BANGALORE: At night, 22-year-old Indian mathematics research student Gurpreet Singh logs on to the Internet to teach students sitting thousands of kilometres away in the United States.
Using an electronic pen, his colleague Varinder Kumar highlights areas on his interactive computer screen where US students are making simple mistakes and suggests solutions real time.
India’s outsourcing industry, which usually covers services such as software programmes, customer management and accounting for companies abroad and at home, has discovered a new market for its talents.
Employing part-timers and staff tutors, outsourcing firms believe they have tapped a potential goldmine in what they call ‘e-tutoring’ or ‘e-mentoring’.
Educomp Datamatics Ltd., where Singh and Kumar work, is one of a small clutch of players in the market and its staff teach mathematics to around 800 students in the United States.
“Six months ago, we thought we would launch a pilot project and see the response,” said Shantanu Prakash, chief of Educomp Datamatics, a firm which provides technology solutions such as digital content for the education sector.
“To our surprise, the response was phenomenal. Now we’re stretched to capacity and instead of an earlier estimate of having 1,000 students by year-end, we’re on course to touch 2,000,” Prakash told AFP.
Singh, who has been working with the company since it started e-tutorials six months ago, said he liked the work so much, “I might even take it up as a full-time career.”
The company has three outlets giving instruction to US students and is the largest player in the country’s nascent Internet tutoring industry. So far at least half a dozen companies in India offer such tuition, said Prakash.
The firm has 20 math tutors, who work at night to bridge the 12-hour time gap between India and the United States, teaching students ranging from the sixth to 12th grades.
Educomp charges 20 dollars to 40 dollars an hour, according to the grade taught.
“India, which invented the numerical zero, has enough qualified teachers. Indians pick up mathematics pretty fast while in the US the kids are very weak,” official Prakash said.
“Statistics show 40 per cent of students in grade seven in the US fail mathematics every year. In India, the failure rate is five to 10 per cent,” he said. “To add to the problem there’s an acute shortage of teachers in the US.”
According to the US National Centre for Education Statistics, in a 2003 national assessment, 32 per cent of American grade eight students failed to achieve even basic maths skills, 29 per cent were at or above proficient level while only five per cent had advanced skills.
The Internet students consult their Indian teachers at a pre-set time deci-ded by e-mail. The virtual tutoring sessions last 30 minutes to an hour daily.—AFP
