Listen to this articleMaiaLearning, Inc. is a rapidly growing California company that sells globally, with client schools in more than 15 countries. Below is our recent interview with Satish Mirle, CEO and Co-Founder of MaiaLearning:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to MaiaLearning?
A: MaiaLearning, Inc. builds cloud-based software that engages students in planning their futures: discovering and exploring careers that fit their interests; building academic, college, and career plans; creating portfolios that tell their stories, and managing college applications.
That software, called MaiaLearning, also supports the educators who guide these students. It powers the State of California’s college and career readiness efforts, and has made MaiaLearning, Inc. a major factor in the markets it services.
Q: You’ve recently joined Privacy Shield to build European Schools’ College & Career Readiness; could you tell us something more?
A: Privacy Shield certification is a newly completed effort to align our policies with EU and Swiss General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). That allows us to sell our software in the 28 countries of the EU, plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. While each country has its own system of education, they share a need to prepare students for careers where they are likely to succeed and thrive.
Our commitment to follow privacy regulations throughout the world will enable us to become a major player in the international market.
To support international clients, MaiaLearning is assembling one of the most comprehensive college databases in the world, with information on about 20,000 institutions of higher education in 186 countries. Students anywhere can find colleges everywhere.
Recommended: Q: How does MaiaLearning help students and educators?
A: MaiaLearning lets students plan for futures they’re excited about. That excitement helps them power through the parts of middle and high school that aren’t so much fun, because they can see themselves moving toward something personally important.
Students begin with online assessments that profile their interests, personalities, and intelligence mixes. These let our software recommend careers where others with the same profiles have thrived. That’s a tremendous help to educators and students, because MaiaLearning knows about over 900 careers; more than any counselor could be familiar with.
Most students enter high school knowing about just a handful of careers. Sometimes, nothing they know about interests them. When they see dozens of futures that could be great fits, their horizons expand and they get engaged.
Students explore careers that interest them. Each requires certain knowledge, skills, and abilities; and students self-assess where they need to improve. Then they develop career plans within MaiaLearning about how they will acquire what they need, and move toward the futures that beckon them. They also build academic plans based on their school’s course catalog; detailing what courses they’ll take and when, to be ready for graduation.
College is key to many career plans, so MaiaLearning helps students discover and explore colleges worldwide. When they’ve selected ones that interest them, they can request recommendations, manage college visits, find scholarships, and send application documents (through their counselors), all inside MaiaLearning.
While students are growing, they’re building digital portfolios of their unique experiences and accomplishments. These become the stories they’ll later tell to employers and college admissions officers about why they should be chosen. MaiaLearning holds these for presentation.
Counselors across the country struggle with large caseloads and multiple administrative responsibilities. MaiaLearning helps them provide better guidance by managing the details so they can focus on students.
For example, counselors can easily find and text to students who have not completed an assessment or task. They can see the college choices and status of all 12th graders who are submitting Early Decision or Common App college applications. And they can submit student documents to colleges by clicking a button inside MaiaLearning.
The goal is to streamline college and career readiness, and present it in such a way that students enthusiastically engage and drive the process themselves. That gives them the greatest chance of success.
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Q: How is MaiaLearning different from other college and career readiness offerings?
A: MaiaLearning differs from other systems in many important ways.
First, the software is easy to use. You can do almost everything on the system within two clicks.
Second, the software is designed to be engaging, so people will want to use it. Counselors are busy. If we can get students to work on self-discovery and planning before they sit down with a counselor, that first meeting will be much more productive. Even more important, the student will feel empowered, like she is in control of her own direction. That builds energy and engagement.
Third, we understand that communication and support are essential. We solicit educator needs, build software they and their students can use with minimal training, and respond promptly if issues arise. Our customers tell us repeatedly how important responsiveness is.
Finally, MaiaLearning is perhaps the most modern system of its kind. It’s built with Responsive Design, to work equally well on computers and the mobile devices students use constantly.
Q: What’s next for MaiaLearning, Inc.?
A: We are continuing to streamline the college and career readiness process for students and educators. We just announced seamless integration with Parchment so schools can submit college applications documents directly. We’re working with other applications systems as well.
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