How the Community is setup

We have setup the Gooru Community as a Learning Exchange. While each of us is focused on our domain specific challenges, we develop solutions to those on a shared Navigator platform. This way every solution developed, benefits us all!

What makes this community powerful!

The tools the community has created

Who we are as a community

Gooru Identity, Beliefs and Values

Identity is who we are and who we are includes our beliefs and values. Beliefs and values are highly interrelated. Our beliefs influence what we do, and our values influence how we operate. Within our identity, these constructs, help us to identify and define the “why”

Identity

Gooru aspires to make social equity non-negotiable. Gooru envisions lifelong learning worldwide where everyone is able to improve their livelihood and falls in love with learning. Gooru is committed to honor the human right to education by co-creating with experts research and technology that enable the ecosystem to focus on assured learning.

Gooru’s aspirations can be achieved through the use of technology. All 7.5B people in the world are connected with a 2-way information device. We use that as the lever to eliminate the asymmetry in information and equity with learning as the fulcrum.

Gooru is an R&D organization that collaborates with researchers and educators to develop open-source technologies to assure inclusive lifelong learning worldwide. At Gooru means are as important as the end. We never compromise for convenience. We have created and continue to grow an organization of mission-aligned, obsessively driven, team players. We tackle complex social challenges by enrolling and collaborating with the community of experts. We start by developing a tool that people trust, then create a community that they belong to, and finally transition to a cause that they own.

Gooru wants to promote focus on Science, Society and Scale. It will do so, with a bold vision, very concrete execution and unwavering activism about our ideals.

Beliefs

Gooru empowers every student to learn and progress on their own path toward achieving their learning goals. To enable personalized pathways with individualized suggestions for each learner, Gooru innovates in many different areas of practice, collaborates across all stakeholders, and implements with learners around the world. Our beliefs and values influence our attitudes, behavior, and activities and govern our pursuit of our mission.

We believe:

1. Education is a Human Right: Equity is equal access to results, not just resources. We need to navigate every student to their learning destination, regardless of where they start.

2. Learning Begins with a Teacher: Learning is a relationship, not a transaction. Classroom practices are paramount to effective learning, and while the student has to take agency and engage in learning, the teacher has a significant role in enabling that learning.

3. Learning is Complex and Personal: We work with educators, pedagogy experts, science of learning researchers, and implementers so the Navigator is informed by practice and backed by science. We use big-data to see the small-picture about each learner as they are very unique.

Values

There are a number of values that stem from our beliefs. Integrity and student focus are the bedrock of who we are, but the values that differentiate us are the key to achieving our mission.

We Value:

1. Passion that Inspires: By demonstrating our sincerity, optimism, and showing the heart of an activist, we enroll others into our mission. We share our work to engage and inspire a community to open-source their expertise.

2. Collaboration that Builds Success: A willingness to share and contribute draws others to open engagement and become part of the coalition of caring. We approach challenges as a shared responsibility and value collective accomplishments.

3. Actions with Impact: By focusing on tangible outcomes, beyond plans, theories, and publications we are able to work with urgency and purpose to reach scalable solutions. We contribute directly to collective goals by taking ownership and constantly improving on our own organizational work.

Collaborative

To address the complexity of the mission that stems from diversity of learners, subtleties in learning, and intricacies of the ecosystem, Gooru has established the Navigated Learning Collaborative (NLC). NLC comprises researchers, educators, learners, content providers, tool developers, governments, small and large non-profit organizations, corporations, and industry bodies. NLC members are completely aligned on their beliefs and values with Gooru.

Inspired by the research on Collective Impact, we established the NLC around a centralized infrastructure, a dedicated staff, and a structured process that leads to a common purpose, shared measurement, continuous communication, and mutually reinforcing activities among all participants. We have also incorporated theories of complexity science and emergence.

Given the range of expertise involved in the learning ecosystem, we have adapted these ideas to be maximally inclusive. In our approach we value individual agendas, which adds to the diversity and richness of the collaborative.

To maintain the fidelity of Collective Impact, we call our adapted version Collaborative Impact. The Navigated Learning Collaborative (NLC) focuses on science of learning, funders who focus on coordinating the funding efforts of various developments, schools who validate and evolve their practices, and certain collaborators around the world who address the diversity of languages, technology infrastructure, and practices across all disciplines in India.

There are five core principles that drive the NLC - Aligned Beliefs and Values, Individual Agendas, Shared Measurement, Contribution Through Use, and Collective Vigilance. The challenge of improving the outcomes for all learners can be effectively addressed in a short time if we align the many different efforts of many stakeholders to achieve collaborative impact. Together we can help every learner realize their potential. Currently, education ecosystem players are seeking to be more effective, reach a larger learner audience, or reduce their technology development cost. NLC attracts every learning ecosystem player to align their efforts towards collaborative impact by providing them with increased effectiveness, broader reach, or lower costs. With the collective wisdom of the collaborative, we will achieve impact at scale.