‘Challenge’ contest for better benchmarking

Posted by TCYonline.com on August 7, 2008

NEW DELHI, Aug. 6 – Fighting against the odds and fighting your inner self may be the two sides of a same coin, but challenging others for a better benchmarking is altogether a different ballgame a modern Indian student would love to play.

Following this ‘play to learn’ concept, and encouraged by the ‘stupendous’ success of its ‘Challenge Zone’, TCYonline.com recently launched a unique free contest for competitors. The contest will be a student vs student, and student vs computer.

Attractive prizes up for grabs are a Nokia mobile, an MP3 player and a Titan watch. Some consolation prizes also await the winners of this month-long contest, to be announced in the first week of next month. The winners will be picked up on the basis of select criteria.

“The contest, open to all age-groups, covers all course categories ranging from Class IX to post-graduation, including some elite competitive exams. Entry to the contest is absolutely FREE” , according to TCYonline.com IT Manager Rakesh Kumar.

“More you play, more you win. We want parents and teachers to encourage their children to take part in this exciting contest. It will help create more interest in their studies which in turn will improve their rankings.”

It is noteworthy that on an average about 1000 students are participating in the Challenge Zone daily. Students can challenge nationwide and benchmark their performance against anybody, anywhere and anytime.

The idea behind this initiative is to boost student-benchmarking through a thrilling learning exercise. Through this, students compete simultaneously with one another while having the great feeling of playing a game.

Recently, another feature has been added to the Challenge. Under this ‘Challenge a computer’, a student can play against the computer whenever he wishes. In this he has a choice of varying his difficulty levels.

This online unique competition puts a student on a sound pedestal, in full cruise-control. Now he can even choose to play a host. He can either ‘throw’ an on-the-spot challenge or schedule it at a later convenient time. Forming internet groups and scoring over each other is all set to be the in-thing in the Indian education arena. This Challenge Zone is just a beautiful beginning towards TCYonline.com’s objective of giving a new meaning to student-benchmarking in India.

The beauty of this whole testing exercise is that a student can keep track of his performance (with onscreen score display) by controlling his speed and accuracy. This is akin to keeping a tab on your running-mate.

Even inviting other students to the site, who are not online at that time, is as simple as sending a simple SMS. Students with the same goal can compete with each other. The benefits of this ‘challenge’ are many which include choice of better peers, better test, better time and better speed.

At the end of the test all the participants, including the host, will be able to see their scores on a scoreboard which will give them an idea as to where they stand and in what areas they have to improve upon. This testing tool may also shatter many of their false hopes that they might have developed during their course preparation.