Learnsmart launches online academic tool

Learnsmart India Private Limited on Wednesday launched an online diagnostic and self-assessment tool for students of Std III-X.

Learnsmart is a joint venture initiative by Hyderabad-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) and web services integration provider BodhTree Consulting, and Unified Council, a provider of educational assessment services.

Christened 24X7guru.com, the tool combines Unified Council's education content and BodhTree's online diagnostic and assessment engine. The portal allows students to take tests at their own convenience.

Students can evaluate their learning proficiency by answering questions about the subjects they study in school. The portal then scores those answers and demonstrates to students their strengths and weaknesses.

It also offers the flexibility to pause "� in case of power failure etc "� and complete their tests later, besides tracking their performance and serving them with a fresh batch of questions each successive time, depending upon their level of comprehension.

A student can take as many as 45 such tests per year by paying Rs 3 to Rs 5 per day, depending on the class.

"Initially, 24X7guru.com will offer student's online assessment services for CBSE-based science and mathematics. We are gearing up to launch the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) curriculum next month, and introduce the International Baccalaureate (IB)-based courses in the next two months," Srinivas Kalluri, director of Learnsmart, told mediapersons here.

Learnsmart aims at enrolling one million subscribers by the end of the academic year 2009 and add another million by 2010.

"We have tied up with around 3,500 schools in India and abroad, and are currently working with the educational departments of countries like Africa, Malaysia and West Asia for creating syllabi for them," Kalluri added.

According to Sanjiv Gupta, chief executive of BodhTree, the joint venture, has invested Rs 4 crore in the initiative so far, expects to garner revenues of around Rs 60 crore in the next 24 months.

"We propose to invest Rs 30 crore, which will be raised through internal accruals, in developing the portal, besides working on offering it via the mobile delivery and video learning platforms," he said.

The company plans to offer the services through mobile within a month, and via video teaching sometime next year.