Shiksha Expert Meet 2011 - Mumbai Chapter

Shiksha Expert Meet 2011 – Mumbai Chapter proved to be a worthy sibling to the Delhi Shiksha Expert Meet 2011. We were extremely pleased and motivated by the way it went and valuable suggestions and feedbacks we got from some more Education Experts associated with us.

Once again, Mr. Prakash Sangam - Business Head of Shiksha.com and Mr. Nasr Khan - AVP (Product Development) were there to meet the experts, and to fecilitate their achievements and their contribution in providing information that is true and knowledge that is practical to our students. And they agreed that Shiksha Expert Meets have been a big repository for them to get some of the most englightened ideas on how to improve Shiksha and how to engage student and education experts in a better and more effective manner.

From Left to Right, you can see Mr. Prakash Sangam - Business Head of Shiksha.com, Mr. Arun Mishra - one of our Chief Advisors on Shiksha Panel of Experts, and Mr. Nasr Khan - AVP (Product Development).

Mumbai Shiksha Expert Meet 2011 Participants

Here is Aneeket, our Expert Coordinator, proud of Shiksha Expert Meet being organized in Mumbai for the first time.

You bet, he is quite possessive about his Experts too and some of you must have felt how he pushes! But he deserves a special mention because of the effort he has put in to make both Delhi and Mumbai Shiksha Expert Meets a success.

And here are our experts - our extended family members - who actively participated in Shiksha Expert Meet 2011 - Mumbai Chapter and kept it warm and buzzing:

From Left to Right, you can see:

Some more participants here:

Suggestions and Feedbacks

Just like the Delhi Chapter, Shiksha Expert Meet 2011 - Mumbai Chapter took off by Mr. Prakash Sangam briefing experts about the latest achievements of Shiksha.com and how Shiksha Cafe forums have made positive contribution to the lives of thousands of students with the help of their experts. Mr. Nasr Khan informed the experts about the latest developments and features that have been introduced to Shiksha Cafe and telling them more about Reputation Index, which ensures that quality answers get priority over others. But it is essentially the suggestions and feedbacks from education experts that keeps Shiksha Team members on toes.

Here were some of the snippets of hottest discussions on the floor:

• A simple suggestion by Mr. Mayur to add a chat facility for experts to interact with other experts spiralled off into a very interesting discussion. Mr. Nasr suggested that perhaps the experts can use @mention facility to interact with each other even now. Whether experts should interact with students through chat too was a possibility that had many supporters in Delhi as well as in Mumbai. Documenting chats for future or keeping chat transcripts was another idea that had advocates both in Delhi and Mumbai.
• Mr. Ankur suggested that perhaps category-specific open chat rooms can be introduced as a feature to forums. Mr. Harshit added that perhaps we could use the feature as a Virtual Panel Discussion. However, Mr. Shrey thought that open chat rooms can be quite confusing. Mr. Prakash Sangam said that Shiksha can announce virtual panel discussions from time to time for the benefit of students as well as experts of specific categories, to enable more engaging and informative interactions.
• Mr. Arun Dev had some important feedbacks that we have noted. He suggested that in the mails that we receive regarding Q&A and discussion threads in Shiksha Cafe, we can give 'Thumbs Up' or 'Report Abuse' directly through mail but we cannot 'Reply' to it yet. Adding this facility could encourage more experts to add their two bits there and then.

He also suggested that enabling search of an expert by his or her name will enable other education  experts or students to research about his or her credibility easily.

• Mr. Kishore advocated telephonic counseling to students, albeit with quality parameters. To which, Mr. Nasr responded that it can be a difficult proposition to maintain quality in telephonic conversations that happen spontaneously and are not documented. Mr. Nasr also clarified that when we answer a question, our Reputation Index only increases when we get 'Thumbs Up' from different IDs. Such stringent quality measures are difficult to implement in a telephonic conversation.
• Mr. Rahul advocated that Shiksha should invest in development of mobile application that can enable education experts to be active on Shiksha forums all the time, even if they do not have Internet facility that is easily accessible. Other experts agreed that since penetration of mobiles is much deeper in Tier II and Tier III cities than computers, a mobile application could help Shiksha.com to affect more lives and reach out to more students.

Mr. Rahul also suggested that many students from rural areas or small towns, who actually do not have enough exposure and need proper guidance are either unaware of Shiksha.com and its free services or are unable to use it properly because they are not good in English. Perhaps launching Shiksha.com in Hindi or other major regional languages can address their concerns better.

• There were concerns about questions that remain unanswered too. Questions about post-PG studies, AICTE, and UGC often remain ignored and unanswered. If the Shiksha search engine allowed one to search institutes, colleges and universities approved by UGC and AICTE or find out their ratings, many of such concerns could be addressed easily.

Other major suggestions included adding more information on scholarships, education loans, and financial aid for students to Shiksha.com (which was initiated by Mr. Govind Sharma) and allow students to take an aptitude test to decide on their career path.

Mr. Nasr suggested that perhaps a Weekly Digest could be sent to all experts about most recent Q&As and discussions on the categories they are active in. Mr. Prakash said that Shiksha would try to promote its forums on AIR, if they organize any career counselling sessions.

Compliments

Well, we are not trying to boast but Mr. Rahul really did suggest that Shiksha articles should be published in Newspapers so that we can reach out to the masses. Thank you Mr. Rahul for placing such confidence in us.

We would once again like to thank all our Education Experts to make our Expert Meets a success, to make Shiksha Cafe rock, and to help us in providing a fair unbiased platform for students to research their education and career options well, resolve their queries and clear their doubts.

Source: Ruchi Shrimali (Shiksha Team)