Catalyzing the Ecosystem Around Mobile Learning for Development

Matthew KamAssistant Professor

Carnegie Mellon UniversityHuman-Computer Interaction Institute

December 9, 2010 (USAID)

Outline

• Human Development Lab @ Carnegie Mellon

• Lessons from MILLEE– Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging

Economies

• mLearning: A Platform for Educational Opportunities at the Base of the Pyramid. Report by GSMA Development Fund, November 2010. (Foreword by Queen Rania al Abdullah of Jordan)

• Hands-on demo

Human Development Lab @ CMU• Research how people learn under “developing

regions” conditions– Differences due to exposure to print, formal schooling, etc.– Educational games on low-cost devices, literacy and

second language learning, women’s empowerment

• Multidisciplinary research group– Computer science– Human-computer interaction– Reading literacy– Second language acquisition– Speech and language technologies– Videogame design

International Collaborators

Sesame WorkshopChinese Academy of Sciences

ASSET India FoundationByrraju FoundationDhirubhai Ambani Institute of ICTIIIT HyderabadNaandi FoundationSuraksha

University of Nairobi

Current and previous funders: •MacArthur Foundation•Microsoft•National Science Foundation•Nokia•Qualcomm•Verizon

Selected Media Appearances

• Cell Phone: The Ring Heard Around the World.In Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television documentary,

aired on April 3 and June 5, 2008.http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/cellphones/india.html

• India’s Cell Phone Tutors.In ABC News, aired on June 16, 2009.http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7854956

• Angrezi, the Phoney Way. In Times of India, December 5, 2009.

• In Rural India, Learning English via Cellphone. In The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2009.

Opportunities (GSMA Report)

• Learning on the go

• Complementary

• Inclusive

* % of total time spent at a particular location

Semester-Length Pilots [in IEEE/ACM ICTD 2009, ACM CHI 2010 – Best Paper Honorable Mention]

• Spring 2008

– Classroom pilot

– Post-test improvements on spelling (p = 0.007, σ = 3.3)

• Spring 2009

– Out-of-school pilot

– On average, participants covered 46 new words over 16 weeks without adult supervision

Lesson #1• The educational model is part of the last-mile

Instructional Design Methodology [in ACM CHI 2007]

• Combined theory and practice

• Theory: applied latest education research on second language acquisition and reading literacy acquisition

• Practice: reviewed >35 commercial language learning applications

– Avoid reinventing the wheel by reusing best practices in existing applications as starting point to inform instructional design

Lesson #2• Formative testing becomes even more crucial when

designing for new cultural contexts

• More than 3 rounds per design

10

Videogame Design Methodology[in ACM CHI 2009 – Best Paper Honorable Mention]

• Initial game designs non-intuitive to rural children

– Initial game designs contained Western biases, did not match rural children’s understanding about games

• Studied 28 traditional Indian village games

– Analyzed how these 28 games differed from contemporary Western videogames

– Took these differences into account in subsequent game designs

versus

Analysis: Differences in Games

• Identified 37 non-trivial differences

– Difficulty based on sub-goals

– Resource management

– Skill acquisition

– Score keeping

– Rituals associated with space

– Inter-team interactions

Sample Screenshots

Lesson 3• Intervention design is equally, if not more,

important than intervention evaluation

Bridge Curriculum• Average rural child lags three years behind urban,

middle-class counterpart

• Bridge curriculum aims to address this gap

– Targets literacy competencies that are prerequisites for advanced literacy skills, based on Chall’s stages of reading development (1983)

• Differs from commercial software for early literacy

– Has to consider foundational skills e.g. “concept of print” that children with good access to schools already have

• MILLEE content is based on this bridge curriculum

Competencies in Bridge Curriculum

• Currently target these early literacy skills (Chall, 1984)

– Phonological + orthographic awareness

– Oral vocabulary knowledge

– Phonetic decoding

– Word identification (including fluency)

– Spelling

– Lexical inferencing

– Morphological awareness

– Sentence-level reading comprehension

• 65% of core bridge curriculum is applicable to any community worldwide, 35% needs local adaptation

100 lesson plans for 100 school days (i.e. one entire academic year)

*competencies in red have been completed, competencies in black are those we are fund-raising to complete

Lesson #4• mLearning is still about curriculum development

and content development, not just application development

Challenges (GSMA Report)• “The educationists, academics and researchers

have a greater understanding on what mLearning methods are most effective, but not necessarily the experience to transform them into sustainable or commercial projects”

• Economic sustainability– Role of different parties in ecosystem– Scalability vs. locally relevant content

• Evidence for learning benefits– Compare with traditional methods, but have to

take curriculum into account– What are the educational models?

Demo MILLEE ESL Literacy Mobile Games

Phonological awareness (specifically, auditory discrimination)

Orthographic awareness (specifically, letter-sound correspondence)

Oral vocabulary knowledge

Word reading and identification fluency

Needs and Problem Statement

• Fluency in “power language”e.g. English

• Public schools in developingregions (e.g. India) are not succeeding

• 101 million primary school-age children do not attend school– 36 million in South-Asia

– 39 million in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Cellphones can make education more accessible through out-of-school environments

– User can learn anytime, anywhere without disrupting work

• Game-like exercises for enjoyable learning experience

Solution Overview

Project Timeline

• 10 rounds of fieldwork, >12 months total in India

• Human-centered design process with 100 children

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Needs ass

essment (

village +

slums)

Exploratory st

udy

(slums)

Exploratory st

udy

(village)

Feasib

ility st

udy

(slums)

Feasib

ility st

udy

(village)

More ite

ratio

ns +

testingClass

room st

udy

2009

Out-of-s

chool s

tudy

Controlle

d study

2010

Improving Gender Equality

• 70% of 130 million out-of-school youth are girls (United Nations Foundation)

• 5-stage model of women empowerment

• Based on 15-week field research in India– Interviewed 47 staff from non-government organizations

(each NGO impacts ~500 poor women)– Interviewed 35 low-income rural and urban slums women– Obtained stakeholder input on 7 proof-of-concept prototypes

Scaling Up in India and Beyond• Develop commercial-quality literacy learning games

for widespread deployment

• Partnership development with

– Cellphone manufacturers

– Wireless carriers

– Third-party content developers

– Education service providers , including government

– Non-government organizations