An app that encourages students to ask questions and promotes ‘application-based learning’ was launched recently by an NGO that works with children from underprivileged homes.
Peer Assisted Learning Systems allows students to ask questions on a lesson that they have done. Their queries get posted after the teachers in the NGO are convinced that the question is relevant.
Students are allowed to post answers but only after they are checked by teachers.
It is an online tool that seeks to restore ‘the peer to peer network’ in an era of online learning.
The app will encourage students to think and ask questions.
“We are encouraging students to ask questions on what they have learnt. It will also give them a feeling of peer community that they have been missing out because of the pandemic,” said Mohuna Dutt, project director, @Shikshya programme at Calcutta Social Project.
The online tool will generate an academic conversation amongst students and will not be restricted to students of any particular class.
Some of these children are first generation learners and have no guidance at home, Dutt said.
The NGO had received a prize money of 25,000 dollars in a worldwide competition that asked organisations about the ways they were combating demands in education.
The app can be downloaded on a basic smartphone and will require less space.
“We will have to close offline classes but this app-based learing will continue,” said president of Calcutta Social Project, Arjun Dutta.