Formulating questions for students, photocopying and distributing them, and finally checking the answer-sheets take up a lot of the teachers’ time. Not only do they get stuck with these ancillary activities but lose teaching time. A new app may just be what they need.
Classplus, launched in December, is co-founded by Mukul Rustagi, an IIT-Roorkee alumnus, and his friend Bhaswat Agarwal from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology.
Both Rustagi and Agarwal were studying at the same coaching centre, which was shut 10 months before the JEE exam, and this incident played a major role in their developing this app.
“We already had a traumatic experience during our IIT coaching and, after talking to my juniors, I realised nothing has changed in the coaching space in the last 10 years. Added to this we saw that Internet consumption is on a high. So, all these things gave us an idea that something needs to be done in the education sector,” said Rustagi.
How the app works
One can log-in in three modes: tutor, parent, and student. Once logged in, a tutor can create his batches; add students, share notices or reminders about class. He can also assign tests on the platform.
Objective questions are automatically corrected and feedback in th form of reports and analytics given to parents and tutors. For subjective questions, a student can take a photo of the answer or of the diagram, and send it to the tutor.
The correct answers can be checked on the phone itself.
“One of the biggest worries of parents is to know whether their ward actually attends the tuition class. Reports say Indian parents spend 12 per cent of their total monthly expenditure on coaching classes, therefore, it is important that they stay updated on their child’s performance, and this app provides them that opportunity,” said Rustagi.
Key features
According to an NSSO report, the largest number of after-school tuitions happen in India As many as 7.1 crore of the 30 crore school-going students take supplementary coaching classes every year. The bread and butter of this app is the online test provided to the institutes.
The app comes with pre-loaded tests, however, it offers teachers the flexibility to come up with their own content.
“It saves manpower, as a lot of a teacher’s time is wasted conveying to parents that the child has not come for the class. Now, with this app, we just have to share the attendance record with the parents. Also, customised tests can be given to students and have been very beneficial”, said Gyanendra Singh, Director, K Gyan Institute.
Curently, the app is being used by over 200 institutes across the Delhi-NCR and also in a few cities in Punjab and caters to all coaching institutes for students from Std 9 to 12.