Agami’s edutech solution for classrooms in Bangladesh

Despite important progress in education in Bangladesh, achieving good educational outcomes has been difficult as evidenced in student assessments. Bangladesh needs to approach improving education with a sense of urgency as competition gets fierce with other low-wage countries developing capacity and robotics and artificial intelligence replacing low-skill labor. In this backdrop of “Quality Education Challenge” and urgency to find effective solutions, Agami’s approach is to provide high quality digital lessons aligned with Bangladesh curricula that can be used in classrooms leveraging existing infrastructure such as multimedia classrooms and/or computer labs, regardless of  internet connectivity. The availability of supplementary learning/teaching resources are influential factors in encouraging the use of active and creative learning methods which result in improved learning. This is exactly what Agami aims to provide. 

A quality education will prepare the next generation of Bangladesh workers to compete successfully in the global economy.

The lack of quality education is a critical problem facing Bangladesh today. The National Student Assessment Report of 2015 states that only 41% of grade 3 students perform at or above grade level in Math and for Bangla it is 65%. Also, the fact that students are not learning effectively in schools often contributes to the lack of motivation to remain in schools, resulting in high drop-out rates (1/5 by grade 5, half by grade 10 and 2/3 by grade 12). 

This impacts basic numeracy and literacy skills of 27+ million children enrolled in schools, and ultimately diminishes their global competitiveness as they enter the workforce. Data show only 28% of Bangladeshi workers have intermediate or higher level education, while 70% of workers in Vietnam, one of Bangladesh’s main competitors, have the same.

The major contributing factor to this crisis is lack of skilled and equipped teachers. 250,000+ teachers lack access to professional training. Research suggests availability of supplementary learning/teaching resources are influential factors in encouraging teachers to use active and creative learning methods which result in improved learning. This is exactly what Agami aims to provide along with training to teachers to effectively use them in classrooms.

There are 134,147 primary and 20,465 secondary schools in Bangladesh with 27+ million children enrolled. Our solution is designed for use in schools by teachers and students leveraging existing infrastructure such as multimedia classrooms and/or computer labs. 

To understand classroom practices and readiness to incorporate technology in classrooms, we have been introducing early versions of our solution in schools since 2016. We have worked with 25+ schools – training teachers, installing the solution and monitoring classroom use. Through this work, we identified opportunities for improvement, such as creating local lessons to make instructions fully consistent with local curricula and using appropriate technology to provide these lessons to classrooms without internet connectivity. With these, the potential for scaling up the impact in improving education quality has increased dramatically. 

100% of secondary schools have at least one multimedia classroom, and primary schools are catching up. Unfortunately, a large percentage of these remain unused due to lack of material. Our classroom-friendly and curriculum-friendly solution successfully addresses this need. 

Finally, teachers often  lack subject-based training and proficiency, which they can address themselves by using the content from our solution for self-learning, as has been reported by the teachers we serve.

Agami’s curriculum-friendly and classroom-friendly solution is designed to be used in multimedia classrooms and/or computer labs in schools in Bangladesh to deliver quality education. The solution consists of the following components:

1. Digital localized and aligned content package: This education content package includes video lessons, interactive exercises and lesson plans aligned with the Bangladesh School Curricula.  Agami first started digital content creation in 2011 with the translation of over 2,000 Khan Academy videos in Bangla, now available on Khan Academy Bangla website (bn.khanacademy.org) and YouTube channel. In addition, Agami started creating its own Khan Academy-style videos based on Bangladesh curriculum and have so far produced over 150 such videos and corresponding exercises. These lessons are designed to encourage interactivity with students, their curiosity, and critical thinking, while keeping in mind their pedagogical use by teachers in classrooms. In 2020 to 2021, we plan to complete the development of Math, Bangla, English, Science and ICT content for grades 1 to 8. Contents for grades 9 – 12 will be developed in later phases. 

2. Delivery of content without Internet connectivity:  Agami is using an open source offline education platform called Kolibri (www.learningequality.org/kolibri) to curate and distribute the developed content in schools. Kolibri, developed by Learning Equality, is specially designed for use in low resource communities without Internet connectivity. Existing infrastructure in schools such as multimedia classrooms can be used effectively by teachers to use the content on Kolibri. Kolibri is already in use in more than 20 schools in Bangladesh with support from Agami. These include primary and secondary schools in and outside of Dhaka, including cadet colleges. Learning Equality is providing the funding to supplement the hardware for these schools, so this solution would leverage that existing investment.

3. Teacher training: Agami provides training to teachers on how to to blend Kolibri and its content for instruction in multimedia classrooms. In addition to content, Kolibri includes various analytical tools to support  teachers in personalized and differentiated learning, and other school officials to track overall student usage and learning.   

4. Implementation support: Agami installs Kolibri with grade appropriate content on school computers. In addition to training the teachers, Agami provides on-site and remote support to assist teachers and students to use appropriate blended learning pedagogy with the hardware used in classrooms.

Our solution is innovative because it is designed to be used in classrooms in Bangladesh, where there is no Internet, limited infrastructure and the national curriculum is strictly followed. In short, our solution is both classroom-friendly and curriculum-friendly, which is not the case for most educational content available online or through mobile Apps. We achieve this by doing the following:

• Developing a content library which is organized, mapped and aligned with the national curriculum and  consists of world class educational content from Khan Academy translated in Bangla, and locally developed materials.

•  The content is delivered to classrooms using Kolibri – an offline education platform, specially designed for use in low resource communities without Internet access, and by leveraging existing infrastructure established by the government such as multimedia classrooms and computer labs.

•  A training program for teachers, which prepares them to effectively blend technology in classrooms.

Given that it leverages the infrastructure established for hardware by the government, it is lower cost. Overall, it is a complete package with the potential to be used in any classroom in Bangladesh.

While the scope of our initial work did not permit quantitative impact assessment, our observations support existing research that says availability of supplemental material encourages more creative teaching and learning. Because of the localized and contextualized approach to our solution, we have seen the following results when working in schools with early version of the solution:

1.       Increased attendance in Math class

2.       Increased motivation to learn Math, which go beyond classroom learning

3.       Request for content on more topics and subjects, both from teachers and students

4.       Students and teachers becoming more comfortable with technology

5.       Teachers adopting different teaching methods in class utilizing our solution

6.     Ability for teachers to identify students who are lagging behind and to conduct review classes 

Based on these observations and our ongoing development work to make the solution truly classroom and curriculum friendly, we expect the solution to be widely utilized and make an impact on improving the quality of education.

Here’s the current and target number of people using our solution in classrooms:

Current:  1,200

In one year: 5,000

In five years: 10 million 

Our content is also available online for free. Here’s the current and target number of online users:

Current:  100k

In one year: 500k

In five years: 10 million

Our ultimate goal is improving the quality of education of 27+ million school-going children in Bangladesh and thus preparing them academically to participate in the global economy. Our approach from the beginning is to design the solution to be appropriate for classroom use in Bangladesh. That approach guides our content development work and the school pilots. We believe, demonstrating success in school pilots and engaging with the government will pave the way for national adoption through government support. With that in mind, we have set our intermediate goals and identified necessary steps/approaches as follows:

Within next year:

• Develop a content package for Grades 1 to 8 for Math and Science and make it available through Kolibri for use in any school in Bangladesh equipped with hardware.

• Execute a pilot in 20 schools. The scope of the pilot will include teacher training, monitoring, implementation support and impact assessment.

• Engage with concerned government agencies and ministries to seek feedback, collaboration and support.

• Start awareness campaign to inform schools, teachers, parents, students and stakeholders about the solution.

Within 5 years:

• Develop content package for Grades 1 to 12 for all subjects and make it available through Kolibri to any school in Bangladesh.

• Scale up the solution to national level in collaboration with government and others given the strong focus on usability in schools. 

1.       Recruiting talent for content development

2.       Motivating teachers to adopt the solution

3.       Funding the program

4.       Government endorsement and support to facilitate national level adoption

1. Recruiting talent for content development: Developing content requires diverse set of skills, such as curriculum and pedagogy knowledge, voice skills, video editing, language skills and creativity. It is a challenge to find many people possessing all or most of the required skills. As such, we will build on our approach:

a. Divide work into steps requiring particular skill, that can be completed independently.  

b. Recruit a mix of full time, part time, interns and freelance workers. Talent hunts, similar to what Khan Academy does can be used.

c. Conduct internal training.

2. Motivating teachers to adopt the solution: Teachers are often not motivated to use solutions that require extra work or interferes with regular class routine. We strive to overcome this by designing our solution to be used in regular classes and aligning it fully with the curriculum and textbooks, with the goal of making it easy and seamless for teachers to adopt. We also design different classroom models. In addition, we work closely with schools to ensure proper infrastructure and support, including the necessary pre-implementation and ongoing training.

3. Funding the program: Approach individual and corporate donors; donor agencies; collaboration/partnerships with other ngos; revenue from schools with resources (such as cadet colleges); and secure government support for scaling up through demonstration of pilot success.

4. Government endorsement to facilitate national level adoption: Ongoing engagement with the government to keep them informed, incorporating their feedback into the solution, aligning with government policies and priorities and demonstrating success through pilots.

Our current activities include content development and dissemination.

Content development is divided into following activities:

1. Curriculum mapping and identifying topics for content development

2. Video production in our in-house studio

3. Exercise creation using Kolibri studio

4. Localization of Khan Academy content

Content dissemination is divided into following activities:

1. Identifying schools for dissemination

2. Installing grade-wise curriculum mapped content on school hardware

3. Teacher training

4. Monitoring and implementation support

5. Maintaining website and Youtube channel for online dissemination

We also conduct information sharing meetings and social media outreach to create awareness and promote adoption. 

Full-time: 7

Part-time: 4

Interns/freelancers/volunteers: 20+

Our team is a mix of pedagogy and curriculum experts, computer scientists, content creators and video editors who are all passionate about working with teachers and students to improve education quality through the right use of technology. They have come from top universities in Bangladesh and US and together have a combined experience of 25+ years working on education technology.

In building our team, we have focused on both aspects of the solution – developing the solution and implementing the solution. While each team member has a primary focus of either content development or school implementation, we also recognize how one is informed by the other. Our content developers regularly go to schools to learn how the content is used. And our implementation team participates in different stages of the content development work in order to have a thorough understanding of what can and can not be accomplished in development.

Our close collaborations with partners such as Khan Academy and Learning Equality, both of whom work with organizations from around the world, provide us the opportunity to learn from a global network of organizations and teams who are taking on similar education challenges.

We believe, all of the above are contributing to make us best-placed to deliver this solution.

Learning Equality (https://www.learningequality.org/): We are using Learning Equality’s Kolibri platform for content creation and dissemination. The scope of our partnership includes hardware support, training and tech support from them.

Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org): We are the Bangla Language advocate for Khan Academy. The scope of our partnership includes us localizing content from Khan Academy into Bangla and maintaining the Khan Academy Bangla website and Youtube channel.

Our solution is a digital content package which is delivered to schools using an offline platform. The content is then used by teachers in classrooms as supplementary material. In addition, we provide teacher training and implementation support. The key beneficiaries are students in primary and secondary schools, and they are expected to have improved learning outcomes after using our solution in classrooms.

Our key activities are content development and dissemination. Content development includes curriculum mapping, localization of content from external sources such as Khan Academy, and creation of local material. Dissemination includes direct engagement in schools to deliver the content as well as awareness campaigns.

The key resources required to execute these activities include a skilled workforce that includes content creators, trainers, implementation support and funding. Teachers are our key partners in implementing the solution in classrooms. For initial implementation and pilots, we will work directly with schools and organizations who work with schools to access teachers. After successful pilots, we plan to work with/through the Government and interested organizations to scale up our solution to schools and teachers across the country.

We are a non-profit organization and our goal is to provide our solution for free. We fund our work through individual, corporate and foundation grants and donations.

We are a non-profit and provide our solution for free to target users. We sustain our operations through donations and grants.

We also believe in showing impact through pilots to attract government and/or international donor agency support to scale up our solution in the long term.

Funding is one of our major barriers and the financial award if selected will enable us to implement our pilot.

Selection will also help us to create awareness about our solution to a wide audience, including target users, potential partners, and talents for recruitment.

We would like to partner with organizations with expertise in following areas:

1. Impact assessment

2. Creating awareness

We are also interested in working with schools to train teachers to implement our solution in classrooms.