Preparing for GRE? Mobile comes to the rescue

: Move over e-learning. Latest buzzword doing the rounds in academic circles is m-learning.

Especially if the US is your dream destination for higher studies. A maze of learning options crowd the market, from coaching classes to prepare-yourself learning kits to downloadable digital material.

Help is now at hand, courtesy Valued Epidemics Pvt Ltd (VEPL), a company set up by two entrepreneurs with stints at Nokia and Motorola. They have devised an innovative learning programme to help students prepare for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), through the humble mobile phone. Especially, for techies, it appears to be a stress-free learning with cognition happening through a mobile.

VEPL has launched an adaptive interactive learning application for GRE aspirants under the brand name Wizdom.com. The package can be accessed through GPRS-enabled mobile phones and can also be seamlessly integrated to internet-enabled PCs and personal data assistants (PDAs). Anand Kannan, Yogish Lavanis and Darini Raman set up VEPL in September 2004.

GRE is an admission requirement for many graduate schools in English speaking countries, especially in the US. It is a standardised test intended to measure the verbal and quantitative skills of graduates, regardless of their area of specialisation. It is created and administered by the educational testing service. On an average, about 50,000 students from across the country take the GRE examination.

“Having set the platform in place, we are also looking at extending the same to GMAT, SAT and TOEFL exams too,’’ says Kannan. He adds that the technology aims to exploit the full power of GPRS, thus seeking to overcome physical limitations. The next move, he says is to spread the technology for the government-sponsored rural education programmes. In all probabilities, the technology can be extended with a GPRS-enabled set to a learner in a remote village.

When asked about competition, Kannan says that at present, there is none in the world for GRE with this kind of service. “The technology for adaptive learning is first of its kind in the world and we have filed a patent for the same,’’ he informs. Going forward, VEPL is talking to venture capitalists for the series A or first round funding which is expected to happen soon.

Wizdom.com comes in three packages namely the Verbal Master, Complete GRE (verbal and analytical training) and GRE Fast Track. While Verbal Master and Complete GRE are structured into 60 and 110 one-hour sessions, Fast Track is designed as a three-week programme for...