IM Dr Math: Using Instant Messaging in a Mathematics Tutoring Project

Instant messaging (IM) over cell phones is extremely popular in South Africa. A local South African company, MXit, provides a free cell phone based application, also called MXit, which allows participants to use IM protocols over cell phones to communicate using General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). At the time of writing this paper, MXit had nearly 5 million users in South Africa and approximately 45% of these users are teenagers. This paper describes a project where teenagers could get help with their mathematics homework over MXit on their cell phones in the afternoons after school. The service was offered in both English as "Dr Math" and in Afrikaans as "Dr Wisk". A local university provided volunteers from their engineering department to act as tutors for the services. This paper covers the technical aspects of how we set up a tutoring service using IM over cell phones as well as the administration required for such services and some of the unexpected social aspects of the service.