A DIGITAL SOLUTION FOR EFFICIENT TEACHER TRAINING

Written by: Kriti Anand

Sri Ayaan Initiatives, recognized as one of the most forthcoming tech startups in India, strives to fill the existing gaps in the education sector in India. Winner of 2019 India 500 Startup Awards, Sri Ayaan’s edutech initiative MAPHA featured as one of the “25 Hot Indian Startups to Watch in 2020”. The company has also been shortlisted for the semifinals of Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY Startup Grand Challenge.

They have been recognized by the Department for Promotion of Internal Trade Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India.

MAPHA At A Glance
MAPHA is a mobile based digital training platform which takes care of

Teacher training, evaluation, analytics of teachers and schools to the stakeholders.
Employee training, evaluation, analytics of employees and branches of the organization to the stakeholders.

1. “MAPHA” for Teacher Training
Teachers play a bigger role in students’ education than any other aspect of schooling. This has been established by research, and stands as one of the most agreed-upon arguments in the education system.

However, with inadequate in-service teacher training in primary and secondary schools, lack of methodology and standardisation of training, and limited and inconsistent options to measure in-service teacher training, schools often fall short of bringing out the best in the students.

In India, there are over 10 million teachers. These teachers are central to student learning and there is a need to help them become more effective in their practice, so as to improve student learning outcomes.

The traditional method of teacher training, in physical locations on fixed days with unregulated sporadic support, cannot reach all teachers, and has proved insufficient.

Data released by the District Information System for Education (DISE) for 2015-16 showed that only 15% of government school teachers received training. Most of the time, these training are ad hoc one-off exercises without any meaningful follow-up. Trainings are often not designed systematically, are not based on needs and assessment, and tend to be irrelevant, outdated and repetitive. Teacher training methodologies need to evolve to ensure effective transfer and application of knowledge and skills, and to provide continuous access to learning opportunities for all teachers.

“MAPHA” platform can address the above problem with its automated process of teacher training, which maintains quality, professional, and scheduled training by reducing human intervention and helps to provide school children access to quality education by enabling teachers with quality training.

2.“MAPHA” for Employee Training
Government Employees: MAPHA platform can be used to train employees of various Government departments where in-service staff training is required like GST department, Income Tax Department, frontline health workers of Health Department, Judicial Department, nationalised banks, corporations like LIC, etc.

Corporate Employees: MAPHA platform can be used to train the employees of different corporations which require regular in-service training and spread geographically at different places like automobile companies, retail chain, hospitality chain, insurance companies, banks, NGOs etc.

Unique Features of “MAPHA” Platform
MAPHA is

An automated process of employees/teachers training which will reach 100% employees.
A platform which is user-friendly and requires very basic digital literacy for employees/teachers to use.
A robust system that gives real-time and accurate reports regarding training, performance of employees/teachers for different levels of management hierarchy like staff level report, branch level report, taluka level report, district level report, region level report, zonal level report, state level report, and country level report.
A platform which provides employees/teachers with motivation, standardized abstracts of training content, flexibility of timing in training, updates from the government from time to time etc.
The peer to peer forums in the platform can be used to clear the doubts of teachers/employees and can also be used as a decision support system for taking quick decisions.
Top level management can directly communicate to all their employees/teachers across India with a single click.
It can also be used to train managers/principals for leadership development.

This application is a unique digital platform which can address training problems, irrespective of the number of employees, location, language, sector, etc.

This application is administrative/management driven, i.e, the management can decide the schedule so that the server will atomically push the training content accordingly. It is the most important and unique feature when compared to other LMS.

Goals for the Future
Keeping pace with the evolving technologies, MAPHA is developing an AI-enabled personalized evaluation for the performance evaluation of every teacher/employee. The company is also working on creating AI enabled chatbots and quizzes. Research and development is the life blood for any technology based company, and this belief fuels their efforts in the direction of developing AI for the evaluation of employee performance.

MAPHA plans to expand the platform to include State and Central government school teachers of different states in India, and along with it to other state and central government departments like Health Department, Income Tax Department, GST Department, etc, where staff training is required. They are also aiming towards corporate clients, especially those with huge marketing staff scattered across different places like automobile showrooms, retail chain stores, pharma companies, etc.

With their organized approach of providing 100% training to the teachers, distributing standardized training content, making training a regular part of their daily routine, systematic evaluation of knowledge gained in the training, and providing regular updates and knowledge sharing, MAPHA is set to make teachers an even more significant and efficient part of school education in India.