VIJAYAPURA: The Covid pandemic brought the world to a grinding halt in early 2020. It changed how we interacted with fellow beings, how we breathed the air and taught us how we should value even the simplest things in life. One of the worst affected was the student community, whose way of learning had a significant change.
From having fun at school, discussing their daily lessons and learning with a physical teacher, it was all confined within the four walls of their homes through and classes streaming in through a laptop or a smartphone. But online learning did contribute by not depriving millions of education.
In a unique initiative in Vijayapura, the zilla panchayat offers online tuition classes to students of government pre-matric hostels. These classes are apart from their regular school to help them face examinations with confidence.
The programme, ‘Mission Vidyapura’, was started last academic year by the ZP on a pilot basis. The man behind this novel initiative is Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive Officer Rahul Shinde, who implemented it with an objective to equip students with better information on their subjects. Shinde told The New Sunday Express, “Mission Vidyapura follows a centralised online system and is being taught from the ZP’s panchayat resource centre which was converted into a centralised smart class.”
He said, “We realised that the students of pre-matric government hostels had no access to tuition centres to improve their academic performance. I thought of using the available technology and resources to ensure online tuition for the students. A decision was also taken to give an honorarium to teachers who volunteer for the programme.”
Sixteen hostels were selected for the programme and different departments, including social welfare, minorities, backward classes and education department, were asked to use their available funds to purchase basic equipment to conduct the online classes. “We later selected expert government teachers and called them for a meeting. We requested them to volunteer as they had to work beyond their regular hours,” he added.
Rukmini Nimangri, a Class 10 student, is all praise for the mission. She believes that the tuition will help her prepare better for the SSLC exams this year.
The classes are conducted every day between 6 pm and 8 pm. “When we found that the initiative was getting a good response, we extended it to all the 100 hostels that have a combined strength of 5,000 students,” Shinde said. The state government is planning to replicate it across the state now.
Besides teaching regular subjects, the students are also educated on different aspects, such as the Army recruitment process by the teachers of Sainik School Bijapur. An NGO, Agastya Foundation, has joined hands with the ZP to teach basic experiments to the students.
“Online classes have also helped us keep a vigil on the attendance of wardens and take regular feedback from the students on facilities given to them,” Shinde said and claimed that after the start of online classes last year, he did not receive a single complaint from any hostel on facilities.
Channabasappa Ingaleshwar, a Class 10 student, said “Sometimes, we don’t understand lessons properly in school, or we miss school for some reason. The online tuition helps us cover this gap. Since we also have an interactive session, we get our doubts cleared.”
Ashwini Kulkarni, a science teacher who has volunteered, said it was a new and good experience for her. A teacher of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Residential School at Arakeri, she said she chose to volunteer as she wanted to help hostel students. Kulkarni said that she also learnt how to use technology.