, and an outdated colonial curriculum. In addition to the aforementioned problem, we see some quality education only being available for the economically privileged strata of the society, as those children can afford good educational facilities like tutors, career counselors, and online courses. We are solving this problem by providing all these services under one roof- Envision! 

Our target is to serve every student who wants to learn true science and apply it to serve humanity. We are excited by students who are dedicated, passionate, and enthusiastic! We aim to reach the lower-income and rural students primarily through technology. Every student in India who goes to school owns a smartphone now because of the classes shifting to the online mode owing to the pandemic. The quality of education in most government-run schools in India is dismal because of uninterested and underpaid teachers and also a lack of funding to upgrade infrastructure. We want to reach these strata through technology and the programs that we want to implement in rural areas (in-person) also those who can't get access to the app. For us, technology is just a tool, but our goal remains the same. A part of our solution also aims to harness dialogue between major stakeholders in the educational sector through public webinars. We aim to have boot camps on relevant STEM skills and an online magazine for schools to make present-day research more accessible and easy for everyone.

The impact would be to see more students understand the science they study in schools through our experimental curriculum, get mentorship from real-life STEM professionals who have in-depth knowledge of fields they want to pursue, through our Discord community, we aim to connect our leadership, mentors with students to interact with them and provide them with networking opportunities with students, professionals, and the Envision team! 

Our team consists of scientists, engineers, science communicators, and business minds who are determined to tackle this problem in its entirety.

We interacted with school and college students about the way how science is taught in their schools, how would they like to envision teaching science, what possible guidance would they need on embarking on a career in the sciences, what do they consider the toughest in their path of navigating science education materials and possible careers via personal interviews, surveys, and general conversations we have with friends to understand one side of this situation. Most of them reported very bookish teaching, no application-based studies, and zero mentorships from schools and colleges for career support. Most of the students were excited about the proposed solutions and have signed up to volunteer for our beta-testing program for the app and all other services.

The other chunk we reached out to were science educators who gave us a clear picture of what their attitude is towards the teaching of STEM, what would they like to change, institutional barriers, and gaps in mindset about education. A passionate bunch of educators agreed to help our curriculum design and review team to make content.

Jhillika, the co-founder and CEO, and Rithika, the COO work with a neuroscience education and outreach organization called 'Project Encephalon' to understand the scenario of STEM outreach and the status of awareness among Indian students about STEM with a non-traditional perspective. Falguni, another co-founder is a part-time STEM educator herself.

Envision currently is a concept. We have plans for every segment of execution. Furthermore, we are currently in the process of understanding the STEM ed-tech market scenario in India. We have interviewed and surveyed major stakeholders like students, educators, and prospective mentors who have been generous in their support and direction for Envision.

We are currently in the process of recruiting a small founding team that would be sufficient enough to build our MVP and conduct beta-testing programs for our product. We are in the process of finding some mentors and educators to help us review and suggest editions (if needed) to the experimental content we are wanting to provide through our app. We are currently building our team to come up with an MVP, we are aiming to execute our concept by effective hiring of the product and technology team.

Our project intends to work through a website that shall depict the services we have to offer to our consumers (or clients).

Also, we focus on disseminating our services through our app mostly where students could avail facilities like interaction with one among our erudite mentorship pool, the concepts from their relative subject of interest, and the experiments on show, our monthly sci-com magazine, etc.

The app is designed to have an extremely interactive interface with games, quizzes, and discussion forums to maintain a regular community engagement.

High school students in India are mostly found themselves either drowning in ignorance or in myriad options of career options for which they still seek guidance. We plan to conduct regular webinars, boot camps, and masterclasses for the student community (via our customized video teleconferencing feature built in in our app) by which we could help them have even better clarity to pursue their higher studies and take up a career that best aligns with their interest and passion. 

Our discord community shall help us stay connected through community building programs time to time and through live mentorship and awareness sessions each week.

Our project currently exists as a concept and is under the process of ideation where we keep updating it with improvisations to suit our target audience’s best of interests. We aim to reach a community count of 1000 students and more from various schools through our app. Our mandatory Discord service aims to build a community of 5000 students from diverse backgrounds economically, next year

The High School Project we undertake under Envision aims to make STEM education more inclusive among high school students in India. We wish to break the common notion that prevails among the high school populace that education is only limited to classrooms and it couldn’t be availed fruitfully through such experimental and practical pedagogies. One of the programs under this project shall target three government schools twice a year to carry out awareness and training sessions for its students. This program will first launch off with its implementation in schools of Himachal Pradesh and will move forward towards other underprivileged schools of India. However, the curriculum and other related experimental and practical resources that we plan to put forward through our app and website could be availed by everyone who has the access to them.

The mentorship pool we intend to create for our student community shall comprise mainly historically underrepresented people. It shall include people expert in their fields from diverse backgrounds irrespective of their race, caste, sex, sexual orientation, disability, or any other social or economic factors. 

We will work towards popularizing science communication through our monthly sci-com magazine.

The discord community shall enable connectivity among people who share a common interest for a particular scientific field rather than the schools and geographical parts of India they hail from. We aim to reach to 1000-3000 students in our first year.

We are currently at the ideation stage.

Our goals at Envision align with UN SDG 4 which is Quality Education for all. We strive to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all students, in terms of delivering content, educational opportunities, internship opportunities for young talent to understand the hustle of running a startup, networking, and mentorship opportunities for career building and growth. We also aim to address SDG 10, Reduced Inequalities by providing work to everyone irrespective of their background and reaching to every student in India willing to learn STEM by doing.

Financial: Lack of capital

Cultural: Problem with changing an existing mindset of students, educators, and interns.

We are a group of scientists, engineers, science communicators, dreamers, educators, and passionate business minds who envision India to be an educational and scientific superpower in the coming decade.

Jhillika, one of the co-founders is a scientist-in-training. Having grown up and studied in India she has experienced all of the problems she stated in the previous answers firsthand. She believes in building for a billion to make a billion! Her experiences with the Indian education system led her and Falguni, the other co-founder to come up with Envision. Jhillika hails from a family of academicians and educators so her family has played a great role in shaping her thoughts on education. She leads the curriculum and mentorship team due to her background in the sciences. She leads the team with her vision.

Falguni, the other co-founder is the team's hustler and executioner. She is an educator by day and an entrepreneur at 3 am! She leads the execution team and assesses the viability and feasibility of all ideas. Her knack for design also helps her to come up with visually appealing designs for the app.

Rithika, is the hacker of the team. She leads technology and operations. She is currently involved in making the app design. Her coding and design skills are great assets to Envision.

Subhangi and Arni are the business minds who assesses the financial viability and sustainability of our vision. She has impeccable foresight and leadership skills to lead the strategy team of Envision.

We are at the ideation stage, so no partnerships as of now.

Yes, we do qualify for the Pozen Social Innovation Prize because we primarily
focus on improving the learning outcomes for students from an early age by
providing them access to free, interactive, and educational content. We aim to bridge the learning gap and level the playing field between students who come from a low-income background versus a more fortunate one. This will ensure that there is equal access to opportunity for all students despite their background and those students are encouraged to pursue a career in the sciences from an early age.