Smartphones for Learning during COVID-19

We are presenting a solution to education disruption and the resultant learning losses during COVID. However, it also solves the massive global illiteracy problem, which is our organization’s macro goal, to improve access, quality and accountability of education.

We are leveraging the massive installed base of smartphones to deliver learning solutions, which use gamified self-learning applications for enhancing K-5 literacy and numeracy 

The impact is two-fold. The immediate impact is that it creates a response for education disruption due to COVID or any future pandemics or other circumstances, by allowing mitigation of students’ learning losses. The long-term impact would be educating the 2 billion functionally illiterate people across the globe, if successful. It solves the problem of access by using a readily available device to educate the massive population of out-of-school children. It would also enhance the quality of education for in-school students.

The developing world has an education crisis of access, quality and accountability. Nearly 1.5 billion people are functionally illiterate, or barely literate. Approximately 300 million children are currently out of school (UNESCO, 2019). There are acute teacher shortages and poor learning outcomes. Pakistan’s education crisis is approaching catastrophic levels, with 22 million+ children out-of-school (UNICEF, 2019). 30-40 million could be out-of-school by 2030. Approximately 40% of 5th graders fail to perform at the 2nd grade level (ASER, 2019). Similarly, Bangladesh houses over 1 million refugees (World Bank, 2021), whose access to education is limited. 

COVID exacerbated problems further with 32 million  K-5 students affected by school closures in Pakistan (UNESCO, 2020).  Per the World Bank, closures of 7 months would lead to learning losses equivalent to 0.7 Learning Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS).  Given that Pakistan already stood at 4.8 LAYS, these numbers are worrisome (World Bank, 2020). 

Traditional means won’t solve this problem in an acceptable timeframe. In Pakistan, providing access to 22 million out-of-school children would take 87,000+ schools and 700,000+ teachers (ASER, 2019). If we are to do this in the next 20 years, it would take roughly 12 schools a day.

Smartphones for Learning during COVID-19 is a simple and scalable K - 5 “functional literacy” eLearning play, deployable on a smartphone. It delivers K - 5 learning in English, Math and a local language using award-winning gamified applications on smartphones, without reliance on a trained teacher.  

We use smartphones with Android software, and the gamified applications installed provide content with high engagement value, which promotes self-learning for the student. As this is self-directed learning, there is no teacher or instructor, and students are able to complete these independently at their own pace. They are supported by a remote facilitator, who also provides parental support and technical assistance. 

The analytics data generated by the application is used for monitoring and evaluation. There is minimum infrastructure investment as students use devices that they already have access to. These features make this solution highly adaptable and scalable, even for low connectivity settings.

Key focus: 

a) Out-of-school children with no access to schools; 

b) In-school children needing quality enhancement

Our at-home model was driven by school closures in the aftermath of COVID-19. With ~50M children having lost access and tablets being cost prohibitive, our flagship program, ELAN which was on tablets, needed alternatives. Despite some drawbacks, smartphones provided an answer with their massive existing installed base (90M+ in Pakistan).

We launched using our existing portfolio of educational games, for both in-school and out-of-school variations through existing implementation partners.

The program is managed by facilitators working with children through parents. We found parents — who are often illiterate themselves-- taking great interest in their child’s learning and using gamified learning apps. Thus, an unexpected but powerful ancillary benefit has emerged here. We are turning this program into a potential family literacy program.

Currently we are piloting it with ~1400 children in Pakistan and Bangladesh.  Early results have been strong. Focus groups with parents show that the program has been very successful at engaging/motivating children to study despite school closures. Results from weekly quizzes confirm this.

This model has proven to be our fastest growing, with massive potential to scale. By 2025, smartphone penetration in the developing world is expected to reach 70%. (World Economic Forum, 2019).

At scale, it is also our lowest cost model with cost per student  under $50 per year. With family literacy added, it could be our highest ROI play.

Our model is focused on self-learning through gamified applications, where the physical location or internet connectivity is not an impediment to a child’s education. This model allows self-learning at home, developing digital literacy skills, as well as independent learning. 

The program has built-in mechanisms for parental involvement and support. There are dedicated facilitators who guide students and parents, and offer parental support through frequent remote check-ins. Student motivation mechanisms in the form of weekly awards are also built into the program to give students a sense of peer interaction in offline settings.

Our primary model, ELAN, has been tested in multiple settings and geographies, with tablets as the main medium of delivery. We have tested content, the interface, as well as training and deployment, and have solid results about the efficacy of the model. However, with the advent of COVID, our response was to take the learning and tested results we had from our flagship ELAN program, and adapt them on to a different medium of delivery, the smartphone, with a new interface. As this is a remote, at-home program, facilitation processes have changed, and we are navigating the best practices in remote learning and support. Similarly we have had to explore some new content that is supported by smartphones. In order to test all of this, we have a robust pilot with approximately 1700+ students underway in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Our innovation combines existing technologies with new approaches/processes to solve for education access and quality, particularly during COVID. Key features are: 

1. Use of educational games to drive student “engagement”

2. Innate scalability built into our deployment approach by using smartphones 

3. Real time feedback and personalized student learning.

4. Solving the “accountability” challenge”  in developing countries by monitoring in-app engagement data regularly

1. Gamification

Gamification and rewards motivate students and enable self-learning, without direct teacher instruction. Our applications solve for critical challenges of teacher shortages and quality, as they are highly engaging compared to traditional methods.

2. Scalability: 

Pakistan has an installed base of 98 million smartphones and is expected to grow 8% annually for the next 5 years (https://www.pta.gov.pk/en/telecom-indicators). By using existing parent smartphones, we have built massive scalability into our design to allow us to deploy to millions rapidly through low infrastructure investment, low management skill needs and no need for in-person access during COVID.

3. Real-time Feedback: 

Our solution provides real-time feedback,  allowing students to follow a personalized learning path, based on their own learning pace and cognitive ability, while we use the data to track their progress to iterate and further improve the learning experience. 

4. Accountability: 

The built-in tracking capability of digital creates extraordinary accountability. Teacher/student attendance, time spent on learning apps, and learning progress is tracked. With appropriate rewards systems, this can be a powerful motivator for reducing teacher/student absenteeism and enhancing overall performance, especially in developing countries.

Current: 1700+learners

1-year plan: 10,000 learners

5-year plan: 2,000,000 learners

In order to measure progress we shall use the following indicators:

1. Proportion of K-5 learners achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in (i) reading and (ii) mathematics, dis-aggregated by gender

This will be measured through rigorous impact assessments with data-points at baseline, midline and endline using the EGRA and EGMA tools developed by USAID and RTI. In addition to that, focus groups will also be conducted with parents as well as facilitators for qualitative feedback, anecdotal observations and insights from the ground

2. Student participation rate in self-directed learning, dis-aggregated by gender

This will be measured through in-app engagement data and dashboards which are provided by our content partners

3. Proportion of K-5 learners achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in 21st Century Digital Skills, dis-aggregated by gender

This will be measured through tests specifically designed to measure digital literacy and proficiency

4. Number of new deployments

5. Number of Learners

This will be documented through student enrollment records

Core Management:

We have a lean core team of 14 people in 2 countries, strongly supplemented by our partners, whose infrastructure we leverage. Our team is divided into:

• Implementation: 6

• Research: 4 

• Content & Fundraising: 2

• Technical Support: 2

Deployment Partners:

• 50+ facilitators on-ground

Research Contractors: 

• 30+ (Enumerators, Research Associates)

Our leadership team has extremely relevant expertise for this massive transformation effort. We have 5 years of strong on-ground experience with 20+ deployments in varied settings, effectively aimed at eradicating illiteracy in developing countries.

A vast majority of our team originates from developing countries and are committed to their betterment. Being beneficiaries of education, our team understands its profound impact on socioeconomic well-being. We are guided by their aspirations of eradicating illiteracy. Our team includes:

Shafiq Khan, President: headed digital at Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain, where he scaled their digital business from $150 million to $15 billion+. Earlier, Shafiq led the digital transformation of travel by pioneering electronic ticketing and online booking at United Airlines and US Airways. Shafiq brings invaluable experience successfully scaling digital transformation.

Imran Sayeed, Chief Development Officer: Faculty-member at MIT’s Sloan School teaching Entrepreneurship & Innovation, a serial entrepreneur, and until recently, CTO at a Fortune-60 company. Imran brings experience starting new ventures, scaling them rapidly and securing funding & partnerships to create global impact.

Robert Torres, PhD, Chief Strategy Officer: A recognized authority on gamified learning, led educational technology at the Gates Foundation where he launched some of the world’s leading educational innovation programs. 

Shirin Husain, Chief Implementation Officer: among the foremost practitioners of digital learning in the developing world, has implemented ALL our programs worldwide. She has 30 years of experience teaching children in elite schools as well as impoverished communities, while building a sustainable learning ecosystem. 

We are largely operating in the developing world. There is greater racial homogeneity among the population in the countries where we operate (Pakistan and Bangladesh) therefore we do not have racial diversity within our team. 

However, our team is ethnically diverse and inclusive: 

• In Pakistan, we have people from mainstream cities like Karachi and Lahore as well as remote Himalayan towns of Gilgit-Baltistan.
• We also have people from rural districts and villages of Sindh
• In Bangladesh, our people are from the Bihari refugee population who represent one of Bangladesh's ethnic minorities
• Our deployments in Bangladesh in particular are focused on the Bihari and Rohingya refugee populations, as we aim to target the most marginalised sections wherever we operate

Moreover, our team is also gender-diverse and inclusive:

• Our leadership team is gender-balanced
• The vast majority of our on-ground teachers and facilitators are female
• As an organisation, we actively aim to have gender balance within our deployments and classrooms

Winning the Equitable Classrooms global challenge will bring us very significant tangible and intangible benefits. It will very significantly strengthen our ability to fulfill our mission which is to bring literacy gains to ~25m out-of-school children in Pakistan and Bangladesh and ensure continuity of learning for ~54m K-5 students whose learning has been disrupted due to COVID-19. This program has very significant potential for other under-developed countries. If we succeed in Pakistan and Bangladesh, we will plan to transplant this program in other countries with the highest need. 

•  The most immediate tangible benefit is access to funding. This will directly enable us to scale our existing smartphone interventions in Pakistan and Bangladesh to more students. 

•  We expect that the Solve team will also enable us to get access to the immense intellectual capital and the knowledge repository present at MIT and the Greater Boston area, particularly in the areas of emerging educational technologies, research and analytics.  

• The brand association value will also be immense considering the respect MIT has and the considerable “halo effect” that comes from winning such a prestigious award. This will instantly enhance our credibility and allow us to develop relationships with many organizations relevant to our mission—e.g. potential partner organizations, entrepreneurs tackling the literacy problem in Pakistan and Bangladesh, donors, aid agencies, etc.

Financial: We need access to funding for scaling and mitigating cost barriers.

Public Relations: While our social media and online presence is growing, progress has been slow. We have struggled with creating a brand identity for our programs. We will need guidance on how to further build and market our brand through social media and other platforms.

Monitoring & Evaluation: We need access to remote assessment tools so that we can reliably conduct baseline and endline assessments. We have built an in-house automated assessment tool but it needs improvement and can benefit greatly through integration with voice-recognition software 

Technology: We need access to high-quality higher grade content which can be deployed offline or on low-spec smartphones. In terms of hardware, we also need access to low-cost portable internet devices which can be used as hubs. 

Some of the organizations/type of organizations we would like to partner with include: 

Clever (for Software Platform):

We would like to partner with them and contextualize the integrated analytics platform they have developed for use in the developing world. 

Dreambox Learning (for Content):

Possibility of using their award winning Grade 1-8 math suite  

J-PAL - Poverty Action Lab (for Research):

To help us with evidence backed evaluation of the programs that we launch. Also gain access to researchers at Harvard/MIT in the area of education and digital education impact 

Hardware Partners (For low-cost Devices):

Connect with leading hardware providers for cost-effective and durable devices for use.

Global Education Funding Establishment (For Funding):

Gates Foundation, Foreign Aid Agencies (like DfID and USAID), Big Philanthropic Foundations, the United Nations and its associated arms, Development Banks (ADB, World Bank) 

Consulting firms (for PR purposes):

Knowledge partnerships with leading technology and consulting firms to create ecosystem and PR strategy, ideally on a pro-bono basis.

We are already operating in refugee environments in Bangladesh, particularly in Bihari and Rohingya refugee camps over the last 2 years. These represent some of the most deprived/neediest communities in the world. Our tablet programs cover 500+ Bihari and Rohingya refugee children. Our smartphone solution has 700+ Bihari refugee children currently enrolled. Moreover, we have partnerships in Bangladesh with OBAT Helpers who are serving refugee communities in Bangladesh and have massive outreach. Our tablet based programs in Bihari and Rohingya refugee camps have shown 2X learning gains as compared to traditional models

The Andan Prize for Innovation would provide a massive financial boost to our solution.  This prize would help us scale to millions of refugee children worldwide in the future. Moreover we would also be able to conduct outreach and awareness programs for parents within the refugee camps in order to enroll more and more refugee children. We can further advance our existing smartphone solution by using the funds from the Andan Prize to provide hardware to students thereby lessening the technology gap.

Our program covers the most marginalized communities in the world and operates primarily in developing countries where female literacy is already extremely low. In some of these countries, women's education is culturally restricted. 

We are highly committed to gender equality and women's development which is reflected in our current programs as well as our leadership structure. 

• We require a 50-50 male-female ratio for all of our digital learning programs regardless of geography and cultural constraints.
• We require a vast majority of our on-ground facilitators to be female
• Our executive team at Teach the World has a significant complement of female leaders

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