SmarterEd,a ground-breaking matching program for students and volunteer teachers, has secured over 11,000 volunteer teachers and nearly 15,000 student registrations in its first four months, firmly establishing itself as a new model to tackle the education gap in India. The program is led by global technology company Lenovo in conjunction with eVidyaloka, a not-for-profit education organization.
The platform was launched in April 2020 to facilitate free virtual education during COVID-19 lockdown, to connect volunteer teachers with students across India. According to government estimates, India faces a shortage of one million teachers, with a decreasing student-to-teacher ratio. SmarterEd provides access for individuals from different backgrounds to volunteer and teach.
The SmarterEd platform was designed by Lenovo for one-on-one online learning sessions, taking into account the respective teaching and learning styles of learners and instructors. The registrations were not geographically limited, which allowed individuals from 654 cities to teach voluntarily, and students from 571 different cities to learn, with the majority from Delhi.
The platform offers links to NCERT and State syllabus e-books, and allows learners from classes V to XII to register. In the last three months, the maximum number of registered students (5000+) were from class XII. While learners and volunteer teachers had the option to choose from multiple Indian languages, the most preferred language for communication was English, followed by Hindi.
