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Reach And Teach : Adobe creative challenge
We were a four designers curious to learn, grow & make a difference through design as we come together and collaborate on this unique challenge sponsored by Adobe and hosted by IBM iX.
Date : August 2021 (During Covid19 pandemic in India)
Duration of work: 10days
My role: I mainly worked on primary research, findings and insight part.
Rest of the work in this case study is collaborative work.
Vidya
UX Designer
Gaurav
Visual Designer
Supratim
Visual Designer
Rohan
UX Designer
The Challenge
"How might we enable educators in better engaging with students
in a remote learning set-up which varies from
high to low-end technology accessibility and awareness?"
We found ourselves in different corners of India trying to solve a problem that is prevalent across the world during pandemic.
Juggling between our projects we ensured to find sometime everyday as a group to concentrate on the challenge which required a good solution, which is capable of scaling up and becoming an ecosystem.
We had a tight timeline to work with… so how did we go about it?
How it started?
How we went about it…
We connected on a daily basis via webex to share our progress - be it on research, insights or analysis we ensured there was proper knowledge sharing and distribution of work within the team at all times, we each diverged and divided our work, trying to understand different sectors & personas (Rural/ Urban/ Teachers & students alike)
Here’s how we planned our week:
10
hrs
2
hrs
2
hrs
2
hrs
1
hr
16
hrs
Research
Insights
Personas
Ideation
Prioritizing
ideas
Final solution
and
Prototype
Once the plan was set… here is the approach how we executed it?
Given our diverse locations and timings, we tried to use EDT framework.
Discover
- Primary research
- Secondary research
- Context study
- Observations
Ideate
- Ideation
- Prioritizing ideas
Develop
- Prototyping
Present
- Final presentation
Discovery
We started our research with diverging from “Rural” to “Urban” and 4 main variety of target groups. We talked to students, parents and teachers to understand their point of view, their pain points, needs and also problem with existing solutions according to their context.
Research methods used
- Primary research
- Secondary research
- Context study
- Observations
Research Plan
Purpose
Method
Participants
The purpose of this is to find how educators and students are engaging in remote learning set up during this pandemic. What are the difficulties they are facing and when they are facing.
We will conduct "Primary research" and "Secondary research". We will visit nearby schools to learn by observing and talking to educators about their current set up how they are delivering everyday lessons to students. And will also talk and observe few student in our contacts to learn how they are learning.
Kid’s Parent from urban
Kids from Urban
Educators from
rural government schools
Kids from Rural
6 to 10 year old
Locations
Location 1: Banantikodi village, Belgaum - Karnataka, India
Location 2: Bangalore urban, Banglore - Karnataka, Indian
Location 3: - Shillong, Meghalaya, India
Location 4: Remote interviews
Consent
Will take permission from school authority before entering their premises and assure that images, and all kind of information will be utilized only for project and not for anything else. And any sort of personal information will be kept confidential.
Time planning
3 to 4 days
Stories
Explorations of existing solutions
Findings
Insights
Primary Research Insights (Rural)
Currently there is no all-in-one solution for school students for studying.
Students and teachers need to rely on multiple modes of communication For example: WhatsApp, YouTube links for class wise recorded videos, and few schools in rural uses “Teach-mint app” and on certain TV channels classes are running.
Students are unable to join live classes and unable to access recorded learning videos at their study time because, lack of mobile devices, poor mobile data connection and phone signal.
Students between 1st to 5th standard needs their parents help because current solutions are not designed for them.
For example : Multi mode channels usage watsapp, YouTube, and other apps.
Due to distributed class material these student unable to remember what to study.
Educators are lack motivation since only few students able to join the live classes.
Educators are unable to keep track of attendance, student’s total head count in class remotely because few students do not have any mode of communication.
Primary Research Insights (Urban)
Parents feel they are more pressurized than educators since students are studying from home whereas during non-remote learning students used to go to school and educators used to take care of students for 6 to 8 hours in school.
Student’s attention span towards online lectures are reduced because screen time is increased and monotonous way of learning. They feel heavy on content part
Since school and tuition both are running remotely in current solution , students feel that it doesn’t make sense they to attend tuition classes. And they would rather prefer self study.
Since educators handling student’s activities remotely its becoming impossible for them to monitor the students in their during online classes, studies, attendance.
Secondary Research Insights
6% of the students found online classes burdensome and 24% found them difficult.
27% of the students mentioned the non-availability of smartphones and laptops, as per the survey. (Resource forgot add)
Kids with highly involved parents had enhanced social functioning and declines in problem behaviors
After maths, science was the most difficult to grasp online,
Ideation
Ideation
Prioritized Ideas
"Celebrating milestones and achievements of students."
"Augmented Reality/ VR that can enable the kids to engage in real
time with their product/ solution (google/ one football)"
"Introducing math hunt and different DIY techniques to keep the students engaged"
"Having quizzes and KBC format and 5 minutes physical activity dispersed between long theory sessions."
"Virtual backgrounds and AI filters that aide in engaging sessions."
Solution
REACH&TEACH Framework
The R&T framework is set of solutions for better engagement and reach which educators can use to drive better engagement with students, both high & low technology ends. The framework includes two solutions, which are provided in the form of a simple application. The features which can be incorporated into existing solutions as well. In areas where the application is not accessible due to network or device capability, the framework establishes some solutions for engagement at that particular level.
1. Application: Drive Engagement through the app
2. Systems dealing with accessibility: Drive Engagement through other mediums
1. Application: Drive Engagement through the app
The application is a responsive native app, working both on the mobile and the web. Responsive, direct and simple to use.
Keep it simple
Simple and direct interface, just time table and join, auto reminders, no settings, big buttons, minimal parents involvement
Simple Shortcut buttons beside the screen clearly saying ," Ask a Question"
Customize
Celebrating student birthdays by adding a filter
Break-Out the Boredom:
Breakout sessions - Setup scenarios like field/
auditorium/ science labs/ computer labs so kids feel close to the real setup
Breakout Sessions designed using workflows, designed by teachers on the platform itself,
like scavenger hunt,
Quizzes (KBC format), 5 min Physical activity - dispersed in the middle of theory sessions.
AI DRIVEN
Reach to the quiet ones.
AI Recognises who has answered and who hasn’t throughout the day across all subjects, notify the teacher according to queue, teacher can ask.
AR DRIVEN
2. Systems dealing with accessibility:
Drive Engagement through other mediums
Engage with students in low connectivity
Bluetooth pairing file sharing. One student with internet gets note, every other student in the area can get via Bluetooth file sharing bridge, or a Mesh network. Distribution of materials notes, lecture take place. (Needs training)
Use SMS to get audio books as a call.
Welcome message ->
Reply with 1 for English subject audio as a call ->
Reply with chapter number->
Audio of chapter as call.
Engage with students in low-end devices:
1. Communication activities through SMS (can work in cheapest of phones) - , Mailing or Posting the answers altogether through the week.
2. Use SMS to listen to the audio of the whole lecture giving my teacher as a call.
Reach & Teach (R&T) is framework that can be used across many schools and colleges, the framework can be expanded into various approaches.
Features incorporated within R&T offer better engagement & are also usable with the existing solutions across the market.
What it does right now is set the ball rolling by reaching remote areas and bringing our end users closer to an engaging education platform.
We would like to thank IBM iX team and the Adobe team for giving us this opportunity to come up with a holistic solution towards a problem that is affecting millions across the globe.
We look forward to a better future!
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