Oberlin grads form firm to make learning Chinese easier

Nick Winter jokes that after his graduation from Oberlin College last spring, he had a “failure to launch.”

Actually, what happened to Nick and his two roommates is just what college officials had in mind when they crafted a strategy in 2006 to bring an entrepreneurial mindset to the liberal arts campus.

The strategy included a “fifth year” of college, an after-graduation program for selected students to experiment and learn about putting together a business. It was part of Oberlin’s proposal for what eventually became known as NEOCEP – the Northeast Ohio Collegiate Entrepreneurship Program. Through NEOCEP, The Burton D. Morgan Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation are funneling $6.6 million to five local liberal arts colleges to breed a culture of entrepreneurship.

Oberlin set aside part of its grant money for mini-business creation. Winter, George Saines and Scott Erickson applied and were awarded a $30,000 grant this year to launch their business, which is a Web site to improve the teaching of Mandarin Chinese.

The program they have built is known as “Skritter,” named from the word Sanskrit. It teaches step-by-step the drawing of Chinese letters.

“See a prompt, write the character and receive immediate feedback,” is the way the Skritter Web site describes the process.

On a Saturday morning in September, the Skritter team visited the Western Reserve Academy campus in Hudson to test the Web site using the school’s third-year Chinese students. The feed-back from those who have been studying this language for awhile was invaluable.

“We are ecstatic to talk to the students,” Saines said the morning of the testing.

Winter was the force behind the creation of the business. After three semesters studying the language, he spent a month in China and felt like “a helpless baby.” He returned to campus, did an informal survey and concluded that only 39 percent of those who studied the language could write what they could read.

While the English alphabet has just 26 letters, he points out, there are thousands of Chinese characters. He determined that there must be a better method of teaching and helping students retain what they have learned than the current flash-card method.

Fortunately, he quickly found a support team among his good friends. Erickson is the programmer. Saines is the marketing person, the Web site designer and the investor liaison.

For now, the program is free at Skritter.com. The official launch is scheduled for February, and the Oberlin grads hope to license the program to individuals and schools for a monthly subscription fee.