Yogish Lavanis (IT-BHU, Electronics 1991) has teamed up with Anand Kannan (IIT-Madras, Electronics and Communication 1993) and formed the unique company for training students for Graduate Records Exam. The company, Valued Epistemics Pvt. Ltd. (www.vepl.com) was formed in September 2004 and Wisdom.in learning platform was developed through intense R & D in technology, pedagogy and cognitive psychology. The platform promises to deliver high quality, online personalized learning to the student’s PC or to his GPRS enable mobile phone. Powered by this platform, www.GREedge,com was launched in August 2008 exclusively for GRE preparation. Most of the training is provided through internet. According to company’s website. “GRE Edge is a series of Adaptive Learning Programs for GRE, delivered through your mobile phone or computer. It gives you the freedom to learn at your convenience - through your Mobile, PC, Blackberry or PDA. Students can access GRE Edge through mobile when on the move, and by PC at home.”

 

                      

  Anand Kannan                          Yogish Lavanis

Managing Director                Director and Co-founder

   (IIT-Madras)                                       (IT-BHU)

Details about them can be found on: http://www.greedge.com/people-behind/

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I knew Anand Kannan since 1993 when we were post graduate students at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. After IISc, we went in different ways, but stayed in touch. I joined the cellular development division of Motorola while Anand did his PhD at Purdue and later worked with Nokia in Dallas in R&D and Product development. After gaining a fair amount of expertise in industry, both of us independently were thinking about going on our own. We met in the later half of 2004 and brainstormed on different business models.

The company, Valued Epistemics Pvt. Ltd (www.vepl.com) was incorporated in September 2004 and began operational execution in April 2005. We decided to create a end user facing product that is world class. A product, which would not just meet the user's need effectively, but also create a vastly superior user experience. Further, the product had to be technology intensive, innovative and with an ability to be delivered globally, in a highly profitable business model.

We are passionate about Learning/Teaching and were keen to apply advances in technology (Internet, Mobile, Computation, and Human Computer Interface) to learning in order to create highly superior learning experiences. This led us to create Wizdom.in, a technologically advanced platform capable of delivering personalized learning experiences on the online medium.

There are a number of books and guides that are available in the market for preparation for GRE. Besides, you have a number of websites that host tests, preparation material and tests. There are a number of coaching institutes that aid in preparation.

The student undergoing a program with us accesses the lessons at www.GREedge.com. Our method of preparation differs greatly from these conventional methods of learning. Our lessons are interactive and online, which the student can access either on his mobile phone or his computer. This gives him the flexibility to study anytime, anywhere, an aspect which a working professional or a busy final year student finds to be of immense benefit.

More importantly, GREedge.com's unique technology (Millisecond Score Booster Technology) enables us to continuously measure the learning process of the student, just as a diligent teacher would observe the student. Smart algorithms running on our servers analyze this data and evaluate the student on various parameters, identifying his strengths and weakness. We assign a trained Student Facilitator and Analyst (SFA) to each student, who monitors the student's performance and provides personalized counsel on how he could improve. The SFA might adapt the lessons based on the student's needs and of course clarifies all the doubts and difficulties faced by the student.

Feedback from our past students has indicated that the technology and personalized attention from the SFA have created highly satisfying learning experience and helped them in GRE.

GRE, as you very well know is a test whose scores are used by most American universities as one of the selection criteria for admission to their graduate programs leading to MS and PhD. We offer a set of flexible online programs that satisfy different student needs in Verbal, Quantitative and writing development skills. The student could subscribe to the right one based on his/her needs. You could get the complete list from:

GRE is an online test conducted all through the year. The test is adaptive, which means that the student gets one question at a time and the difficulty level of the question changes based on how the student answers. All our programs offer extensive practice on online adaptive tests, which simulate the kind that the student will face in GRE. Besides, at the end of each learning session, we provide meaningful data and graphs that helps the student to improve his time management and achieve the right balance between accuracy and speed.

GREedge.com runs on Wizdom.in learning platform (www.wizdom.in) which has been developed by us through intense R&D. The platform aims to create highly personalized learning experiences. This calls for an inter-disciplinary effort in technology, pedagogy, cognitive psychology and instruction design. The results of delivering GRE preparation programs, involving online training in Verbal and Quantitative skills have been quite satisfying. However, we feel that a lot more can be achieved, especially as the computation power and multimedia capability of user devices increase, along with the increase in data rates and computational power of the backend servers. I would like to draw attention to the fact that advanced personalized learning has been defined as one of the fourteen grand challenges of the century by the National Academy of Engineering

We will be happy to hear from people passionate about this idea – in design/development, marketing or channel development.

We would like to invite partnerships and alliances, especially, those who might be interesting in utilizing the Wizdom.in platform for delivering personalized learning services in different areas of learning.

Finally, to the young students at IT-BHU – work hard; be passionate about your interests and develop strong foundations during your undergraduate days. Enjoy every moment at IT-BHU, the university offers a lot of opportunities for all round development of young minds. It is up to you to realize and use it to the maximum!!!

... and those of you planning to take the GRE, do visit www.GREedge.com.

Best wishes to all .......

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