We all have those last-minute notes from friends one hour before the exam to help us remember the important topics. Maybe that's why a student can best understand and help another student with the overall learning of a subject. This one-of-a-kind platform started by a 16-year-old Class 12 student does exactly that. Founded by Shreyans Gupta, a student of Vaels International School in Chennai, Sciency is a 'by a student, for a student' free digital educational platform designed to assist with learning.
The platform was set up by Shreyans to bridge the gap in learning difficulties faced by the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) students as well as other boards for classes 8 to 10. "I shifted to the IGCSE board a few years ago and since then I have been struggling with the subjects, especially science subjects. Only in my Class 10, did I figure out how to strategise, methods to use while solving papers and really understand the subject. So many students like me were not aware of these strategies. Thus I started Sciency to provide these for free through a website, focusing on Chemistry as it is one of the harder subjects and students had more issues with it," explains Shreyans.
How does the website help students? Students can access concise notes that are manually curated for the IGCSE Chemistry syllabus. These notes are presented with student tips, strategies, links to worksheets, interactive pictures and YouTube videos to make the concepts simpler and clearer. The website also hosts an online Q&A solution, wherein students can post their questions and get them answered for them by other students who have studied the subject earlier. The USP of Sciency is that students can access all of this free of cost. "Sciency was also set up to bridge the learning difficulties the Coronavirus pandemic brought in. The online classes, I figured, were not as good as the physical ones. There are a lot of gaps and the concepts are not clearly conveyed. That's what I am trying to do with the platform and with the help of older students," adds the 16-year-old.
Sciency conducts webinars and online sessions free of cost, two of them are called Student to Student Online Classes and Hear The Student. In Student to Student Online Classes, past IGCSE students are invited to tutor other students that find difficulty in similar topics by hosting a one-hour online session. Hear The Student is a module of online educational webinars wherein past IGCSE students share their insights about their exam successes, strategies to employ, and tips on how to study for a certain subject. These sessions include a variety of subjects from science to humanities. Currently, all the content available on the website is on Chemistry and has been carefully curated by Shreyans himself. "I was done with all the content in November and then in April, the website was up. I am now looking to get more students on board to create a team for Sciency. We have already helped over 3000 students across four countries, so now would be a good time to share the responsibilities," adds Shreyans.
Shreyans says Sciency is like a part-time job that he manages along with his studies. He wants to pursue Mathematics and Chemistry in college after finishing his Class 12 next year. Speaking about how Sciency stands out in a saturated EdTech market, he says, "Not many companies provide these classes for free. Providing free learning is the main objective. Moreover, we are all students, we have the first-hand experience of these exams, students can relate to us more. Someone who already knows will guide you, it's almost like a friend is teaching a friend."
As for the future plans, Shreyans adds that he aims to expand Sciency's reach to 15 countries by the end of September. "We also get more students, facilitators on board and eventually add content for numerous subjects to the website," he signs off.
