The teacher-centric classroom is dead.
Well, maybe not dead, but as digital technologies surface new alternatives to the typical classroom setup, no longer must students attend class to get an education.
This option is especially important at community colleges, where students often balance part-time studies with full-time careers, families and other responsibilities.
Despite this glaring need for flexible course schedules, tutorial sessions, meetings with advisors and more, Alex Pritchett said edtech companies tend to forget about the community college space.
“We started talking with admins from community colleges all over North Carolina, driving hours and hours to these campuses,” said Pritchett. “After we heard enough admins talk about what the issues were, we realized that there wasn’t a lot being done focusing on finding ways to help community college students be successful.”
So he and co-founder Melvin Hines launched Upswing in 2013 to make virtual learning services available for community colleges. Originally from Durham, N.C., Hines and Pritchett have since relocated to Austin.
The platform helps schools offer live, virtual tutoring sessions sourced through the college’s own staff or via Upswing’s network of more than 1,000 tutors. These sessions can be scheduled at the whim of the tutor and student and are hosted online with real-time data updates for administrative tracking.
“One of the biggest things that sparks people’s interest is the fact that every piece of data that occurs can be accessed by an admin,” said Pritchett.
As the startup has grown, interest has spread to universities. Now, Upswing has partnered with several four-year universities including University of North Texas, Indiana University East, Utah Valley University and College of Staten Island. The platform has also reached high schools.
“Our long-term vision is that we want to become the single, go-to space for student support management, tutoring, mentoring, financial aid, advising and office hours for professors,” said Pritchett. “We know that by becoming the hub for those services, we’re not only delivering ways to better engage students, but we’re taking giving administrators a centralized view of everything that’s going on within each service.”
To help them get there, the Upswing team has grown to 20 employees and has moved into a new office just a hop, skip and jump away from Rainey Street.
On the horizon, Pritchett said the team plans to unveil a communication solution that allows professors to better communicate with students over SMS, as well as a bot system that can make recommendations and connections with college staff.
“It’s a cool space to be in,” said Pritchett. “There’s a lot of innovation happening.”
Image provided by Upswing.
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