In a class of its own

You are an IIT-aspirant living in a remote corner of India and you want access to quality teachers/lectures and learning tools? Or your kid missed the Algebra class this morning, and she wishes to make up.

Wish granted, at the click of a mouse!

Years ago, this might have been just a dream. Not any more. Technology-enabled learning or virtual learning has provided an environment where teacher and student do not have to be in the same place at the same time, in order to interact.

Thanks to better connectivity and an array of solutions in the market, nearly 10 million students have logged into online classrooms in India run by the likes of EdServ Ltd, Everonn Education Ltd, Educomp Solutions Ltd and Pearson Education. Not surprisingly, these companies have been quick to tap the online learning opportunity and have come out with a slew of offerings to woo students.

The opportunity size

Given the vast numbers of students and challenges of delivery, the Indian education landscape is well placed to adopt technology-enabled learning. With 673 million (60 per cent) of the population below 30 years of age (median age: 25 years), the sector has immense potential. From $28 billion today, the Indian education sector is expected to grow to $47 billion over five-six years.

Citing the immense growth in this sector, Everonn points to how private educational institutions have proliferated rapidly over the past decade with the kindergarten to Class 12 segment estimated at $20 billion; private professional colleges at $7 billion and tutoring at $5 billion. Out of one million existing schools, around 75,000 are privately run.

The digital opportunity is undeniable. In a big boost to tech initiatives, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is encouraging schools to use “Digital Content Materials” in classroom teaching.

The CBSE has advised all its affiliated schools to set-up at least one ICT-enabled classroom for each grade, from I through XII. Further, schools are encouraged to progressively increase the number of classrooms with digital content and move towards enabling every single classroom with such learning infrastructure, Shantanu Prakash, founder and CEO, Educomp Solutions Ltd, said in a recent conference call with analysts.

what's on offer

Educomp's WiZiQ — a web learning platform — offers a virtual classroom equipped with live audio, video, white board and text chat elements. It even facilitates payment for the teaching and tutoring services.

EdServ offers products from ‘Cradle to Career' on a single web platform, www.lampsglow.com. From pre-school to Engineering exam support and preparing for CA finals, EdServ has a range of offerings for every age group.

Students can access the educational products that the company offers, at a starting price of Rs 199. Once they exhaust the number of hours fixed for the category, they will have to top-up and recharge.

EdServ says by way of Engineering exam support — electrical, electronics, mechanical, computer science and IT — all semester classes are available online. There are four lakh engineering students in Tamil Nadu, of whom 40 per cent have arrears (or backlog exams) to clear. EdServ helps them clear these ‘arrears' through online classes. At any point of time there are about 20,000 students on board the virtual classroom, says S Giridharan, CEO of EdServ.

Also, be it entrance exam for IIT-JEE, AIEEE, CA, CAT, or Law, online support is offered through live and recorded video sessions. An IIT-JEE aspirant based in Theni or Dindigul (in Tamil Nadu) or any other tier-II/III town can access EdServ's content on lampsglow.com. Other offerings include test preparation, model papers, reference materials, live tuitions and pre-recorded sessions.

Everonn follows a student pay model in its virtual and technology-enabled learning solutions (ViTELS) division. Students pay to access content or to listen to lectures broadcast by teachers from 15 studios in Chennai to remote locations, including Everonn Learning Centres, across the country. They use presentations, video, audio and digital content to communicate, engage and interact with students.

Everonn, through ViTELS, also connects to colleges and retail centres offering skill development and job-oriented programmes. With VSAT (very small aperture terminal) technology, a single instructor can teach thousands of students across the country.

Also using VSAT Technology platform is Pearson Education Services. Meena Ganesh, CEO and MD of Pearson, says her company's EduriteONE programme utilises this technology platform to reach out to the most remote locations of India. Beamed from Bangalore, this platform replicates a real classroom learning environment and enables two-way, audio-video interactions.

Meanwhile, Pearson's DigiClass solution empowers teachers to transform traditional blackboard-and-chalk classrooms into interactive sessions. The multimedia content enables teachers to better explain complex concepts.

The DigiClass solution is based on the philosophy of Cognitive Learning Approach. According to this, there is a close relationship between “what we know” and “what we need to learn”. By associating new material with something familiar, students can better understand and retain new information. DigiClass' multimedia content — including 2D/3D images, videos, demonstrations, simulations, rhymes, games, activity sheets — helps teachers establish this link better, says Meena Ganesh.

The online advantage

All the online players claim that one advantage over physical classrooms is the quality of teachers that the virtual forum offers.

According to Edserv, its tutors are selected through a rigorous interview process. “We check their credentials and students also continuously rate them. There is a team working on this to monitor the quality of the online tutors. We record all the online tuition sessions and have a recap model for students whereby they are able to do self-assessment,” Edserv's Giridharan says.

The online players also hold out affordability and flexibility that gives digital learning model an edge. While you may shell out almost Rs 14,000 a year for an hour of algebra classes for a class X student in a city like Delhi, you could get an online tutorial for a year for Rs 2,000, says a Delhi-based parent who uses one such solution - Topper Learning. And there are flexible pricing options as well. In the case of EdServ, while live online tuition could cost Rs 30 per hour, recorded eLearning sessions could cost Rs 5 per hour. “Everyday, we are seeing newer students register on lampsglow.com from tier-II/III towns,” says Giridharan.

But for technology, these students in remote places would have been deprived of quality tutoring, he notes.

Growing online learners

So is digital learning finally picking up in India? At least the numbers seem to suggest so. Educomp's WiZiQ today has 1.2 million students and over a lakh teachers registered on the platform. “Clearly WiZiQ is on a roll,” Prakash told analysts recently.

EdServ's web platform www.lampsglow.com has a student base of one lakh. EdServ provides online tests almost everyday. There are over 80 batches every evening, between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. The company wants to expand online tuition sessions to 800 batches every day over a period of time.

Pearson's DigiClass reaches out to more than seven lakh students every day. The company's assessment and testing programmes help to educate more than 100 million people worldwide.

“We combine content and technology and offer customised solutions of international standards to audiences not just in India but worldwide,” says Pearson's Meena Ganesh.

Everonn reaches out to over three million students through ViTELS. Revenue for Everonn, through ViTELS, increased by nearly 50 per cent to Rs 216 crore in 2010-11 compared with Rs 146 crore in the previous year. It reported total revenue of Rs 302 crore in 2010-11 (Rs 211 crore), according to the company's 2010-11 annual report.

With a growing number of students clicking in to eLearning portals, the virtual classrooms are finally coming alive in India.

The other side to IT

Virtual education is fine but nothing like meeting eye-to-eye with the students, says V Sreevathson, founder of the Chennai-based Bharadwaj Institute, which trains students to become chartered accountants, cost and works accountants and company secretaries.

The seven-year-old institute teaches around 1,200 students every year.

Virtual education could complement but not substitute personal classroom teaching. “In virtual education we do not know whether the student understood what we taught. A student views the monitor while the teacher looks into the camera. We cannot understand the body language through a monitor,” says Sreevathson, who is a Chartered Accountant by profession and teacher by passion.

The real issue is about lack of quality teachers due to which there is a spurt in virtual education, he says, adding, “we would never look at venturing into virtual education.”

raja@thehindu.co.in

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