HRD to involve IITians to help aspirants in JEE preparation

To reduce the influence of coaching centres, the HRD ministry has planned an out of the box strategy as part of which IIT students will create modules on various topics to help aspirants clear the fiercely competitive JEE entrance examination for these prestigious institutes.
The Smriti Irani-led ministry is working on a plan to create an IIT-Pal app which would have free high-quality study material in 11 languages including English, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Odiya, Kannada, Malyalam, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi.
"The material needs to be of the best quality and should cover the syllabus of Physics, Chemistry and Maths in detail. The plan is to invite volunteers from among 2nd year IIT students, who under the guidance of an anchor professor will prepare various topics," senior HRD officials told PTI.

They said there are around 150 major topics required for preparation for IIT entrance exam.
IIT students will be invited to prepare notes on how best to teach the concept to aspirants and, on the basis of this exercise, winning entries will be chosen. One IIT-PAL team will be selected for each topic.
"The idea is to utilise the talent and enthusiasm of those who have already been there and done that. To ensure that there is some healthy competition and students are rewarded for their efforts, teams whose content on various topics is chosen may be given an honorarium of up to Rs 1 lakh each," sources said.

To ensure that all children, especially those from less privileged backgrounds, do not face obstacles due to lack of proper guidance, the ministry is also considering setting up a help centre, which will have toll free number, where teaching assistants identified by each IIT will answer queries from aspirants.

Earlier this month, Irani had referred to the "menace of the coaching industry" and said that one of the biggest pressures on students preparing for IIT entrance examination is to seek outside help in preparation.
"That is why the government has decided to dedicate in the forthcoming two months an IIT-Pal portal and mobile app on which 50 years of IIT (entrance) examination papers will be available free of cost," Irani had announced.

The material will not only be available on the IIT-Pal app, web portal but also on SWAYAM, the HRD ministry's Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platform, officials said.