Klik2learn

Since its inception, Klik2learn has been a passionate advocate of empowering disadvantaged communities of learners to fulfill their potential by giving them access to high quality digital resources which allow them to gain mastery of the world's global language: English.

In many emerging economies, competence in English is the gateway to further study and better employment. It is often the determining factor between the haves and the have nots. Only the children of more affluent parents however, can attend English medium schools and access quality teachers.

Over the last eight years, Klik2learn has developed award- winning solutions which can be deployed globally to all levels of learners including complete beginners using only a mobile phone.

The company has already partnered with an NGO in Ahmedabad and a Charity in Mumbai to trial our solution: The Digital Learning Hub. Over a six month period, we delivered our proprietary diagnostic testing, measured progress on our LMS and gave learners access to our interactive content. Our adoption rate was 97% and 60% of learners moved from zero knowledge of English to level A2 on the CEFR.

We are now partnering with a prestigious Indian organisation: the Education for Employment Foundation ( EEF) to take this to the next level by working at national and state government level.

We are deploying our Digital Learning Hub via series of pilots in two locations:

In Ghandigar, we are highly privileged to be working with the Ministry of Education of the Government of India on their Samagra Shiksha initiative - an overarching programme for the school sector extending from pre-school to class 12, with the goal of improving school effectiveness in terms of equal opportunities and equitable learning outcomes.

The major objectives of the Scheme are the provision of quality education and enhanced learning outcomes for students; Bridging Social and Gender Gaps in school education and ensuring equity and inclusion at all levels.

The main emphasis of the Scheme is on improving quality of school education by focusing on the two T’s – Teacher and Technology. It will also reap the benefits of technology and widening the access of good quality education across all States and across all sections of the Society.

Klik2learn is ideally placed to deliver digital innovation having regularly featured in the British Council ELTons and PIEoneer awards for digital innovation and having won the  European EdTech for Good award in 2021. We have a dedicated teacher training section and provide comprehensive digital resources and tools for teachers to use.

In Telangana, we are working with the Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS) under the patronage of the Ministry of Welfare. The TSWREIS  has been passionately providing services for the past 35 years to improve the standards of life of the Scheduled Caste students by offering them quality and sustainable education in English medium up to graduation.

The Society has 268 institutions, sheltering around 150,000 students. The Hon'ble Chief Minister of Telangana Sri K. Chandrashekhar Rao, strongly believes that education is the strongest weapon with which the lives of the marginalized children can be transformed into social and economic spheres thereby cultivating a new generation of the Telangana state which can lead the country in the 21st century.

Klik2learn is honoured to have been chosen to provide the Digital Learning Hub to add value to the aims of the Society.

With its emphasis on English as a global language, we believe our resources can not only improve the four language skills of all of our learners, they can open a window on the wider world. Our 'Journey 2 Basic Skills' program takes students on a virtual world journey, exposing them to different cultures, accents, currencies, people and places.

Klik2learn's aims are aligned completely to the aims of these two organisations in their desire to address inequalities in Indian society, overcome the disadvantages of belonging to the 'Economically Weak Section' of society and allow young people to flourish and lead fulfilling lives.

Our platform has all the functionality in place to provide data at every stage of the learner's journey and working with MIT to validate and boost the evidence base of our effectiveness would be transformational not only for Klik2learn but also for the government partners we are working with.


 

We have previously worked with two communities with very similar needs in India.

1. A girls' digital school in the slums of Mumbai, where we partnered with an inspiring local young woman who has been running her own school to help the girls in her community. We conducted a small scale pilot with our Journey to Basic Skills course over a period of six months during which the girls were able to move two levels on the CEFR and held awards ceremonies to celebrate their success.

2. We worked in a Middle School in Gujarat with pupils aged 8 -12 who had no English. Weekly reports were generated and we had regular feedback from the NGO who were running the pilot locally. This included videos from the pupils and teachers involved.

For the project in question here, we are much better resourced with a team of people, including headteachers and government officials (NCERT) via our Indian partner -EEF. They have  opened up opportunities at government level where we have a real chance of providing complementary educational resources at scale in India across a variety of sectors both private and public. We hold  meetings at least four times a week with EEF and are training their staff to provide local support. We are hosting a launch event in the summer to publicise the initiative and engage directly with senior education leaders in the states we are operating in.

Our theory of change can be broken down as follows:

1. Our day to day activities consist of a number of tasks related to  developing evidence -based educational software: clearly defining the learning outcome of each activity, using instructional design planning to optimise learner engagement and motivation, using graphic assets, animation and audio recording to include a range of learning styles, and above all  developing our own Learning Management System to track progress and capture the user data we and the customer really wants, in a reporting dashboard at both macro and granular level. 

2. We conduct market intelligence and hold regular conversations with customers and end users with a view to constantly improving the service we offer and ensuring learner success.

3. We have a dedicated support line and analyse weekly the requests and questions which come in from our customer base. These feed in as appropriate to our product improvement roadmap. Since we work mainly with B2B customers, either corporate or educational, it is vital that we have hard evidence to show both ROI and educational impact.

4. Our short and medium term goals are quite simply to enable learners to gain a good working knowledge of all four language skills in English: speaking, writing, listening and reading. Many of our learners in the UK are displaced persons and are seeking to move into suitable employment as soon as they have the required level of English.

5. Our longer term goals are ambitious and can be subdivided into:

• User Outcomes:

A user who acquires competence in using English can earn on average 34%
more over their lifetime. A knowledge of English therefore leads to a
much improved chance of securing gainful employment and progressing to
further study. We do not see English as an end in itself. It enhances
the confidence, opportunities and life skills of our learners.

• Organisational Outcomes 

Organisations can improve their effectiveness and satisfaction metrics
by using the data insights from our platform. They can fast track
students on to more advanced study, optimise tutor time, offer flexible
learning and extend their provision and therefore revenue generation well beyond their catchment area.

• Societal Outcomes

Most importantly, our programme can help to bring an end to the exclusion and marginalisation suffered by many disadvantaged groups. Education is the most powerful leveller in society and can by default, reduce poverty, gender inequality and the wastage of human talent. It is social justice and social mobility in action. Klik2learn is proud to have been awarded the European Tech for Good winner in 2021.

Our integration of evidence at Level 1 is both intrinsic and extrinsic.

Within our own product eco-system, we can clearly define how our learning outcomes are measured throughout the learner journey. They feed directly into the reporting dashboard. The other metrics we use: time spent, tutor input, completion rates, scores in assessment and speed of execution all relate also to the broader extrinsic evidence we are attempting to gather: i.e. can a self- regulated digital program be more effective than traditional classroom teaching? Is a blended learning program superior to both?

At Level 2 our proprietary LMS can capture the data we need for the above but the evidence is largely empirical or anecdotal. It clearly shows positive change in the learner's knowledge of English as measured by objective testing but we cannot conclusively confirm this in all circumstances, especially when our learner cohort is resident in an English speaking environment.

We are well aware of the need to escalate our evidence gathering to Level 3 to include control groups but this has not so far been possible due to the small scale nature of the pilots we have undertaken and the need to include as many children as possible. For the project we are proposing here, there is an ideal opportunity to rectify this given the huge numbers of pupils not involved in the pilots and the co-operation and alignment we can draw on at state government level.

Working with a number of LEAP Fellows would be an unparalleled example independent evaluation that would take us to Level 4 and allow us to offer a robust set of guidelines- Level 5 -  for the implementation of our solution at scale across the K-12 sector, not just India but in other emerging economies where we are being asked to conduct pilots - e.g. Uganda and Ghana. Were we selected for this program, it would have significant implications not only for the company but for potentially millions of learners.

We are currently tracking impact through the data we gather via our Learning Management System. This is constantly evolving as we engage with customers and listen to feedback : e.g. we have recently incorporated dynamic learning outcomes into our dashboard to allow tutors to access precise information about their learners' progress and inform the teaching process.

We use standard tracking metrics:

• time spent overall
• time spent on each activity
• percentage completion overall
• completion by activity
• test scores
• leaderboards to identify under performance
• last login data At the development stage, we use a range of methods: online webinars, interviews and questionnaires both qualitative and quantitative to measure the impact of the resources from a learning effectiveness perspective.

Deploying an innovative English learning platform in Indian schools to bridge the gap experienced by disadvantaged sections of society.

The initial question Leap Fellows would help to answer is the scope and nature of the improvement in English language skills of primary age children over the 12 weeks of the programme. Within that broad aim there are a number of related questions that would help us greatly as a company to define our value proposition:

1. Are all four language skills improved to a similar degree?
2. Using the data from our LMS, what is the optimum time spent on the platform to achieve success?
3. How reliable are our diagnostic tests?
4. Is there a gender difference in achievement?
5. How do pupils and parents view the benefits of increased competence in English?
6. Is there a difference in the performance of Klik2learn pupils and those who do not have access?
7. Does access to the Digital Learning Hub lead to better scores in mainstream English tests?

In addition to the above, there are a number of very important over-arching questions that need to be addressed with this project:

How effective is self-regulated digital learning when compared to traditional methods of teaching and delivery?

How effective is gamification?

Can we demonstrate increased meta-cognitive skills?

Can we develop autonomous learners?

Is the program more effective in a blended learning context?

What is the optimum ratio of tutor time to self -study?