@Neyawn shifting to outskirts in a phased manner is the only viable long term solution,gurugram centeris a step in right direction,Greater Noidaalso has vacant buildings and plots in theKnowledge Park area. For this to happen most of the coachings have to decide unaminously, build a concensus and move out in the intrest of students. one pays price of palaces to live in slum like consitions in ORN, patel nagar.(May 2015- Sep 2018) : 3years in Delhi for college, could not survive 3 months in Patel Nagar/ Shadipur area. (2 counts of food poisioning, 1 count typhyoid)
1. What people who take online classes feel is sense of loneliness and isolation despite being in the batch. Offline coaching allows you to see familiar faces daily, even if u dont talk to them. For online students city/area wise groups can be created so that those who wish to connect with each other can do so. (off course, with proper privacy concerns of students esp females.) Right now me and my neighbour's child would be taking the same class and we wont even know.2. For students who dont want to come to ORN, Forum can go to them. Fortnitely/Monthly/bimonthly visits (depending upon the city/area) to places having significant strength of online students. a 2 day/ 1 day workshop to guide, mentor, clarify doubts in person. It would bring extra cost, but i think would be worth it. For online students in NCR region, weekly sessions can be held at locations on the border areas. for eg- Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad, gurgaon. Visit to these centres may bring regularity in studies. All this can be done with prior planning and interest of students. this would be something like Open Schools/college.3. To manage expectation of students, take only those who have some merit based on entrance,etc. I remember Vidyamandir classes used to have entrance for coaching. They were consistently giving results. For a lot of students money is not the issue. It is the value for money that matters. Spending 700-900 per test for evaluation when evaluator is an aspirant like us doesnt seem reasonable. I understand that the money is needed to run the institute and attract talent, but value for money still bothers us.4. Innovation in courses can be brought. For eg Dipin Sir is an excellent teacher. He does a lot of research for his content. He and others can share their sources and methods for students to become self reliant. It would be something like "teaching a student to fish ". Focusing on the "How" rather than the What. Focus on "How" is there in courses , but it is not the central aspect of courses.5. Let the student know your team. For online students , the biggest problem in mentorship is trusting the mentor. I have seen you and Dipin sir on screen , teaching. I know you guys are good at teaching. But you are not the ones answering mentorship calls. I need to see my mentor on screen teaching, clearing doubts to believe in him. I am sure the mentors you have are good, but it just becomes difficult to trust especially when there is a flood of YT/Telegram mentors.At the end, you are responsible for students you enroll. Limit enrollment. Focus on quality. Personal attention is what students want, but dont get in big coachings. I remember being scared to ask doubts in class and after class because there were too many students around. teachers expected specific pin-pointed questions because they had little time for each student.Make me believe that Forum cares for my result as much i do.
Point 2 actually makes sense, regional centers could be the Mains centers (24 in number) with temporal and spatial variability. Forum already has its own centers in Patna and hyd.
"The conventional model of coaching is to have it near walking distance to save time. That was the whole idea of residential. or even coaching. Travelling far away from your home to a place, not with the goal of taking an auto to travel to coaching classes."@Neyawn
Kota's case of expansion can be looked into.
- Initially bansal sir used to conduct classes in Vigyan Nagar (comparable to ORN and Mukherjee Nagar)
- Later on with larger influx of students (2008ish) Bansal Classes shifted to the industrial area along with Carrer Point followed by Resonance, in close vicinity Allen also devloped.
- Students there use Cycles at scale, female students genrally use shared auto.
- The ecosystem in the said area is many KMs away from the city center and highly student centric and student supportive (from tiffin/mess walas to police )which is not the case with Karol Bag-here student's intrest compete with intrest of other commercial activity and are hence compromised (at best) and most of the times exploited.
- what the community@delhi needs is an ecosytem tailored to thier needs which can not happen at karol bag or MN.
- students alot of the time find themselves stuggling with issues which should not have been a concern in the first place the ecosystem instead of providing flow gives a lot of resistence, at times actively sabotaging the efforts of the aspirants-teachers-mentors.
