One of the most common sights in cities these days is that of young students rushing around after school hours, using every mode of transportation available to partake in an almost daily pilgrimage to tuition classes and entrance coaching centres. Some settle into the routine easily, while others grumble and count down the days till the ordeal is over. Amid all the hustle and bustle of theorems and formulae, the quiet hours they could have spent at home are lost.
Prasanth Parameshwaran, who was one of these students a scarce few years ago, is out to make things a little easier for the harried teenagers preparing for their entrance exams. Having dropped out of college after two years, he has started his own firm, Apprender, that specialises in social media marketing, web design and web development. Apprender has now launched an online portal called MegaExams (megaexams.com), which is designed to help engineering aspirants prepare for the exams without having to waste precious time travelling between home and coaching classes.
Accessible
“Our main aim is to make education accessible. While students who live in cities may have access to coaching for entrance exams, those who live in less urban areas do not have access to the same facilities. Megaexams is out to bridge that divide. All students can register irrespective of where they are from and take mock tests designed by expert teachers according to current guidelines.
Those who take the tests can evaluate their performance and compare against the average result of other participants, giving them a fair idea of where they stand,” says Prasanth.
Apprender has started with entrance examination training, but Prasanth explains that this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is also planning to tie up with schools to bring an interactive learning experience to the classroom, with customised software that can scale the lessons according to each student’s learning speed.
“We have approached some schools and there is some definite interest. With this way of learning, students can login from home and catch up on lessons, teachers can set tests and students can take those from home as well if necessary. The possibilities are endless,” Prasanth says, before elaborating, “we can even evaluate which sections of the syllabus a student finds difficult, and alert the parents to help them with the section in question.”
Prasanth is quick to admit that most of the plans are still in a nascent state, with only the entrance coaching being fully operational at the moment. However, he is confident that the rest of the training mechanisms will be in place by the time schools reopen after the summer break in two months’ time.
MegaExams will also publish an online ranklist of the students who used their facility post the entrance test, ensuring that the even students from semi urban and rural areas are noticed for their performances.
Providing accessible and affordable education is Apprender’s main aim, says Prasanth.
“We are always restricting ourselves, learning what is taught by outdated syllabi and often by faculty who may not have a complete knowledge of the latest happenings in the field. We only begin to use our full potential when we take learning into our own hands, and Apprender will provide the tools to do just that,” he signs off.
