Teaching math to American students - from India!

Discussion in 'Working Women' started by indira, Jul 8, 2005.

  1. indira

    indira Junior IL'ite

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    Here is a good article about teaching math to American students through the internet sitting in India. They charge anywhere between $20 to $30/hour. Worth thinking about if you are planning for a home based opportunity.

    Need Help With Calculus?
    Tutors Coach U.S. Students
    Online -- From India
    By CRIS PRYSTAY
    Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
    July 5, 2005; Page A11

    NEW DELHI -- Tanu Basu lives in Boston, but when she wants extra coaching in math, the 16-year-old American gets online and spends an hour reviewing calculus with an Indian teacher who is based in a suburb of this teeming metropolis.

    "It's great. I can log in on my free time, whenever I want," says Ms. Basu. "Sometimes my tutor has to explain something four times, and I just feel I'm this dumb person on the other side of the world, and he's all 'No, that's OK.' "

    Enter the next phase of outsourcing: online math education. Not only does the U.S. increasingly lag behind other countries on international math scores, it's also short of qualified math teachers. This could make it tough for America to improve its grade and retain the competitive edge that keeps good jobs at home.

    Into the breach step a handful of Indian companies like Career Launcher India Ltd., which provide math tutoring through two U.S. online tutoring companies and directly to students like Ms. Basu.

    These tutoring services have found a business opportunity: American 15-year-olds ranked 24th among 29 industrialized countries in a study of math skills released last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Plus, as school enrollment surges and baby boomers retire, the U.S. faces a teacher shortage, particularly in math and sciences. Nearly 40% of U.S. high schools reported difficulty filling math openings this year with qualified instructors, according to the American Association of Employment in Education.

    Career Launcher's software allows teachers and students to talk to each other during the live session. Teachers also use a tablet PC to draw diagrams and formulas to help explain the lesson or answer questions. They can see each other through a live feed using a Web camera.

    The company started in 1995 as a tutoring service and now helps more than 30,000 Indian students. Most are teenagers who turn to Career Launcher to help cram for entrance exams for the country's prestigious engineering schools. In 2000, Intel Capital, a venture-capital arm of Intel Corp. took a stake in Career Launcher valued at just under $1 million. Around the same time, Career Launcher started marketing its services in the Middle East, targeting the children of expatriate Indian professionals who flock to the region for work. The company tutors close to 20,000 students there -- with a large portion of its business in the United Arab Emirates.

    In 2003, Career Launcher founder Satya Narayanan struck a deal with a U.S.-based online tutoring company, and eight months ago, signed up with a second one. (Both require Career Launcher to keep their names private under terms of the contract.) Teachers now coach students throughout New Delhi's day and night.

    Career Launcher has taught about 800 U.S. students online in the past 10 months. About 50 of those signed up directly after finding Career Launcher in an Internet search; the rest are outsourced by the two companies it works with. Career Launcher now plans to market itself more aggressively in the U.S., in part by revamping its Web site. It's oriented toward students in India, and it will be redesigned to show students that the company is able to teach to U.S. curricula and help them prep for college entrance exams.

    Career Launcher charges between $20 and $30 an hour, with rates rising for more complex material, on par with U.S. companies like tutor.com and E-Sylvan.com. Career Launcher says it doesn't see itself as a cut-rate competitor to U.S. tutoring companies. "We want to be seen as a higher-quality product, not a cheaper, outsourced option," says Anirudh Phadke, Career Launcher's business-development director.

    Another big Indian tutoring company, Educomp Datamatics, plans to roll out similar services in the U.S. this year with a site called Mentoraide.com. Educomp also creates educational software for classrooms and recently completed a pilot program with a California science class.

    Tutor.com says it's not worried about competition from India. "Online tutoring, as a fairly nascent industry, has so much potential to reach many more students than it does now," says Chief Executive George Cigale. The company tutors about 3,000 students each night, about half of them in math.

    Most of Mr. Satya's 300 tutors don't have education degrees, but they all have a bachelor's degree, mainly in math or physics from Indian universities. Many also have graduate degrees. He pays $8 to $10 an hour -- a fortune in India. The pay has created demand among younger graduates for the jobs -- the staff is mostly in their 20s and 30s.

    Career Launcher recently began offering online tutoring to U.S. college students for $35 an hour -- which is more costly than many U.S. online services. "You find very few companies offering college-level tutoring because of the lack of teachers," says Mr. Phadke. "But here in India, we have so many Ph.D.s and people doing doctorates, so we think we can actually charge a premium."

    At a small office building in Okla, about an hour outside New Delhi, six tutors chat into microphones to students in the Middle East at 10 p.m. A pair of cows hunker down for the night on a dusty curb outside. Swati Chopra, 23 years old, wraps up a session with a student in Dubai, then waits to see whether another student logs on for a session. Ms. Chopra, who has a master's degree in commerce, taught accounting at a local college for 18 months before joining Career Launcher last year. She works later into the evening than at her previous job, but the pay is better and the technology makes it exciting, she says. "I really enjoyed learning to teach over the Internet," she says.

    Ms. Basu, who is Indian but was born in the U.S., says she was initially hesitant about using a tutor in India. "Would they know my curriculum? Would they understand my accent? Would they even speak my language?" says Ms. Basu, a straight-A student who joined group tutoring sessions during the summer for advanced coaching. Now she uses just online tutors. "It's been a great experience," she says. "I've really had a lot of fun with my teachers in India."
     
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  2. indira

    indira Junior IL'ite

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    Gifted Students Connect Online With Colleges..

    Another article about online education. Just wanted to post this as a supporting information that online education is starting to pick up..

    Gifted Students
    Connect Online
    With Colleges
    By NEIL PARMAR
    Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
    August 19, 2005; Page B1

    This fall, David Kayler plans to challenge himself like never before. As a 10th-grader at a rural North Carolina high school, his courses will include 11th-grade chemistry and honors algebra. When he gets home, he will attend classes at his other school -- in cyberspace.

    For many of today's gifted students, honors programs at their own schools aren't challenging enough anymore. Like 15-year-old David, they are signing up for online courses offered by such colleges as Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Missouri. David, for example, will write short fiction for an online class at Duke University.

    These online courses offer classes mainly in advanced math and English, but subjects such as history, philosophy and anatomy also are offered. Programs are available for students of all ages, kindergarten through 12th grade, and some courses for high-school students follow college freshmen curricula.

    Not only do these classes bring in extra revenue, but for universities competing for the nation's brightest students, online programs are a useful tool for identifying and attracting them. Colleges keep track of students in their online programs and later mail them brochures highlighting their undergraduate programs. Participating may even give students a leg up in gaining admission to popular colleges.

    [​IMG]
    Increasingly, high school counselors, especially in rural schools where resources for gifted students often are limited, have begun combing through student records and encouraging top performers to apply for online courses. Some counselors go so far as to submit grades directly to universities, which regularly host regional "talent searches" where students are invited to take standardized tests to see if they qualify for the courses.

    Courses cost from $120 to more than $1,000 each, and typically last a semester, although some stretch out over two semesters.

    Some of the courses offer credit toward high-school graduation requirements, but because local and state educational requirements vary, schools must decide how much credit, if any, a student may receive.

    Online classes typically have 20 to 40 students. They usually meet at least once a week in teacher-moderated online chat rooms, and the participants sometimes speak with one another using headsets and microphones. Homework is downloaded and, once completed, either submitted to the teacher via email or posted to an online message board so that classmates can critique each other's work. Teachers usually assign real textbooks for students to read, although increasingly CD-ROMs and scholarly Web sites also are used.

    Before the Internet, gifted high-school students could attend classes at nearby universities or send away for college-level books and CD-ROMs. Now, the availability of online classes is leading to greater interest in gifted-student programs by students, particularly those in rural areas, says Patricia Wallace, author of "Psychology of the Internet" and director of the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins.

    Stanford began offering classes on floppy discs to about 20 high school students in 1992. This fall, more than 5,000 students are enrolled in the Palo Alto, Calif., university's Education Program for Gifted Youth -- up 15% from last year.

    Enrollment in Johns Hopkins' program has increased 20% since last year: some 5,190 students this fall are taking one or more of the Baltimore school's 46 online classes. The university says interest has been piqued by new technology it is testing, such as an audio link enabling participants from around the world to talk to each other.

    More universities are jumping in. After a pilot program this year, Duke, Durham, N.C., is offering an online program this fall in subjects including philosophy and psychology. The University of Washington plans to begin a pilot program next year. Northwestern University, the University of Missouri and University of Iowa report rising enrollment in their online programs.

    Taking online classes has become "kind of like earning brass rings to get into college," says Robert C. Vaughn, associate director of the Robinson Center for Young Scholars at the University of Washington, in Seattle. The Robinson center offers on-campus summer programs for gifted students, and next year will offer an online program.

    Educational software companies say the gifted-student niche has become one of the fastest growing segments of the "distance learning" market. Apex Learning Inc., Centra Software Inc. and Smarthinking Inc. are selling online course packages, interactive whiteboards and 24-hour online tutoring services to universities with gifted programs.

    To help prevent cheating, some companies archive class sessions so universities can review them if they suspect a parent is completing the work. Parents say cheating is unlikely -- students who take online advanced courses are obsessed with excelling. When 11-year-old math whiz Spencer Tofts applied to the University of Delaware's engineering school, the college suggested he improve his writing skills. Spencer took the advice, and aced an online essay-writing course last year at Johns Hopkins. He will be a freshman at Delaware this fall, majoring in electrical engineering and math.

    Laura Merciez's 10-year-old son, Joseph, who already is a member of the high-IQ club Mensa, spent hours working on interactive math quizzes in his online class at Johns Hopkins. "It's almost an addiction," says Mrs. Merciez, who lives in Springfield, Va.

    Yet these students also benefit in another way: They can meet like-minded people their own age. At his regular school, David says, "nobody really cares about what they're doing." In an online Duke class he took this year, everyone wanted to work, he says.

    "Gifted children do not find affiliation with students in their own brick-and-mortar school on a regular basis," says Andrew Mahoney, a Pittsburgh counselor for gifted students who was a child prodigy in art.

    Teachers in the online programs say they aren't hindered by the lack of a traditional classroom setting. Lyn Fairchild, who teaches in the online gifted program at Duke, says she can easily meet the needs of students via email.

    "When you're teaching face-to-face, you can only talk to one person at a time," she says. "With email, I could cater towards individual needs and I had access to my books and other resources to fully answer questions."
     
  3. Umasekar

    Umasekar New IL'ite

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    Teaching

    Excellent idea, Even I am a math graduate. Anybody is willing to make use of my spare time?



     
  4. sri_july27

    sri_july27 New IL'ite

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    well even iam a math graduate. well have any of u joined in that online tutoring?
     
  5. cakula

    cakula New IL'ite

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    Re: Teaching

    Hi Guys,
    i have been into teaching field back in india , calculus, algebra, coordinate gemontry well versed with these topics ..
    dealt with so many students as in the form of batches for my classes
    if any one are intrested , let me know

    i would love to take up this ...
     
  6. Umasekar

    Umasekar New IL'ite

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    Hi,

    We are all only talking and want someone to take the initiative. Why do not we start an online coaching centre and take math tutions? If the origin is from USA, it will work out well, I think.

    Regards,

    Uma.
     
  7. marialochinvar

    marialochinvar New IL'ite

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    HI INDIRA,
    pls can u tell me how to get job on line tutoring.pls can u sen me tha mail abt this thourhg private message.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 20, 2007
  8. radhikaraj

    radhikaraj New IL'ite

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    Hi, if somebody could give details as to how to tutor online from home and what are the steps to be taken, it would be really helpful.
     
  9. Jey

    Jey Administrator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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  10. prabhabala

    prabhabala Gold IL'ite

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    hi,

    I am a post graduate in maths. I have 5 yrs of teaching experience as a maths

    teacher. Any oppurtunity for further content writing in maths or tutoring in maths

    prabha
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2007

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