[Editor’s Note: This post is written by our guest author- Gaurav Sharma, who lives in Bangalore, works with a reputed IT company and is also a teacher on the ThinkVidya platform. He attended the ThinkVidya Teachers meetup in Bangalore on 6th September, 2013]
ThinkVidya Teachers Meetup was organized on Sep 6, Friday at the ThinkVidya`s Bangalore Office. Meeting Registration was managed by Richa, Marketing Head at ThinkVidya. Registration Process was well organized – collecting Names, E-mails and Questions from attendees. The idea was to note all the issues/questions which the participants (teachers) had in mind and cover as many of them as possible during the meet up.
Meetup agenda was shared a day in advance on the Facebook Groups- Official Event Page on ThinkVidya’s Facebook page as well as ThinkVidya Teachers’ Lounge . Agenda aptly had an hour long Q&A (Questions & Answers) session post Rakesh’s presentation on ThinkVidya- Mission and Future Initatives.
I reached the ThinkVidya office around 4 pm, which was time for the meeting to start. ThinkVidya Team was there to greet us with a smile and we are seated in the meeting room, setup for the meeting. Rakesh walked down from first floor with his evergreen smile.
Meeting began around 4:10 pm, with Rakesh welcoming all of us for the meetup and thanked us for taking time out for the meetup. Formal introductions of the ThinkVidya team members, Pratik (Product), Anand (Institute Sales) and Richa (Marketing) were also made.
As part of the first item on the agenda, we began with teacher introductions. As introductions were progressing, I observed that teachers from various different streams of teaching were present. Each of them shared their experiences about how ThinkVidya has benefited them in gaining more students over a period of time as well as some questions about the platform, its services and some challenges that they face as a teacher.
Post introductions, Rakesh began his presentation which gave insights into ThinkVidya’s Mission and Future Initiatives. Rakesh’s key notes highlighted how ThinkVidya is focussed on organizing the unstructured learning ecosystem – which is the key differentiator between ThinkVidya and other learning websites. Rakesh elaborated on how ThinkVidya concept was envisaged as an online Marketplace for learning needs where you could discover teachers, courses and classes needed to learn something .
ThinkVidya Teachers Meet Up- September 6th, 2013
Rakesh also gave some key updates about new initiatives on the roadmap to improve ThinkVidya Platform. I gave feedback related to ThinkVidya Courses section to allow feedback to be provided by students after attending a course which could be made available for future attendees. This would help them decide whether to go for the same course or not. Another teacher requested for a special needs category to be introduced for teachers like her who teach students with special needs. [Editor’s note: The last point has been immediately taken up for implementation and the special needs category has now been introduced into the system.]
Another important update from Rakesh was the option of Pre-Recorded Courses to be opened up for the Teacher Community soon. This option would allow Teachers to share Pre-Recorded Courses on the platform so that students can go through them at their own comfortable time. Teacher in such scenario`s can enable a Q&A session/class (either online or locally) once a student has gone through the course. Rakesh ended his updates on a positive note about taking ThinkVidya Platform to the next level and incorporating all key feedback from the teachers.
We then broke for a snacks break during which we also re-organized ourselves in a circle for the Q&A Session which was up next. Some of the Key Questions asked in the QA sessions were
Gaurav: What are ThinkVidya`s Global Expansion Plans?
Rakesh: As of now, our main priority is to expand more in India and enhance our products and services for the learning community in India. We may look at expanding globally in another year.
Shantaram: Sometimes there are payment issues between teachers and students, resulting in teachers not getting paid despite taking some classes. How can ThinkVidya help in such scenarios?
Rakesh: Based on such feedback, we have decided to soon launch a payment service between students and teachers where ThinkVidya will act as a Third Party to collect fees from students before a course and transfer it to teachers’ accounts on a weekly or monthly frequency. It will also help address concerns of students or parents where sometimes teachers don’t come after 1-2 classes and the payment has been made upfront.
Kalyani: How can we get more details of the requirements when a student expresses interest in a pilot or scheduled course, e.g days available for classes/Budget of the student?
Rakesh: Thanks for sharing your feedback Kalyani. We will be adding new features soon to the Courses Marketplace platform and your feedback would be incorporated to enable features/ ways of collecting more information from students who are interested in a course.
Ramesh: Are there any venues which can be used for Teaching Classes by ThinkVidya Registered Teachers?
Rakesh: We are working on developing a database of such venues which teachers can use for their teaching courses. We will provide contact information of owners of these revenues and teachers can contact the venue owners directly and work out the details. We request teachers and other users to share details of such venues that they have used or come across in their city or locality to help us create this database. The system to collect these venue details would be soon online on Thinkvidya website.
ThinkVidya Teachers Meetup ended with Q&A session where informal discussions continued between the participants and ThinkVidya Team post Q&A session. Finally, Rakesh gave his business card to all the participants and encouraged everyone to share their ideas with him later also.
As a Teacher, I took 3 Key takeaways from the session. Firstly, Teachers Meetup was a refreshing start in the right direction. I had the opportunity to meet up with Teachers from various streams. Secondly, we had the opportunity to share our experiences of ThinkVidya Platform and give recommendations for any further enhancements. Thirdly, we also got a sneak preview on the future developments at ThinkVidya!
Kudos to ThinkVidya Team for organizing such an event and look forward to such regular meetups in near future.
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