Products - TeNeT Group IIT-M

Online Tutorial

The focus of the Online Tutorials is to enable rural students to pass examinations. Active teaching and learning strategies have been used in these tutorials. The highlight of the tutorial is the use of the Question and Answer format. This problem-solving approach is evident in its three-pronged format: Learn, Practice and Evaluate. In the learn mode, students learn the steps to answer a question and thus the concepts behind it. In the practice and evaluation modes, students can test their knowledge and understanding. Combined together, the elements of interactivity and problem solving have made the tutorials a healthy supplement to conventional classrooms.

The technology consists of three parts, namely, content generation, posting and evaluation, and generation of model question papers.

An off-line editor has been developed around the Qt GUI environment for data entry. The tool developed enables data entry for different types of questions, namely, multiple choice, fillups, short and long questions, marking on a map/diagram. Facilities are provided in the tool to include pictures and voice-overs as part of the answers. The content is stored in a database. MySQL, an open source database, is used for this purpose. The contents are stored Chapter wise in the Question and Answer format. The tool has been designed such that data can be entered in Indian languages. The software currently supports Tamil.

The architecture is based on the client-server approach. The content database is stored at the server. PHP based scripts have been developed to produce HTML pages from the database in the learn, practice and evaluate modes. In addition, in the practice and evaluate modes, for good interactivity Javascript is used.