From Mannarakoil To CEO Of Global Scholar: Kal Raman’s Journey (Part 5)

Sramana: Would you give me a granular view of what the initial product was that you launched in 2009?

Kal Raman: If you look at a school today, on an average day they will use 14 different software vendors. They have a system to manage student demographic data which is the student information system. They have a scheduling system for scheduling classes. They have to grade student performance and make it available, so they have a grade book application. They have a curriculum management system to control their curriculum school-wide. There is an assessment system to manage all the tests they give students on both the class and district level. Schools also have to share this data with parents and others, so they have a portal system. They have a data warehouse to allow them to track trends and see where student trends are going. They also have a dashboard system to allow them to track goals and see if they are making progress. They also have a professional development management system to allow them to provide more training to teachers. If schools want to reward teachers based on student performance then they will have a performance management system. They also have a unique system for special education.

If you take a step back, you will see that most of that revolves around gathering information. There is demographic data, performance data, and instructional data. If you combine those three data sectors you will get leading indicators to help you achieve the outcomes you want in areas like student achievement and teacher performance. Schools buy these 14 different software packages, and then they use their local information system solutions to integrate them to extract information from all of these different software packages. The problem is that you do not get the brightest of engineers building IP in a school districts information systems division. This is a lesser problem than you would deal with at Amazon.com or Wal-Mart, where you have to deal with a lot more variables, but it is still a significant challenge. Combining the data and providing collaborative filtering on top of the data, as well as data modeling options is what we are able to provide to parents, principals and administrators.

Sramana: Would you give us an practical example of your system being used?

Kal Raman: We make it idiot proof so that it is very hard to make mistakes. We also save the teacher’s time. If they do one unit of work in our system it would equate to five units of work in three other systems. A teacher can come to a portal which immediately tells the teacher what three students they need to focus on that day because they are going in the wrong direction. At the click of a button, the system will tell the teacher what learning material or test needs to be given to the students on that particular day. This is based on collaborative filtering done on student’s work and test progress as well as teacher’s performance. The teacher does not have to correct the test, and the system automatically grades the test. If the teacher puts it on autopilot then it will automatically keep the parents, students, and teachers notified of progress.

This segment is part 5 in the series : From Mannarakoil To CEO Of Global Scholar: Kal Raman's Journey
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