#21 - Mentor Relationships Remain Critical to EdTech
The oversimplification of the gaps in our education system bothers me. Yes, the curricula can be better. Yes, the content can be better. Yes, the delivery can be better. But these are aids to the relationship that traces back to the very roots of human civilization — that of the teacher-student, mentor, and learner.
For outcome-driven learning, this relationship is key. It fulfills only one of the many things required to drive real learning with real outcomes.
Learners have individual strengths and weaknesses, and content is just inadequate to cater to their individual needs. As such, mentor relationships remain critical to learners’ growth, they add context to the learning.
For thousands of years, gurukuls, monasteries, and maktabs throughout different periods in the Indian civilization under Vedic, Buddhist, and Islamic rules were all teacher-centered. They also catered well to their pupils’ individual needs and stimulation.
Between the mid-18th to 20th century, industrialists pushed for mass education as factories needed skilled labors. This led to the development of the Bell-Lancaster and soon the Prussian model of school education. The Prussian model introduced standard curricula, age-based class divisions, but, pushed teachers to the margins. And since then, mentorship has lost its old charm.
Our data reveals that mentorship improves learning outcomes by as much as five times. This means that with no or poor mentorship, learning also suffers.
At GreyAtom, our expert mentors help not only learners with academics and learning but also help them build a portfolio, gain industrial exposure and practical knowledge
Top-quality mentors are something that has stood us out from the competition since the beginning.
Addressing the mentorship crisis
Of everything I have built at GreyAtom, solving the issue of the right mentorship for our learners is one puzzle that I am most proud of.
In the early days, we had a lot of hits and misses with mentors initially. These were not in terms of a lack of industry experience and expertise but in terms of mentors’ instruction capabilities. I addressed at least three feedback escalations related to bad mentorship at GreyAtom in the initial 6 months. Knowing the subject is one thing, but being able to onboard it to the learners is completely another thing.
That’s when we solved the problem for once and for all.
Here’s how we did it.
Step 1: Outreach - A huge top of the Funnel
We never began with looking for mentors with past teaching experience (the universe would be very limited). Instead, we looked for data scientists and industry experts who were interested in mentoring learners.
We were also looking for young people, professionals with over five or less than two years of experience could not cut through our list. Then, the location was no barrier, and we looked for professionals at top tech companies across the world.
We had built a good database of potential mentors following this outreach. So, we began evaluating them one by one and at two levels.
Step 2: Mentor evaluation
We carried out mentors’ evaluations at two levels.
Level 1: Internal Evaluation
At the first level, our evaluation team scheduled a call with shortlisted candidates to understand each of their technical competencies, social competencies, and interest in mentoring learners.
Level 2: Instructor Crucible (Crowd Sourced)
The second level of evaluation involved a live webinar with our large community of mixed audiences. This, of course, was done to test the candidate’s mentorship capabilities in a live setting. The audience comprised a minimum of 75 learners, from beginners to those who were already at some level of their learning journey.
We collected the audience’s feedback on three points:
whether the mentor encouraged interaction and was open to ideas;
the mentors’ knowledge of theories/concepts and real-world applications; and
whether the session was enjoyable and educational at the same time.
Results
Only 1 in 25 candidates made it to our final list of selected mentors. We also witnessed a dramatic improvement in our learners’ mentorship experience. Our failure rates (that we measure in terms of learners’ feedback on mentorship) dropped to an incredible number of 1:20 ratio.
Our mentors comprise of a diverse range of professionals, from those working in Silicon Valley companies like LinkedIn, Walmart Labs, Facebook, Uber, and Google to those working at top Indian tech companies like Qure.ai, Episource, Fractal Analytics, etc.
Surprisingly, only a few of our mentors had any previous mentorship experience. Most of them discovered their latent talent at GreyAtom and they are able to take away so much by teaching our learners.
The mentor-learners relationship that we have at GreyAtom is truly incredible. This relationship extends to beyond live classrooms.
Alongwith content and sales, invest in your mentors, they can truly drive the learning experience like nothing else.