© 2004 IBM Corporation Improving India’s Education System through Information Technology An IBM...

© 2004 IBM Corporation

Improving India’s Education System through Information Technology

An IBM Report to be presented to His Excellency, The President of India

IBM India Research Lab

| © 2002 IBM Corporation

Raisina Project Team: Education

Sponsoring Executive: Nicholas Donofrio Lead: P. Gopalakrishnan, Director, India Research Lab Core Team:

– Rakesh Agrawal, IBM Fellow, Almaden Research Lab

– Subhankar Roy Chaudhary, BCS India

– Albee Jhoney, India Software Lab

– Harish Krishnan, Government Programs, IBM India

– Nimish Sanghi, BCS India

– Ashwin Srinivasan, India Research Lab Technology Deep Dive

– [TEC – India South] - Albee Jhoney, Karthikeyan Ponnalagu, Murali Paramasivam, Pankaj Pathak, Rahul Chenny, Sarvani Ganesh, Umasuthan Ramakrishnan, S Venkatakrishnan

Contributors– Sharat Bansal, BCS India

– Michael R. Fernandes, BCS India

– Peter F DeKam, eLearning EBO Executive Reviews

– Shanker Annaswamy, India CGM



Executive Summary

India’s education system has made many advances in the decades since independence. Yet much remains to be done to improve the reach and quality of education.

– Student drop-out rates remain very high

– Teachers are poorly trained

– Teacher-student ratios remain very low

– Quality of instruction material is poor and often out-of-date

Our study is about how Information Technology could be used to improve the state of education in India.

During the course of our research we have come to the firm conclusion that:

– Teachers are at the heart of the educational system. Improvements to the system must enable teachers to become better teachers.

– In collective wisdom lies strength. We would like to see a system in which teachers, educationists, planners, administrators and students across the nation can work together to provide the best possible foundation for our youth.



Executive Summary

We believe that the country should look towards developing:1. New models for the design of curricula that are relevant and meaningful.

2. New models for authoring and updating educational and teacher training materials.

3. New models for providing access to educational and training materials.

4. New models for imparting lessons to students.

To achieve these goals, we recommend that India develops, as a priority, a nation-wide Education Collaboration Network (ECN)

– Capable of Handling different levels of IT maturity, multiple languages etc.

– Highly distributed and leverages existing infrastructure (e.g. EduSat, Vidhya Vahini Labs, Teacher Centers, e-Choupals etc.).

– Based on open standards for encoding and accessing content.



Ashok, Science Teacher, Rural U.P, new to teaching• Ashok wants to improve his understanding of Newton’s laws for his lecture next week• Neither his school nor he has a computer, though he has a TV at his house• He goes to e-chaupal in his village, which has been integrated into the ECN, and begins his search

using an easy-to-use graphical interface

What he Finds• a ranked list of material matching his requirement. Ranking is based on past

searches, accesses, and recommendations by other teachers.

• Notes from Mandira Mukopadhyay who teaches in Kolkata on how she taught Newton's laws (original notes were in Bengali but were translated into Hindi by Nimish living in Allahabad who knew both Bengali and Hindi). Ashok prints the notes using free quota available to him for this purpose.

• A video of a very insightful lecture by Prof Goyal.

• Some problem sets and test questions provided by other teachers. He prints these support materials also.

Through the ECN Ashok is able to find material that will help him understand the subject matter and obtain access to teaching aids that others have found useful.

Rural areas with low IT maturity

Uses existing infrastructure

Empowers teachers

Multi-lingual

An example of what is possible: knowledge sharingExecutive Summary



Uma, A dedicated Physics teacher in Kerala

• Uma also wants to improve her understanding of Newton’s laws for her lecture next week• However, unlike Ashok, she works in a school that has provided a computer in the faculty room and

there is one TV per class room attached to a VCD player.• Uma uses the internet to get into the ECN and carryout her search

What She Finds• Uma also finds the same material as Ashok. However, the ranking has changed

because of Ashok’s selection the day before.

• Uma burns a CD of the Prof Goyal’s video. Instead of lecturing herself the class, she plays VCD, taking the role of the discussant, pausing the lecture to add supplementary explanations from her experience or to field questions.

• She creates a new problem set combining ideas from the problem set she found and her past problem sets and adds it to the ECN. She also adds comments about her use of the lecture and how her students did on the new problem set. Her material now becomes available to other teachers using the ECN.

Through the ECN Uma is able to bring an expert virtually to the classroom. She also enhances the material with her own contributions that are then available to others on the network.

Distributed, evolutionary content creation

New pedagogy: teacher as discussant

Accumulation and re-use of teaching material

Another example: collaborative content creationExecutive Summary



What is needed: an “electronic joining of hands”Executive Summary

Cognizant of existing realities: infrastructure, languages, IT-readiness, different curricula, etc.

Leverage existing infrastructure – Vidya Vahini, EDUSAT, etc.

EDUSAT, Gauhati

Teacher center, Ahmedabad

School Node, Malappuram

Vidya Vahini, Lucknow

ERNET, Delhi

JKC, Hyderabad

e-Chaupal, MP

IBM, Bangalore

EDUSAT, Mumbai

•A hardware and a software infrastructure built on industry standards that empower teachers, educators, and administrators to collectively create, manage, and access educational material, impart education, and increase their skills



What is Unique?Executive Summary

Right focus– Teachers are at the heart of education system and network is designed to

help them teach better. (We are not talking replacing teachers with computers.)

– Make use of computer technology to improve schools, rather than concentrating on teaching computer technology.

Low entry cost– Piggyback on existing hardware infrastructure.

– Rather than commissioning content, make use of the talent of our vast educated population.

Inherent scalability– Grows organically and exponentially due to network effect

– Costly regulation replaced by collective wisdom and distributed ranking Multilingual

– Multilingual content created by distributed partial translations and automatic consolidation

– Benefits from translating best in one language into another



Better quality of instructional

material

Helping teachers to teach better

Developing educational

and training material

Developing educational


Imparting educational


Imparting educational


Developing relevant

curriculum

Developing relevant

curriculum

Distributing educational


Distributing educational


Better operational efficiency

Education Collaboration

Network(ECN)

A Framework for an IT-enabled Education SystemExecutive Summary



Outline

Current State of India’s Education System Scope of this report Areas of benefit Recommendations Usage scenarios Technology deep dive Conclusion



India’s Education System: Achievements Through The Years - 1951-2002

Significant achievements have been made. But many problems remain …

1951 1981 2002(*)

Literacy Percentage 18.33% 43.57% 65.38%

Educational InstituionsPrimary 209671 494503 664041Upper Primary 13596 118555 219626High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 7416 51573 133492

Enrollements (in millions)Primary 19.2 73.8 113.9Upper Primary 3.1 20.7 44.8High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 1.5 11 30.5

Dropout Rates (%) NA 82.5 66

Teachers (in '000)Primary 538 1363 1928Upper Primary 86 669 1157High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 127 926 1777

Pupil Teacher RatioPrimary 20 38 43Upper Primary 20 33 34High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 21 27 34

Public Expenditure (% of GDP) 0.64% 2.92% 4.02%



India’s Education System: Non Infrastructural Issues

Poor performance 39% dropouts in primary, additional 15.6% in secondary and additional 11.7% in higher

secondary

Pass out ratio is 50% at Class X and majority of them pass in 3rd division

Less than 8% finish all schooling to qualify for a college education

Poorly trained teachers 51% of primary teachers are higher secondary or below

Only 44% have received in-service training

Absence of learning material for teachers to update their knowledge

Poor teacher-student ratios Ratio in primary is 1:43, secondary and Higher secondary is 1:34. About 9% of primary

schools have a teacher-student ratio > 1:100.

1.4% of primary schools have no teachers, 19% have only one teacher for all classes.

Poor quality of material Too much emphasis on theory, poor quality textbooks, out-dated curriculum



Scope Of This Report

This report focuses on the use of IT to enable teachers become better teachers, and improve the quality of class-room instruction. The recommendations apply across all levels of school education (primary, secondary and tertiary). They can be adapted for the college education also, but we do not focus on that here.



A Subset of Education NeedsFrom the background material and through interviews the following issues

emerged as a few areas where IT is likely to make significant impact

Improve teachers' competencies and skills. Improve design and content of textbooks and instruction materials. Identify appropriate teacher training programs for different disciplines,

abilities and roles. Improve teachers’ access to teaching resources. Increase effective teaching time. Review curriculum, teaching methods, and examinations. Improve the supply, quality and holding power of education,

particularly in the rural areas. Address issues of regional disparities in standards of education –

specifically the teachers. Personalize the teaching based on learning capabilities and inclination

of students. Develop a system to motivate teachers and make them accountable

for quality of education. Increase community involvement.



Areas of Benefit

Our findings suggest that the following areas in Indian education would benefit significantly from the use of innovative IT-based solutions:

– Helping teachers become better teachers

– For example: collective development of teaching support material and providing access to this material to every teacher.

– Improving the quality and relevance of classroom instructions

– For example:– Collective identification of how the curriculum being taught in our

schools should be improved and made relevant– Collective monitoring of the deficiencies in our textbooks and the

creation of supplementary material to enhance them.– Increasing operational efficiency

– For example:– Better planning and management– Efficient production of textbooks



Helping Teachers Become Better Teachers

Lack of good teaching support material─ Almost no good teaching aids to help teachers

─ No help on lesson plans, projects, supplementary materials

─ No mechanism to share and re-use teaching resources

How IT could help

Collaborative development of lectures, assignments, tests, etc.

Mass participation of teachers and students to comment or discuss sections of textbooks or lectures

Development of training materials for helping teachers and administrators enhance their skills

Enable access to model lectures, aids created by other teachers



Improving the Quality of Instruction

Curriculum not keeping pace with the new realities

─ Too much emphasis on theory, little emphasis on vocational aspects

─ Skills of “learning-to-learn” not developed

Lack of quality in educational material─ Very long gaps between updating text books

─ Errors in text books

How IT could helpMass participation of experts, teachers (and even students) in the development of

curricula

Tools for the timely creation of supplementary material

Provide new models for imparting education to enable flexible class hours and compensating for low teacher-student ratios



Improving Operational Efficiency

Inadequate estimates of demand and supply─ No “facility maps” available for levels other than primary school

─ No clear picture of the education requirements of the population by geographic location, socio-cultural groups etc.

Production, procurement and distribution of textbooks─ Lack of availability of textbooks/workbooks contributes to drop-outs and failures─ About 30% of the current costs are non-paper related.─ Distribution is reliant on physical transportation to sales outlets.

How IT could helpNation-wide data collection of facilities and statistics to facilitate planning.

Supply-chain management techniques for improving operational efficiency.

Delay committing content to paper form until as late in the distribution process as possible.

| November 2004 © 2002 IBM Corporation

Recommendations



Framework for an IT-enabled Education System for India

Better quality of instructional

material

Helping teachers to teach better

Developing educational and training

material

Developing educational and training

material

Imparting educational and training

material

Imparting educational and training

material

Developing relevant

curriculum

Developing relevant

curriculum

Distributing educational and training

material

Distributing educational and training

material

Better operational efficiency

Education Collaboration

Network(ECN)



Recommendations

We believe that the country should look towards developing:1. New models for the design of curricula that are relevant and meaningful.

2. New models for authoring and updating educational and teacher training materials.

3. New models for providing access to educational and training materials.

4. New models for imparting lessons to students.

To achieve these goals, we recommend that India develops, as a priority, a nation-wide Education Collaboration Network

– Capable of Handling different levels of IT maturity, multiple languages etc.

– Highly distributed and leverages existing infrastructure (e.g. EduSat, Vidhya Vahini Labs, Teacher Centers, e-Choupals etc.).

– Based on open standards for encoding and accessing content.



Education Collaboration Network: Underlying Principles

Collective wisdom can be better than single expert.– E.g. Wikipedia, Open Directory & Linux

The size of our educated population is our strength; a small fraction of motivated educators, teachers and students working together will make a big difference.



Expected Impact In the near-term, the network will:

1. Enable the collective development by teachers and students of education and training materials like supplements to text-books and teaching support material.

2. Enable the collective identification, by teachers and administrators, of deficiencies in curricula and associated text-books, and how these can be addressed.

3. Act as a vehicle for providing access to education and training material to teachers and students.

4. Act as a vehicle for experimenting with new methods of imparting education and training.

In the medium-term, the network will enable:– Enhancing the skills of teachers and administrators.– The use of information-based planning and better methods for

procurement and distribution of materials.– Support for a new pedagogy in class-rooms.


Using The Network: Some Examples



Scenario: Knowledge Sharing

Ashok, Science Teacher, Rural U.P, new to “teaching”• Ashok wants to improve his understanding of Newton’s laws for his lecture next week• Neither his school nor he has a computer, though he has a TV at his house• He goes to e-chaupal in his village, which has been integrated into the ECN, and begins his search

using an easy-to-use graphical interface

What he Finds• a ranked list of material matching his requirement. Ranking is based on past

searches, accesses, and recommendations by other teachers.

• Notes from Mandira Mukopadhyay who teaches in Kolkata on how she taught Newton's laws (original notes were in Bengali but were translated into Hindi by Nimish living in Allahabad who knew both Bengali and Hindi). Ashok prints the notes using free quota available to him for this purpose.

• A video of a very insightful lecture by Prof Goyal.

• Some problem sets and test questions provided by other teachers. He prints these support materials also.

As Ashok makes his selections, the system notes his selections and uses this info as an input to refine the ranking.

Rural areas with low IT maturity

Uses existing infrastructure

Empowers teachers

Multi-lingual



Scenario: Collaborative Content Authoring

Uma, A dedicated Physics teacher in Kerala

• Uma also wants to improve her understanding of Newton’s laws for her lecture next week• However, unlike Ashok, she works in a school that has provided a computer in the faculty room and

there is one TV per class room attached to a VCD player.• Uma uses the internet to get into the ECN and carryout her search

What She Finds• Uma also finds the same material as Ashok. However, the ranking has changed

because of Ashok’s selection the day before.

• Uma burns a CD of the Prof Goyal’s video. Instead of lecturing herself the class, she plays VCD, taking the role of the discussant, pausing the lecture to add supplementary explanations from her experience or to field questions.

• She creates a new problem set combining ideas from the problem set she found and her past problem sets and adds it to the ECN. She also adds comments about her use of the lecture and how her students did on the new problem set. Her material now becomes available to other teachers using the ECN.

As Uma makes her selections, the system notes her selections and uses this info as an input to further refine the ranking.

Distributed, evolutionary content creation

New pedagogy: teacher as discussant

Accumulation and re-use of teaching material



Scenario: Updating text booksThanushreeA Social Science teacher in Belgaum

• Thanushree teaches 7th class Social Science in a school at the Karnataka-Maharashtra border. She is using a text book in the Marathi language. She has to lecture on India in World Affairs. Her school has an Edusat terminal.

What She Does

• She sees the map on page 107 that shows Pakistan as an island in the Arabian sea and Tibet has moved to Bay of Bengal. It also shows SAARC members like Bhutan, Bangaladesh, and Nepal as island-nations.

• Thanushree tells her students about this error.

• In addition, she goes to the Edusat terminal and taps into the ECN to record this error in the book.

This feedback is saved, in a section on errata in the current edition.

Update errors in text books

Collective identification and improvement of education material

Feedback on curricula


Technology Deep Dive:Building The Education Collaboration Network



Education Collaboration Network: General Requirements

Distributed data management Multi-lingual Evolutionary Geographically scalable Customizable for every deployment (state, board, community, institution) Off-line information access models Ease of use for novice and expert users Reachability (reliable multi-channel access and integration) Open standards based Ease of maintenance and management Auditable and measurable Secure and privacy-preserving Reduce TCO and scaling-of-cost (refer to utility models) Allow personalization



Education Collaboration Network: Physical View

Communication

Data Center

Computing Center

ICT Hardware ICT Hardware Infrastructure GridInfrastructure Grid

Data Center

Computing Center

Computing

Center

Server Server SoftwareSoftware Platform Platform

Collaboration Space

Integration SpaceEdge Server Space

Presentation Space

Information Space

Directory Integration

Client Platform Client Platform



Web-based Architecture

Client Platform– Different classes of devices - PC, Simputer, PDA, TV, ...

– Client application integration based on open standards

Server Software Platform– Content Storage Networks, Compute Grids, Application Hosting

Environments,

– Open Standards Infrastructure platform for Integration and Virtualization of server side resources

– Presentation controllers to handle multilingual requirements

Software– Open standards for encoding and accessing content

– Multilingual for authoring, organizing, and updating content

– Collaboration and search services



Server Platform: Logical View

Infrastructure Services

Information Services

Presentation Services

Application Services

Integration Bus



Server Platform

The Server Platform proposed is one that uses a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) with the following blocks:

Presentation ServiceMulti-Device Access mechanisms, Data Caching, Personalization, Multi lingual

Support, secure and privacy mechanisms Infrastructure service

This block hosts the basic infrastructure such as Storage Management, Security, Systems Management, Automation

Info ServicesEncapsulation of a group of services that handle content organization, lifecycle,

storage, distribution, authoring, search Integration bus

Forms the back bone for integration / collaboration / interactions between the services



SOAP, HTTP, FTP, RMI / IIOP, ISDN, Multimedia Streaming, WAP

Client-Server Integration




Integration Bus




Integration Bus

Thick Client

Thin Client

Low Memor

y Client

SOAP, HTTP, FTP, Multimedia Streaming

HTTP

Non-compu

ting Device

Cable TV Telephone Networks,


Conclusion



Discussion We believe:

– The destiny of India will be fashioned in our classrooms.

– Teachers are at the heart of the educational system. Improvements to the system must enable teachers to become better teachers.

– In collective wisdom lies strength. We would like to see a system in which teachers, educationists, planners, administrators and students across the nation can work together to provide the best possible foundation for our youth.

IT can help build an education system in which:– Teachers and students can participate in the collective development of teaching

support material, which can then be made available across the nation.

– Teachers and educationists can participate in the collective identification of how the curriculum being taught should be improved and made relevant.

– Teachers, educationists and government planners can participate in the collective monitoring of the deficiencies in our textbooks and the creation of supplementary material to enhance them.

As a result, we think:– Teachers can become better teachers.

– The quality of educational material should improve.

– Planning and management of education should become more efficient.



It is time to act … We accept that technology alone cannot solve a complex problem such as providing universal,

high-quality education. Technological solutions have to dove-tail with the political imperatives, traditions and norms, individual and societal motivational factors, and the priority of other initiatives.

However, we believe that by advancing technology options, we increase the policy choices and improve the overall quality of the solution.

We must leverage existing initiatives and invest further to implement a large scale collaborative infrastructure that will provide broad based benefits to teachers and educators



Acknowledgement We gratefully acknowledge the input provided by the following individuals and organizations

Dr.Arun Kapur, Prinicpal, Vasanth Valley School Ms.Shalini Nambiar, Principal, Heritage School Mr.Pankaj Agrawal, Joint Secretary (e-learning), Ministry of IT, Government of India Mr.Vivek Bharadwaj, Secretary, NCERT Prof Marmar Mukhopadhyay, Joint Director, NIEPA S.Ramakrishnan, Executive Directror C-DAC Dr.B.K.Murthy, Media Labs Mrs Aruna Sundarajan, Secretary - IT, Government of Kerala Mr.Roy Mathew, Directro, Kerala State IT Mission Mr.Biju Prabhakar, Executive Director, IT@Schools Project, Government of Kerala Mr.S.P.Gaur, ex-Joint Secretary, Ministry of HRD, Government of India Prof J Veeraraghavan, Director Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan and Former Secretary

Education, Government of India Dr.Gulshan Rai, Executive Director, ERNET Chitra Ravi, Director, E-zVidya Dr.Sanjay Nigam, Living Media Dilip Chenoy, Deputy Director General CII N.Srinivasan, Director General CII Y.S.Rajan, Principal Advisor, CII Jeanie Herbert, Founder, Destiny Education Mumbai Pvt Ltd Bishop Charles Soreng (Chairman, CBCI Commission of Education & Culture) Fr P. P George, (Secretary, CBCI Commission of Education & Culture) Mr. Guilherme Vaz, Director - Schoolnet, Mumbai Manash Chakraborty, CEO, Learnet India Ltd, Mumbai Anjali Subramanya, Member - Advocacy and Research, Azim Premji Foundation Various school teachers and students

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