A school teacher in a village in Karnataka has produced more than 80 YouTube videos, 4,000-plus pages of lessons on a website, and opened a complete laboratory, all with a single purpose — to help students overcome their fear of mathematics.
Yakub Koyyur, who teaches the subject in a government secondary school, is helping students in government Kannada-medium schools with less-than-average attainments improve their learning levels and examination scores.
An assistant teacher at the government high school in Nada village, Belthangady taluk in Dakshina Kannada, he has created content which the rural students would otherwise not have access to. Such materials are normally available only to their counterparts in urban areas, in English.
Mathematics is a hard nut to crack for many students. The IT-enabled initiative of Mr. Koyyur reaches out to Class 10 students to help them pass the mathematics examination.
They learn partly through video lessons on YouTube and through notes, questions and answers, and a ‘passing package’ available on the internet at www.inyatrust.co.in/2016/05/yakub.html
In his bright and colourful ‘Maths World’ laboratory, all students from Class VIII onwards get hands-on experience through models, audio-visual tools and charts.
Of about 750 pages of notes that he has created, about 360 are in Kannada and the rest in English, Mr. Koyyur said. The notes, Q and A, ‘passing package’ run to about 4,000 pages in all.
Syllabus change trigger
“I felt the need to create online content when both teachers and students were looking for answers, after the government changed the Class 10 syllabus in 2014-15,” he said.
The Kannada video lessons on YouTube are themed ‘Target 50’. They prepare the students to score at least 50 marks out of 80 in theory. The notes on the website have a ‘Target 40’.
Three years after he planned his laboratory, the teacher opened it in 2015, with partial government funding of ₹2.5 lakh. School alumni chipped in with the major share of ₹13 lakh.
The results have been encouraging. Mathematics exam results of Class 10 students of 2013-14 and 2014-15 batches were at 77% during both years, but rose to 95% in 2015-16.
“We are making all efforts to take it to 100% this year,” he said. During 2012-13, the results stood at 69%.
Encouraged by the model, other government high schools have set up their own labs, said Srinivasa Shetty, a mathematics teacher at BSS Government Junior College in Hassan.
Mr. Shetty said, “Material created by Mr. Koyyur has become the reference for many teachers and students across Karnataka. When all mathematics teachers meet in June in taluks and districts, we share and discuss his content.”
