shikkhok - isif asia · oursoluon+ • develop!a highlylocalized!mooc!with!a...
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Shikkhok.com An Altruist-‐built, Ultra-‐Cheap Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Pla:orm Building an Open Content EducaAon site for Rural South
Asian Students
Mashiur Rahman Scien&st
NaAonal University of Singapore and co-‐founder – The Shikkhok.com project
www.shikkhok.com
How to change the world with li5le investment?
Low-‐income and rural students in South Asia with limited knowledge of English do not have access to quality educaAon. How can we provide top-‐quality educa=on at a very low cost to the millions of students in rural Bangladesh and India?
Our solu=on
• Develop a highly localized MOOC with a hybrid Internet-‐non Internet-‐based disseminaAon model
• Use the crowdsourcing model for both content development, deployment, and markeAng, spending as li5le as possible
Who we are? Educators: Volunteers spread all around the world who are passionate about sharing their knowledge in naAve languages
Students: Underprivileged students facing language and technological barriers
• Bengali is the 4th largest language in terms of naAve speakers (250-‐300 million speakers in Bangladesh and India)
• Students in rural areas oXen do not have access to quality teachers, books, or good schools.
• Higher educaAon opportuniAes and content is scarce in Bangladesh and India – Only 50,000 opening in Bangladeshi universiAes and colleges for incoming freshmen, while there are more than 300,000 eligible students
– Many students drop out due to lack of cheap higher educaAon opportuniAes or extreme poverty
Background
Background: Informa=on Technology to the rescue …
• While regular compuAng devices are not common/affordable in rural areas, Mobile phones and hence Mobile internet have significantly high penetraAon in Bangladesh, even in rural areas (100 million mobile subscribers as of early 2013, in a 160 million populaAon)
• A mobile-‐opAmized Bengali language MOOC can serve as an alternaAve educaAon pla:orm for rural and non-‐tradiAonal students
• And an innovaAve non-‐Internet based delivery mechanism can allow rural students with no internet access to get high quality educaAon
Why reinvent the wheel? Because, ExisAng MOOCs are not enough
• Coursera.com has 208 courses, ALL provided in English language • The Khan Academy’s excellent online educaAonal videos are also in
English • Unfortunately, Bengali translaAon of Khan Academy’s videos are not
popular among the students in Bangladesh and India (most video lessons have an average of only 100-‐120 views in 1 year. Example: hep://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL58BD1F917975C9BE).
• Anecdotal reasons include mismatch between the lessons and academic syllabus in Bangladesh/India, cultural mismatch/”lost in translaAon”/arAficial and literal translaAon – As a comparison, Shikkhok.com’s Culinary arts course videos received an average of 300+ views within 1
week of publicaAon (heps://vimeo.com/user14642276/videos/sort:plays/format:thumbnail)
Project Requirements • EducaAon medium must be in Bengali
• Content must be highly op=mized for mobile phone browsers with limited and slow data plans
• Lessons must be short, include both text and mulAmedia, and have easy-‐to-‐use student registraAon, feedback, and evaluaAon schemes
• Must be highly-‐available, low access Ames even in Bangladesh and India
• Must be designed, delivered, and publicized at a very low cost, and provided to students for free
• Must not depend only on the Internet to deliver content.
Iden=fying the Challenges
Cost: Popular MOOCs such as Coursera.com have millions of dollars in venture capital funding. – Coursera itself has $22 million funding – Such funding is unlikely for educaAng rural students in Bangladesh and India
– MarkeAng/adverAsing such a site to the masses is also expensive.
Iden=fying the Challenges?
• Overcoming the language barrier: Students with limited English language proficiency cannot uAlize exisAng MOOCs such as edX, udacity, or Coursera, so how do we ensure maximum impact for such students?
• Finding teachers: How to gather teachers with the right experAse and technical know-‐how?
• Reaching stakeholders: How to publicize and deploy content to the intended audience?
The Shikkhok SoluAon
• Explore Human Computer Interac=on principles and methods to effecAvely reach the rural students
• Take extreme penny-‐pinching measures to develop the pla:orm at a low cost
• Use social media marke=ng strategies to publicize the service to the target audience
• UAlize non-‐Internet based supply chains to deliver content to the rural students
Design Strategies
Design – Use an iteraAve model for creaAng the most effecAve user interface which has to be mobile friendly, less-‐graphics intensive, and suitable for both smart and non-‐smart cell-‐phone browsing – Follow a User Centric Design methodology by constantly evaluaAng user responses to lessons and modifying teaching tools accordingly
Design Strategies
Development – Use rapid prototyping and design methods to develop courses (lessons and lectures augmented per user feedback and view counts) – Use ultra-‐low cost and open source tools in a crowdsourced model – Use Social Media markeAng for free, leverage the power of cloud to distribute content
Design Strategies
EvaluaAon: – For evaluaAon of lecture style and content, measure user responsiveness and aeenAon span for each lecture (use webpage stats to calculate how long users stayed at each lecture page, how many users came back to view further lectures, i.e. user retenAon) – Measure user engagement by correlaAng lecture views with parAcipaAon in quizzes associated with lectures
(Ultra-‐cheaply) Designing Shikkhok.com
• Over summer 2012, we rapidly developed Shikkhok.com pla:orm
• Total development cost: only US $15.00 • Total number of registered students (first 6 months) = 20,000
• That is, cost per registered student = US $0.00075 only!
• Total number of courses designed = 32 • 4500 lecture views per day, from 3000 unique visitors
(Ultra-‐cheaply) Designing Shikkhok.com
• To minimize development costs – – Adapted open source CMS (Wordpress) to provide authoring pla:orm
– Mobile-‐opAmized front end – Host all media/videos on free online repositories such as Youtube, Dropbox, imgur
– Use Google forms and embedded scripts to automate user registraAon and MCQ quiz processing
• Cost: Domain name: $5/year, 100 MB low-‐cost host: $10/year (Development (mostly wordpress theme tweaking) done by one volunteer for free)
(Ultra-‐cheaply) Designing Shikkhok.com
Site design and graphics: Crowdsourced via Social network contacts (received 5 submission from a volunteer within a few hours of request on Facebook)
Insight: Social Media is extremely effec=ve GeUng content and volunteers
To gather a team of volunteer teachers: – I posted a request on Facebook – 10 volunteers signed up in 1 day – Two courses were developed by day 2 – By week 2, 5 courses were running – By week 8, 15 courses were started – By month 8, 25 courses running, with 5 courses completed
Design principles and strategies for online educa=on via a mobile phone
Plain text (not mulAmedia) is sAll the king of content – Users of mobile phones have to pay per-‐KB, so less images is beeer
– For videos, youtube based low-‐res streams and downloadable 3gp formats work the best
Reaching rural students: An Innova=ve Distribu=on Channel
• A major challenge was to create a non-‐Internet based distribu=on channel to reach rural students without Internet access
• Solu=on: Develop innovaAve distribuAon channels.
Innova=ve Distribu=on Channels: Using exis=ng Social Interac=ons
Our Approach: Approach 1:
• Create short 3gp version videos; put a collecAon of courses on USB sAcks, give out to phone vendors/shops in rural bazaars.
• Students visiAng the bazaars can load the videos on their phones for free or for a nominal fee (charged by the vendors, not us)
• (We found this model to be very useful, as rural bazaar phone shops are already used as a distribuAon hub for music videos/songs, and people are used to going there to load videos on their phones)
Innova=ve Distribu=on Channels: Cheap compute boards for Shikkhok Kits
Approach II – Use ultra-‐cheap Raspberry PI computers (Each Pi costs only $35)
– We put a large number of courses on SD cards on each PI, add a donated keyboard, mouse, and ship this to rural schools. (No internet needed, we preload everything on the SD cards, and make a kiosk-‐like interface easy for even non-‐computer users)
– The schools can hook the Pis directly with regular TVs, and have the video lectures delivered to students
Solu=ons -‐ User engagement strategies that work …
To engage users in easy discussion, integraAon with exisAng social networks is the best strategy:
– Using wordpress naAve commenAng: about 2/3 comments per lecture
– Using Facebook comments: at least 30 “like” and 5-‐10 comments, quesAons per lecture
Solu=ons -‐ Marke=ng strategies: u=lizing social media
Social media based “free” markeAng campaigns worked very well
• Did not use regular adverAsements, rather used Facebook and Twieer to publicize Shikkhok • Got 3000 fans on its Facebook page within a few days • Each lecture announcement is viewed approx. by 4200 people within one hour or so (stats via FB Insight) • Total fans as of May 1, 2013: 10,500
What we have achieved We demonstrated that localized strategies work beeer than globalized universal MOOCs (local language based and cultural context-‐aware content is more effecAve)
• E.g., Unlike Khan Academy Bangla, we did not translate exisAng MOOCs, rather developed localized content from scratch, which turned out to be more useful to students. (our video lectures viewed many Ames more than the translated content)
What we have achieved • We developed a set of tried-‐and-‐tested design principles for
educaAonal content delivery over mobile internet to rural students • Evaluated various site design and lecture content to determine the best possible strategy and content formats that serve the mobile-‐internet-‐using rural students
What we have achieved • Our user centric design and constant feedback/evaluaAon loops allowed us to detect strategies that work (mobile opAmized video, Facebook IntegraAon) and that do not work (e.g. live sessions with teachers using Google HangOut)
• Constant user engagement strategy allowed us to improve our lecture content (lectures with lower user retenAon/aeenAon span are re-‐wrieen/developed)
What we have achieved: A micro-‐lesson model that YOU can use
Our biggest contribuAon is the generalized set of design and evaluaAon principles for the development of a localized micro-‐lesson model that can be effecAvely used by e-‐learning systems in other languages in other parts of the developing world.
Results – some numbers …
• Since it’s start on August 1, 2012, Shikkhok.com has – 32 online courses on diverse topics such as BioinformaAcs, Neuroscience, Computer Programming, Finance 101, Calculus, Cloud CompuAng, Cancer Nanotechnology
– Total number of students registered for all courses: 20,000 (actual student count larger since registraAon isn’t mandatory) • The Computer Security101 course alone has 2000 registered students
– Total number of quizzes/tests taken: 30,000
Results – some numbers …
• Total unique visitor count in in 8 months: 369,108
• Total lecture views in 8 months: 1.1 million • 80% visitors are from rural Bangladesh, using mobile phone browsers
• Shikkhok.com is gevng 2000-‐3000 unique visitors a day
Visitor data as for 2012 (Q3, Q4) and 2013 (Q1, and ongoing Q2)
Summary: What did we learn from Shikkhok.com?
• Lesson 1: It is possible to design successful MOOC e-‐learning sites at ultra-‐cheap cost via an altruisAc volunteer model (Shikkhok cost only $15 to develop and deploy compared to $22 million for Coursera)
• Lesson 2: AeenAon to HCI design principles such as user centric design can allow beeer retenAon of users and improved aeenAon to content
• Lesson 3: To reach rural students, focus should be more on non-‐Internet based textual content designed for low-‐bandwidth mobile phone browsers
• Lesson 4: Localized, naAve language educaAon is more successful than the one-‐course-‐fits-‐all approach by many well-‐known MOOC sites
To view Shikkhok.com in acAon • Please visit: hep://www.shikkhok.com • Media coverage: Front page news in 10 top Bangladeshi newspapers,
including: – Daily Kaler Kantho: hep://bit.ly/Rj5Sym – Daily Prothom Alo: hep://www.prothom-‐alo.com/detail/date/2012-‐09-‐14/news/289111
– Daily Sun (English): hep://daily-‐sun.com/details_Virtual-‐school-‐wins-‐google-‐award_420_1_19_1_2.html
– Covered by Deutsche-‐Welle – the German InternaAonal Radio’s Bengali language world service hep://bit.ly/WXjsyP
Thank You!
QuesAons??