Chitra Ravi is founder-CEO of the Chennai-based Chrysalis Pvt. Ltd (formerly EZ Vidya, estb.2001), a company focused on improving teaching-learning practices in schools across the country. Over the past 16 years, Chrysalis has grown into a multi-service, multi-product company offering ICT curriculums, teacher empowerment and learning programmes under which 450 schools have already transformed their classrooms into ThinkRooms. Chrysalis also supports the CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives in education of several top-ranked corporates including IBM, Microsoft and Dell. In 2013, Ravi was conferred the Game Changer Award of the Economic Times.

Newspeg. On November 16, Chrysalis launched a new education framework focussed on awakening the human potential of every child, which, the company claims, is a marked departure from the current education system’s focus on educating for job readiness. Backed by 16 years of academic and field research, the new integrated educational framework developed in-house by Chrysalis, nurtures the cognitive, social, emotional, and metacognitive (thinking with the whole mind) faculties of every child during her formative years. 

Direct talk. “Over the past 16 years, we have successfully incorporated proven education innovations into the mainstream curriculums of almost 800 schools which have signed up for our learning solutions. Our academic programme, study materials and pedagogy are based on developing the thinking and questioning skills of students so they learn through enquiry and become independent learners. Several schools have already adopted the Chrysalis ThinkRoom programme and teachers have been provided with learning outcomes targets. From 2014-16, we conducted research on authentic assessment in partnership with the WIPRO Applying Thought in Schools programme and have developed an authentic assessment tool for teachers to conduct formative assessment of students,” says Ravi. 

History. An English postgrad of the University of Madras, Ravi worked with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for over a year after graduation followed by a stint in the family real estate business before she became aware that education was her true calling. She promoted EZ Vidya in 2001 and began developing multimedia content for the computer science programmes of schools. This was followed by the Chrysalis teacher development framework in 2003. 

Future plans. Ravi and her team have developed a multichannel approach to ensure the company’s new education framework reaches as many schools across the country as possible. “We plan to involve policymakers of the Union government, work closely with state governments to persuade government schools to adopt our new academic programme, partner with private schools across the country, and empower parents to follow our methods. Also on the drawing board are plans to launch an open source education framework later this year which can be integrated into mainstream curriculums of all schools that require it,” says this unstoppable educator.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)