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Long term, Mimir wants to “essentially follow a programmer through their entire
education and career life cycle.” For now, the Indianapolis-based developer of an education
technology platform is among the most valuable resources for computer science teachers.
Company CEO Prahasith Veluvolu describes the flagship product, Mimir Classroom,
which was developed by he and other company leaders while they were students at Purdue
University.
“We have a platform for instructors to teach their computer science courses. We
provide no content as of right now, but that’s something we’re working on adding,” he
offers. “Instructors purchase our platform, take their content, upload it to our system and
we automate their entire grading process. Students log in to our platform, turn in their
work and essentially get their grade in seconds.”
The automation brings additional benefits, Veluvolu notes. “Take a math problem for
example. You can grade it in one way. An essay problem, you can’t. Code is like a math
problem. There’s a right answer and a wrong answer. There’s a lot of ways to get to that
right answer and we’re able to account for all those. Teaching assistants and instructors can
spend more time with their students instead of being locked away grading assignments.”
Universities (from single courses to full departments and multi-campus
implementations) are the primary clients, although some high schools and independent
instructors have signed on. Customization of submission processes and plagiarism analysis
are among the added features.
Mimir strives to assist students in a variety of ways. Among the offerings in development:
free programs and content, an internship and job matching system, interview tool and more.
Veluvolu believes Mimir will eventually help fill a need between in-person education
with an active instructor (“very effective but the problem is they can’t scale”) and massive
open online courses (“which scale like crazy but have completion rates of less than 10%”).
“Our approach is to build our products kind of in the middle – a hybrid approach. We want
to be where people first learn how to program and we want to power their more
professional courses.”
And the company is “back home in Indiana” after 2015 participation in Y-Combinator,
a Silicon Valley start-up accelerator.
“For us, Indiana is home. All three of us pretty much grew up in Indiana, went to
Purdue. We also have the professional network and connections we built while getting
Mimir off the ground. It’s important that we stay close to that,” acknowledges Veluvolu,
who was born in India but moved to the United States at a young age.
“We saw the ecosystem growing. Ten years ago, I don’t think Indy would be a good
place to start or build a tech company. Today, it definitely is. Silicon Valley is a great place
to be for tech but it’s very built up. Being here – we’re here while it’s starting.”
COMPUTING FOR THE FUTURE
“Liberal Arts Lose Luster” was the headline
of an article in
The Wall Street Journal
earlier this
year. It noted that majors such as history and
philosophy on some campuses were being scuttled
in favor of nursing and engineering.
It also stated that the number of humanities
degrees declined by almost 9% between 2012 and
2014, according to the American Academy of
Arts & Sciences. For a specific example, it cites a
jump from 9% of all bachelor degrees in 2005 to
17% in 2015 for these three disciplines –
homeland security, parks and recreation, and
health care.
The story quoted a former college president
saying, “People just can’t afford to be educated;
they almost have to be trained.”
Closer to home, the 30 schools that comprise
the Independent Colleges of Indiana (ICI) did see
a 26.5% increase in STEM (science, technology,
engineering and mathematics) degrees from 2010
to 2015. A valid comparison of changes in
humanities degrees is not possible due to the lack
of a clear definition of what falls in that category.
Jake Docking, ICI data and policy analyst
who provided the STEM statistic, adds, “We
don’t see our institutions backing off
programmatically from the humanities. They still
view that as an integral part of the educational
program their students go through.”
Mary Ellen Hamer, executive president for
ICI, puts it this way: “Whenever you see surveys
of employers saying what they want or need in an
employee, it’s always those liberal arts/
humanities skills – communication, problem
solving, self-discipline, teamwork, creativity.
“Those are the things that even if our schools
are having their students major in STEM or other
fields – they still get a very strong foundation in
that because they’re not just training them for the
first job, but for all the jobs they might have over
the course of their careers.”
Docking points to a recent example – a
coding academy in June that included a variety of
liberal arts majors. “That combination of technical
skills that are practical for the workforce but also
the communication and teamwork make you a
stronger employee throughout your career.”
Note: See Page 10 for the final installment of a
five-part series from Indiana Humanities on business
leaders who are successfully combining STEM and the
humanities.
Different Degrees of
Education
Helping the Teachers – and the Students
Technology and Innovation: Yearlong Series
RESOURCE:
Mary Ellen Hamer and Jake Docking,
Independent Colleges of Indiana, at
www.icindiana.orgRESOURCE:
Prahasith Veluvolu, Mimir, at
www.mimirhq.comIndiana roots led the founders to bring
Mimir back to the state after its participation
in an accelerator program in California.