Wipro, McGraw-Hill to develop progs for underserved students

India's leading IT company Wipro today announced that it will develop educational programmes in collaboration with the US-based McGraw-Hill for emerging markets including India that can be delivered through mobile devices like cell phones and laptops.

The programme "mConnect" will offer low-income, rural or underserved students a education and assessment programmes through cell phones, laptops and other mobile devices, McGraw-Hill said in a statement here.

Citing an example, it said that for students who want to establish their careers by learning english, mConnect would provide opportunities to hear conversations, review new vocabulary delivered via SMS.

"Through advances in mobile learning, McGraw-Hill and Wipro...(would) deliver high-quality, low-cost education to students and workers in rural areas and cities with limited access to resources," said Harold McGraw III, chairman, president and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies, who made the announcement here.

The McGraw-Hill Companies and Wipro would work together to develop a mobile learning platform to bridge the skills gap in emerging markets including in India, it said.

Initially in India, the focus would be on the needs of students and workers like in test preparation for entrance examinations into universities, it added.

"In a country (India) with more than 700 million cell phones, mobile learning will help level the playing field for education in India," it said.

Quoting Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), it said that in India, there are 706 million cell phone subscribers, equivalent to about 60 per cent of the population.

It said that India provides an important development ground for mConnect as the country is home to a growing, young workforce hungry for access to high-quality education to improve their career prospects.

"According to mobileyouth.Org, by 2012, one in five of all mobile phones in use worldwide will be owned by a young person in India," it said, adding currently, 100 million mobile phones are owned by youth in rural areas who use them an average of 5.5 hours per day.

Even within the population of Indian students with access to university education, according to a recent WEF report on the global talent crisis, only 25 per cent of those graduates are considered employable by multinational companies today, it added.

"Given this staggering data, mobile learning is uniquely positioned to overcome historic boundaries of distance, infrastructure and economic status and harness the prolific and growing use of mobile devices to engage these myriad audiences," it said.

The intention is to extend this programme later to other countries in Asia and in Africa.