Inspiration

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, learning changed forever. We were all sent into isolation and forced to learn through the barriers of technology-- unable to connect with our peers or our teachers. Thus, many students will describe this time as some of the loneliest time of their lives. We wanted to address the disconnect between the lack of interpersonal connection in the learning industry by carefully curating personalized curriculum that emphasizes on building a relationship between the tutor and the student. Introducing: iTutor.

Team members: Asher Choi, Kareem Safieddine, Ryan Gu

What it does

iTutor is a unique tutoring service that offers 3 main components: tutoring, consulting and mentorship programs. Each program is carefully curated to match the student's learning style, study habits, and in general, meet the students where they are to promote a comfortable learning environment. In addition to this, we stress the importance of building a relationship with our teachers in order to maximize productive learning sessions.

The consulting service is geared more towards high schoolers who are looking for either academic consulting, assistance in securing jobs and internships, educational planning etc.

The mentorship program is our most unique service. The mentorship program includes all aspects of the consulting service, but builds upon that to include essential external life skills such as financial literacy, basic coding and more. However, its main function is to offer life coaching and personal development skills to help anyone, at any age. For younger children, it serves as a big brother big sister effect. For young adults, it gives them someone to look up to that is willing to go the extra mile to serve the needs of the child.

How we built it

We created the concept and drafted a business plan with our basic information and concept. Then fully integrated and built a website ready for utility.

Challenges we ran into

The most difficult task was finding the sweet spot in pricing and how much of the cut we would take for each tutoring lesson. We wanted to be a profitable business, but also considered the importance of remaining highly competitive, accessible and fair.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of how far we got and the progress we have made with this project. It was all of our first hackatl events, we were a smaller team and we were glad that we were giving this a real hard shot but also having fun along the way. We definitely worked hard and spent a lot of time on the project and it has been very rewarding thus far.

What we learned

There are a lot of external factors that must be considered when considering the scope of your business or startup. It's important to be reasonable and not underestimate what these influencing factors may be.

What's next for iTutor

iTutor has a unique business model that calls for low and relatively static costs. Thus, we expect to grow exponentially as a business and expand our services to make it more accessible for all students.