13th September 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
It is common for senior students to tutor their junior counterparts in the US, but in India the launch of a new program at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is hoped to show that it can also be done elsewhere. A report on the Indian Times website explains how the institute has previously allowed graduates and PhD students to tutor undergraduate courses, but is now asking high achieving undergraduates to help freshers.
So far 50 undergraduates have been appointed as UGTAs (Undergraduate Teaching Assistants) as a trial, and these UGTAs are helping students with first and second year courses. The tutors have been very carefully chosen, because they have to have a strong academic record, but also be able to take on the responsibility of regular tutoring each week, whilst still keeping up with their own studies. Usually this responsibility would be left to PhD students, for which they would be paid, but the IIT has found that because many of these PhD students have studied different courses, their tutoring can often be confusing for the undergraduates.
The program also comes in the wake of increased numbers of students throughout India, but especially at the IIT. It’s reported that the numbers of faculty staff and classrooms simply can’t cope with the tutoring required for every student, and that one lecture last year contained 880 students at a time. The new tuition program has been given RS 48,000 for this year, and if the experiment goes well then it will see more third and fourth year undergraduates taken on as tutors next year.