A 16-year old female student based in Doha has developed a unique and interactive website aimed at promoting and giving access to education free of charge.
“In a gist, my website - https://tutorsandstudents.com - gives students like myself an opportunity to be a mentor and a tutor to students who need academic guidance,” the founder of the website, Priyanka Bansal, told Gulf Times.


 Priyanka Bansal

The goal, she said, is to offer services and courses that promote student success in a collaborative and inclusive environment: Peer-to-peer interactions, supported by the site, centre on the growth and development of the learner and the peer educator.
Bansal, a grade 11 student of DPS Modern Indian School, Doha, noted that such platform helps increase the knowledge and academic independence of the participants.
“The ultimate goal of the website is to empower students as they develop resiliency and successful habits in their fields of study and beyond. It has been designed to help students by their peers who are A graders (GPA 3.7 and above) in all subjects and are capable of assisting the students free of charge.
“These tutors support the students in their free time as part of their community services to society. This also helps the students grow into thoughtful and caring individuals who can be upstanding pillars of society,” she added.
According to Bansal, the website received positive feedbacks from student users, vouching for its reliability and has been supporting them based on the topic or course they have selected.
A student named Veda Tripathi lauded her Computer Science teacher saying: “Vanishka did a very good job is clearing the concepts on qbasic. Tutors in the class are very competitive and they know the subject well. This is very helpful for kids and a must-try for all students.”
Two students – Pranshu and Mohamed Syed – said their Mathematics class was great and helpful while student Shubhang Srinivasakumar noted that everything in the Physics class was proper. Meanwhile, Savaaa, an 11th-grade student, said: “I never knew that physics could be so easy to understand.”
As participants, Bansal said students will have the opportunity to gain one-on-one attention during the sessions, improve academically, develop positive learning habits, get self-motivated for independent learning, enhance self-esteem, and create a stress-free workspace.
Student tutors, meanwhile, can strengthen their knowledge in subject comprehension, polish their communication skills, help them gain problem-solving skills, and improve their organisational skills. They can also get a chance to earn a certificate for community services to help them apply for universities abroad.
“The purpose of tutoring is to help students help themselves or to assist or guide them to the point at which they become independent learners, and thus no longer need a tutor,” Bansal said.
She added that many of the students in Doha who previously registered and had tried the programme are requesting for more courses.
“This proves that they are happy with the service and so far we have more than 50 students registered in one month,” Bansal said.
About what inspired her to create and develop the website, she said it started when she couldn’t find online tutoring opportunities, “where I could teach students of my age and those who are younger than me, because I knew I was capable of that and somehow wanted to give back to society”.
Felt upset and unable to find a platform that will fulfill her requirements, Bansal said her mother suggested in a casual manner: “Why don’t you just make your own solution, then?"
After a series of brainstorming with her mother, Bansal, with the help of her cousin decided to put up the website, and “the rest is history.”
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