Oil Dikhya – Home based Learning.
During the first wave of the Corona Virus pandemic in 2020, a lot of students were deprived of regular schooling. Since certain target areas had poor internet connectivity, steering online schooling was difficult too. OIL India wanted to reach out to such students with a Home-Based Learning programme, to help students continue their learning journey. Oil India in collaboration with Schoolnet India launched OIL Dikhya – Home Based Learning Solution on 17th September 2020.
The challenge entrusted upon Schoolnet was to design and deliver a programme to create a learning environment that engages the students, even with remote learning and suiting the restrictions like low internet connectivity, unavailability of smart devices or infrastructure to conduct online classes at school.
Once the situation analysis began, the first step was to determine how to make the best use of the online tools and pedagogical strategies to enhance the learning environment for the teachers who had least exposure to it. A low bandwidth tool that provides them a better learning environment and helps them to continue their home learning with or without the internet was an ideal solution to the situation. A breakthrough was achieved when IVR technology was thought of as a learning disseminating tool and was adopted and adapted.
Thus, as part of the programme, the content was disseminated to the students through two-pronged approach:
1. Internet based lesson videos shared through Whatsapp/Youtube
2. IVR based lesson audios through a dedicated channel
To ensure that above mentioned approaches achieve the desired learning outcomes, training the supplementary for the technology was of utmost importance. The supplementary teachers engaged in the project were extensively trained by the academic team on content creation and pedagogy, dealing with remote learning. The teachers have been supported with coaching on identifying smaller concepts within the identified chapters and creating videos/audios which provide learning nuggets to students and are appropriate for understanding even with a remote learning environment.
The results of the programme that continued between the tenure of Sept 2020 to December 2020 were also encouraging. More than 6000 students across 30 schools were reached through the interactive platform. In October, around 62,884 minutes of content was accessed by students. The outbound dial outs and call backs, were two primary strategies adopted to ensure engagement. It was found that call back users accessed the content for more than 3 to 4 times a month, which reflects the effectiveness of the content to generate engagement. In all the months, above 50 percent users have spent more than 3 minutes on the platform over each call, which can be translated as the platform offered very relevant content for the users. In terms of duration listened, Schoolnet content listenership was good because on an average IVR episodes were of 4-5 minutes in duration.
While the total average duration of the platform is around 5 minutes per users, the monthly average usage for call-back callers are even more encouraging.
During the assessments and evaluations which were done monthly it was found that the the IVR platform was very helpful during the pandemic situation when schools were closed and physical classes were discontinued. During that period, the platform not only provided them with the opportunity to continue with their lessons for regular subjects, but also facilitated them to learn the life-skill topic. While English, Science and Computer literacy were easy to grasp via an audio platform it was difficult to elaborate and explain Maths problem.
IVR as a technology has been in the business ecosystem for more than 20 years now , but leveraging this for education and improving learning outcomes was commendably thought and executed by team Schoolnet India.