In our second “Let’s Talk EdTech” session, we had an insightful conversation with Madhuri Varma. She is a Mentor - Academics, Career, Self-development. She has also been the Barclays: Rising Star 2019 and Exceptional Woman 2020, besides being Indian School of Business: Co18 Torch Bearer.
Below is the summary of expert advice and opinion shared by Madhuri Varma on questions asked by TutorEye’s academic lead, Amandeep Singh:
Madhuri mentioned that she has been majorly focusing on her own venture and exploring her own creative side. She creates content on education, career and self-development. She also provides digital courses on these topics and helps people achieve personal and professional goals by offering 1:1 personal consultation as well.
In reply to this, Madhuri explained how her YouTube channel highlights content on academics, career and self-development, wherein she helps students with choosing their colleges and specializations as well. She also helps them apply for their most preferred universities.
In videos related to career, she helps job seekers prepare for their interview, negotiate their salary, look for jobs, how to network, LinkedIn optimization and how to create job leads.
She firmly believes in learning and considers it as an important aspect of personal growth. Hence, she offers guidance on ways to upskill yourself by working on public speaking & communication skills, multitasking skills and even cross-cultural training. These are all a part of self-development courses.
She believes tutoring has evolved with time. She also cited an example of her parents and grandparents and how they studied in their times. And the way of learning has definitely changed since then. Earlier the focus was more on theoretical knowledge instead of practical.
But how did she overcome it? She covered that too! After facing a setback, she focused on opportunities that would help her achieve her goals. Here, she strongly stressed on the point that now it is time we started recognizing people for their effort and for the value that they add, irrespective of their age, caste or gender. She made a pretty valid point here whether we see it from an academic point of view or professional.
Dr. Kathrine answered the question by sharing some recent data on trauma. She stated that there has been a lot of trauma, primary and secondary, during COVID19. She explained that primary trauma is when something happens to oneself, and secondary trauma is when a person watches something happen to someone else and she/she gets disturbed and traumatized by what they have observed.
She further added that there is a drastic difference in the way students learn in the present times. She shares her own experience by learning through speaker sessions, industry connections and field visits.
Talking about students who have just started learning, she is amazed by the practical curriculum set up by the educational institutes which focuses on holistic development of the student. This helps in bringing out their creative side and tap into their potential that they have. Hence the evolution from years ago to now is a steep curve.
She believes that education has been revolutionized post-pandemic. Students and teachers both had to adapt to the new methods of teaching. While it facilitated time-flexibility, it was also a huge learning curve for the teachers since they were not as adept with the technology as the students, proving that learning never stops and is a continuous journey.
So, upskilling yourself consistently is mandatory to be in sync with the current age and time as things progress in technology and the world.