Inspirit is the first and only education solution to combine powerful virtual and augmented reality technology (together as XR technology) with Stanford research-based instructional practices. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Inspirit CEO and co-founder Aditya Vishwanath to learn more.
Aditya Vishwanath’s Background
Vishwanath is an education technology researcher and entrepreneur who earned his Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University, received a BS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech, and works at the intersection of learning sciences, technology, and design. He has been awarded the Stanford Knight-Hennessy scholarship, the Schmidt Futures International Strategy Fellowship, the Georgia Tech 40 under 40 award, the SXSW EDU launch award, and was recently nominated to the 2022 Forbes Technology Council and the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Education.
Vishwanath is also a social entrepreneur and co-founded MakerGhat, a makerspace and incubator network for youth from low-income communities in India, which now has a presence in over 10,000 schools nationwide. Previously, he worked with the Google Education team, exploring strategies to integrate low-cost virtual reality toolkits into the curriculum. Aditya aspires to continue to nurture a career designing education technology for diverse learning environments worldwide.
Formation Of Inspirit
How did the idea for Inspirit come together? Vishwanath said:
“The idea for Inspirit came about because I used to do a lot of research in classrooms, particularly in and around the city of Atlanta, Georgia, which is where we first got started. In one sixth-grade classroom, we were conducting a research study to understand how teachers were using various mobile tools and Chromebook devices to teach and help students learn. One of the students approached me and said that she had heard about this new thing called virtual reality and, specifically, Google Cardboard. She asked me if I had ever tried it out. And that was when I first learned about the technology. It had a domino effect from there, where I went down a rabbit hole and discovered there was this new but rudimentary device that you could use with a smartphone while you were suddenly transported through a field trip to another part of the world. The potential for this technology and what it could become got me very excited. Even in the very early days, I could see the potential for this tech to transform education. Afterward, I met with one of my closest college friends, and we talked about technology and opportunity. We both recognized an obvious need for VR and similar technologies in K-12 classrooms, but there wasn’t really a market for it yet. This was back in 2016 and 2017. We were constantly tinkering and toying with the idea. Once COVID hit, we saw a true market opportunity and the intersection of that with demand from teachers and students. This is how Inspirit came to be.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Vishwanath’s favorite memory working for Inspirit so far? Vishwanath reflected:
“My favorite memory is the very first time we did a field pilot at a school. It was in a 9th-grade high school biology classroom. I remember just feeling a deep sense of gratitude while seeing this whole thing come to life. It was a lot of work—back and forth — and iteration. But I was humbled and energized having the opportunity to be in front of a classroom of 25 students. It was an introductory lesson to the human cell. As students were going into the cell, they were shouting, yelling, and moving around, excited and overjoyed, while asking a bunch of questions. A handful of things were broken in the process. But in retrospect, I think it just gave me a deep sense of satisfaction to see it come to life. And, more importantly, the visible, obvious feedback that we were getting from teachers and students made it clear to us that we had hit on something incredibly compelling.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges did Vishwanath face in building the company? Vishwanath acknowledged:
“Challenges are the name of the game in building an early-stage business of this kind. If I had to pick a couple of key challenges, I think one is certainly being able to help teachers succeed with the use of technology in the classroom. Teachers have no time, and they are extremely stretched in all different directions, where it becomes almost impossible for them to allocate time to focus on anything new, cutting edge, or promising of this kind. At the same time, teachers desperately need resources like this in order to boost student motivation, student engagement, student achievement, and learning outcomes.”
“There is a critical need to support teachers and facilitate the integration of this technology. So, one of the biggest challenges we constantly deal with is balancing these two things. How do you align the goals of what a teacher is expected to do? And by teacher, I don’t mean just the teacher, but you have to think of the region and context of the school, the principal, the superintendent, the administrators, the parents, and all the other stakeholders who play a role in the educational ecosystem. How you get and create time for something like this is really the million dollar question. Because if you are able to successfully align the incentives of what a teacher is expected to achieve and is expected to do with what this technology can offer, then you create buy-in for somebody to make time to do something like this. It’s a constant work in progress because you’re always learning new things, new workarounds, and new solutions. Most of these workarounds are actually invented by the teacher. It requires this intense design period where we work with teachers in a very hands-on way. It is very hard to do at scale, but it’s very important for sustainability.”
Core Products
What are Inspirit’s core products and features? Vishwanath explained:
“Inspirit is an all-in-one solution for anything that you want to learn in math, science, and careers – in an experiential way. We cover everything in middle and high school biology, chemistry, physics, and math, aligned with standard Common Core math. In the case of math, the Next Generation Science Standards get assigned, but we also offer other state-specific standards and multiple career and technical education pathways.”
“Specifically, our vision is to build the experiential learning ecosystem for education because we fundamentally believe that learning is an experience of building curiosity and a sense of wonder, which are really missing in today’s classrooms. I think it’s the biggest reason for all the challenges that we see in the classroom. Our teachers, administrators, and schools are provided an end-to-end toolkit that they can seamlessly drag and drop and integrate into their curriculum and lesson plans. All of this is backed by research and tested in rigorous ways. We have evidence to demonstrate that these tools work. They are not being done just for the sake of it, but they are being done because they actually work.”
Evolution Of Inspirit’s Technology
How has Inspirit’s technology evolved since launching? Vishwanath noted
“We have been in a constant state of evolution. When we started, we focused exclusively on middle and high school biology. We expanded to other sciences from there, and then introduced math and careers. So, the library itself has expanded, in tandem with the features We keep refining and introducing new platform features and new types of interaction, including teacher-classroom management tools. We’re also hardware agnostic, which means that we don’t only work on VR headsets, but we also launched a web-based platform that works on Chromebooks directly within the browser with no installation, no downloads, none of that required. This has increased accessibility and access to this technology.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Inspirit’s most significant milestones? Vishwanath cited:
“I think the most significant milestone was a whole semester’s worth of VR usage and later the ability for us to claim or build a curriculum that spanned an entire school year or an entire curriculum over the course of the school year. The moment we did that, I think that’s when we truly left the station and hit that escape velocity field where it became a no-brainer for institutions to afford and adopt this in a sustainable way. Other milestones include unlocking strategic district school partnerships, a couple of international partnerships, and announcing new curriculum and product features. Each of those has been a significant milestone for us to continue to support our users.”
Customer Success Stories
Upon asking Vishwanath about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“We have a couple of exciting ones being announced in the next few months. So, definitely follow us to look out for those. But one I can mention is a program we conducted with a specific teacher at a school just outside of Yakima, Washington. This teacher used Inspirit’s content in their science classroom, and it was a phenomenal experience because many of these students found learning in general to be a challenge. These were typically students who were in the bottom 25 percentile of the classroom.”
“There was a dramatic shift in motivation and engagement in the classroom, which are the obvious merits and benefits of VR. But even beyond that, we saw in the long term that even if it was a single VR experience, the effects had a positive impact on participation, more active responses in the classroom, better agency, and student ownership that was visibly demonstrated in other activities over the course of the lesson or over the course of the month. The results were evident just from a single VR experience. From this program, we learned that it was not necessary to do VR every day or every week. In this case, just two or three times a month proved effective.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Inspirit pursuing? Vishwanath assessed:
“We’re going after all students in grades K through 12. So, any child under the age of 18 who is in any formal or informal learning environment. The way we learn today is largely through talking to students through PowerPoint presentations and slideshows and not necessarily talking to them and giving them opportunities to experience learning through doing things. This is the fundamental shift I want to create in the world. And that means our total addressable market is anybody who learns in a formal or informal classroom across the globe.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Inspirit from its competition? Vishwanath affirmed:
“We have a deep commitment to the rigor of the learning sciences and research. I started the company when I was doing my PhD in education at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. I think it is important for us to move beyond the hype, the novelty, the buzzword, the wow factor of this technology. There’s a lot of buzz around words like the Metaverse and such. But those words don’t mean anything in practice to a teacher or to a classroom in most cases.”
“Being able to connect teaching and learning goals, actual student achievement, outcomes, and desired outcomes is important. Creating that accessibility and demonstrating that commitment to doing rigorous research in proving those outcomes in a longitudinal and sustainable way, is probably our key differentiator and our key focus. We are an education company, even though technology forms the core of our offering. We are intentional in setting this precedent. All our experiences include hands-on featured lesson plans, guides, and templates. So, it’s not just an interactive simulation, but it includes other resources and tools that enable a teacher to successfully integrate this into their lesson in a very seamless drag-and-drop, plug-and-play kind of way that requires minimum effort from their side.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Inspirit’s future company goals? Vishwanath concluded:
“In the short term, we want to continue to improve the experience for teachers because I think if we focus on this fundamental unit of the classroom and the classroom experience, everything else from there will work in a much more seamless way. One big focus for us as a team is to continue to sharpen, improve, and test out that experience for teachers and reduce any friction that exists. Everything from installing the experience to getting the devices on school WiFi to all the logistics and the things that are not very sexy – the things we don’t talk about, but which are also important in order to ensure sustainable use and integration.”
“Our long-term goal is to make this the fundamental way in which kids learn. I believe these new media and spatial computing tools are going to play a critical role in shaping the scientific temperament, the problem-solving mindset to the level of critical thinking, and rigorous learning that we can offer to the next generation of learners. And doing anything we can to support that vision and see it through to reality is going to be our number one goal.”
