The School Education Department has commenced an online crash course for nearly 9,000 students across the State from government and government-aided schools who will be taking up NEET this year.
In the run-up to the exam, the School Education Department usually has a one-month residential crash course for students. The crash course has been started online this year owing to COVID-19.
The online crash course was formally inaugurated by Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami on Wednesday. The free course has been made available both in Tamil and English.
The department has collaborated with Amphisoft Technologies and is providing the course through their E-Box learning platform. “Around 9,000 students have registered for the course and most of them have started attending the classes. Around 700 students have registered from Chennai and are attending the classes,” said a senior official.
The students have been given a schedule and have video lectures in Physics, Botany, Chemistry and Zoology spread across morning and afternoon. These one hour lectures are followed by short tests and students also have the option of taking up a formative test at their convenience, at the end of the day.
Sumana, a student who attended the classes on Wednesday said that she had used her phone to access the online sessions. “The classes begin at 8.30 in the morning and go on till the evening. I am hoping that the tests will help me practice and understand better,” she said.
Though the students have laptops, most of them are accessing the crash course on mobile phones owing to internet connectivity issues. “We expect many students to face issues related to connectivity in the coming days. Without wi-fi connections, they have to rely on their parents phones and we wonder if they will be able to afford constant top-ups to access these classes,” said a teacher from Sivaganga district, who has 8 students attending these online classes.