SAMBALPUR: In a bid to provide knowledge support to school students amid the Covid crisis, a group of students of Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT) at Burla are providing free tutorials and guidance to students only through their initiative ‘Unlock Education: The New Face of Knowledge’.
Founder Hrudanand Prusty who is a BTech (Metallurgy) student of the university, said the virtual tuitions are being provided to students of Class VIII to Class X belonging to any of the three boards in the State.
“We started this initiative after realising that a large number of school students are not getting learning guidance due to various reasons during the lockdown”, said Prusty. The initiative was started as a Facebook page in first week of July by Prusty along with two of his batchmates Ankita Meher and Ayushi Swain. Subsequently, a core team of 12 students of VSSUT was formed.
The team initially promoted the initiative through social media platforms and shared a few mobile numbers on which students could contact to seek assistance and clear their doubts on any subject. Eventually, more students joined through mouth of word. So when a student reaches the platform, he is added to a WhatsApp group on the basis of his board of education.
Students then share their doubts in the group which is explained by any of the members either over audio or video call or through video lectures on YouTube. The team also conducts group classes over video call for different subjects. The team members are active from 6 am to 1 am everyday and respond to every student.
As on Saturday, the team of ‘Unlock Education’ has over 50 team members comprising of students from different colleges with academic expertise in various subjects.From five students in the first few days, today at least 200 students are seeking benefit from the platform including 30 students from BSE board, 80 from ICSE and rest from CBSE board.
Prusty, who completed his BTech on July 30, said any student from within the State can approach the team on their contact number 8249462667 and get free tutorials in any subject. “We want more and more number of students to benefit from this initiative”, he said.