Education beyond textbooks

GuruQ is a digital tutoring platform that was born out of the desire to cater to the individual needs of every child-their learning styles and IQ. The student-teacher ratio in schools makes it impossible to give students individual attention.

Minal believes that school education is incomplete by itself, and is in an extreme need to be supplemented, else students are the ones who suffer and lose out. Students will only be equipped to succeed when learning is customized to their own style. Therefore, the key ingredient of quality tuition is the tutors. GuruQ is forever on the lookout for enthusiastic, experienced, and qualified tutors with the right aptitude and attitude. Tutors undergo a stringent multi-level vetting process (including verifying their knowledge, qualifications, experience, skills, teaching techniques & background) and only the best tutors are inducted into the GuruQ community.

They are also trained to use the GuruQ digital platform and tutor dashboard to simplify their lives, teach & manage their students efficiently. Through the dashboard, they can manage their schedules, classes & students and create & send notes, assignments, tests, and exams.

With the GuruQ platform, students are given different ways to find tutors as per their exact requirements. Since students today are pressed for time, we help them save it by providing tuition completely at their convenience. Students can personalize their tuition classes with respect to the mode of class (offline or online), type of class (individual or group), and budget. They can select a tutor and book classes at short notice and/or even book them with selected tutors by the hour for special needs such as revision and exam preparation. Even parents can keep track of their child's progress online and seek feedback when they want to.

Elaborating more on what inspired Minal to start GuruQ, she shares, " It was launched in the year 2017. While pursuing a degree in Business Administration overseas, I realized that there was such a sharp contrast between the quality of education being offered there versus that which was being offered in India. In the US, there was a predominant use of the digital platform and innovative teaching methodologies. However, it was disheartening to note that educators in India are not well-equipped or well-versed in the latest teaching methods. Education in India is still rigid, text bookish, and will serve no good use to students who will step into their professional lives in the near future. Technology is rapidly transforming jobs and students in India will lose out as they are not being trained to be technologically savvy or to think outside the classroom. I therefore, wanted to bring the change in India or at least try to do so."

At GuruQ, students gain a firm understanding of subjects where every doubt is cleared and every concept is explained in detail. A tech-driven education that goes beyond the textbook will allow our students to compete globally and succeed.

Minal shares, "Initially students were unsure of how to use the highly interactive and friendly dashboard simply because they did not have a firm understanding of technology but with time and guidance by our team, they were able to pick up on how to do so. To date, we have parents and students who will call up our helpline and ask for booking of tuition classes over a call instead of using the dashboard to book which shows how most are adverse to change and cling on to the familiar even though it might be outdated. Further, we take daily updates on their business operations. Since we are a digital learning platform, we are connecting the concerns of our tutors and any students through our robust feedback mechanism. We had built it even before we were hit by the pandemic. We have consistently improvised and improved our back-end technical processes. With the pandemic, the pace of work has changed. But we are recalibrating our business operations to ensure we do our job. We are also flexible with those employees who still prefer to work from home due to their constraints."

The pandemic impact on education sector

The impact of the pandemic is observed in every sector around the world. The education sectors of India as well as the world are badly affected by this. It has enforced the worldwide lockdown creating a very bad effect on the students' life. Around 32 crore learners stopped to move schools or colleges, all educational activities halted in India. The outbreak of COVID-19 has advised us that change is inevitable. It has worked as a catalyst for educational institutions to grow and opt for platforms and techniques, which have not been used before. The education sector has been fighting to survive the crises with a different approach and digitizing the challenges to wash away the threat of the pandemic.

"GuruQ aims to provide an alternative coaching option to students and claims to maintain the same level of classroom engagement in its online classes. It is also re-adjusting the teaching methods to suit students' unique needs. GuruQ is leveraging technology and has trained its teachers to use the tutor dashboard to teach and manage their students efficiently. Through the dashboard, they can manage their schedules, classes, and students as well as create and send notes, assignments, tests, and exams," ends Minal.