The ASSET team is proposing to make available to the teaching community a service called the Teacher Help-Line.

Through this service, the teachers would be able to email their queries to a group of senior educationists and researchers from the ASSET team and get responses from them within a stipulated period. The help-line would document specific questions and their responses so that an FAQ compilation could be maintained for the benefit of other teachers who would have similar questions.

"The idea of the helpline is that teachers can ask for advice/ tips by simply sending an email, and receive specific and practical suggestions to the challenges they are facing within 2-3 days from a team of experts who are updated on research and also have teaching experience." said Vishnuteerth Agnihotri, Vice President Test Development.

The suggestions and ideas shared by the experts are likely to be very different from what is regularly found in teacher support materials. The objective is only to support the teaching staff by sharing key insights based on research literature. A teacher is the best person to decide how to teach her class, based on these insights. The hope is that soon an active teacher community will be formed on the internet, and the primary mode of learning will be by sharing ideas and tips with each other - rather than a one-way 'teaching' of teachers by experts. This service is being offered to all participating schools participating in ASSET in 2008. Queries can be sent to ts@ei-india.com