massively empowered classrooms: a blended learning
Post on 04-Dec-2021
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People
Technologies for Emerging MarketsMSR IndiaAndrew CrossEd Cutrell Deepti DesaiBill Thies
Microsoft Research ConnectionsVidya Natampally, Siddharth Prakash, Satish Sangameswaran
Advanced Development Group,MSR IndiaNaren DuttaAjay ManchepalliRahul Kumar
Sriram Rajamani
Madhusudan Parthasarathy, Illinois(sabbatical in MSR India)
Teaching community:Madhavan Mukund (CMI)Kavi Mahesh (PESIT)Viraj Kumar (PESIT)C. Pandurangan (IIT-M)
659Universities
33023Colleges
25.9 MHigher Ed Students
800K Faculty Count
INDIAN – HIGHER EDUCATION
2nd Largest population of Higher Ed students in the world.
87% Undergraduate
Students
4.2MDistance
Education Students
3.3M Students doing
Diploma Courses
17.9% Gross Enrollment
Ratio (GER)
Undergraduate engineeringColleges: ~4700Faculty : ~50,000Students: ~4,000,000
SCOPE: INDIA – ENGINEERING EDUCATION (outside of IITs, NITs, BITS…)
Students only motivated to
clear exams & get a job—not to
master material
Shortage of qualified
teachers in several colleges
Poor evaluation
system
Industry
Govt…..
Who wants what?• Students: Want careers, high paying jobs
• Teachers: Want career advancement and job satisfaction– Salary significantly improved recently due to pay
commission efforts, and hence not a primary issue anymore
• College/University administrators: want improved branding for their institution– Internet connectivity is becoming a non-issue
• Industry: want to hire best students– Most startup activity is around connecting students
to employers
• Government: want to invest significantly into infrastructure, people and processes– Needs guidance on how to do this effectively
Can we use technology to help these people?
MOOCs and IndiaCurrent enrollment consists of adult learners, and aspiring students (top 1%) that are driven to learn
Most people in our scope not using them
– Students: Syllabus different, does not help then crack their exam, get a job
– Teachers: Does not help them get a promotion
– HOD/Dean: Does not help them grow or advance their institution
Question
What does it take to draw students and teachers to participate stay engaged, and feel rewarded?
Massively Empowered Classrooms (MEC: http://www.mecr.org)
MSR India Research project on blended learning with significant community participation
Experiment with combining technology and social engineering
MOOCs vs MECNot online learning… blended learning
Kids go to college; they learn from their teachers
MEC is a modern textbook (expert video lectures, quizzes, and forums, like a MOOC
Key differences:
• Content sychronous with syllabus:– Each course is tailored for a university/syllabus.
– Students exposed to only their syllabus.
– Key idea to attract undergraduates.
• Involve the community:– Don’t just reach students; work with teachers/colleges
– Help them help themselves; help them use MEC
– Again, key to atrtract undergraduates at all levels
The MEC system (www.mecr.org)• MOOC elements: Runs through the semester
Videos+Quizzes+Forums+Certificates(students and teachers)
• Can be tailored by teachers make a course for a college:– Teacher has access to videos and quiz bank
– Tailors the course according to the syllabus; adds videos
– Chooses questions or adds new questions to form quizzes
– Add notes, add homework, etc.; get back info on students’ progress
– All using a web interface.
– Uploads to cloud in 10min….
• Plus more in production:– Download videos for offline use
– Complete offline mode that allows you to take the course entirely offline + quiz questions by Messaging over phone!
Pilot: Spring 2013
• Participation (goal: 1000+ students)– 2000+ students, 600 completed the first quiz, 300+
stuck through most of the class– 27 colleges official partners, rest under “general
enrollment”– VTU registrar issued official circular for all colleges to
participate
• Significant student engagement– Certification program is a huge draw for students
• Teachers are supportive, but not very active– Working on teacher engagement in V2
This semester… ongoing (July – December 2013)
• Two pilots– Pune university (with local industry support)
– Gujarat university
• Focus: Teacher engagement. – Teacher training workshops in each university
– Handout a USB stick with all videos, PPT slides, questions etc
– Experiment with crowdsourced authoring and question banks
– Experiment with certificates/rewards for teachers
– Experiment with offline content consumption
Technical Challenge:Intelligent Tutoring Systems
• Synthesis problems– Automatic question generation (from templates)– Important because of plagiarism! Each student should get a
different question!– How can a teacher declaratively specify a
“find what Prim’s algorithm will do in the third step in this randomly generated graph …(which has the nice property that it is drawable and has a
unique vertex added at the third step)”
• Automated grading (with intelligent feedback)• Automated interactive simulator to teach an algorithm• Quizzes that automatically adjust according to performance
…. Synthesize a good grader…. collaboration with the Sketch-team and Gulwani’s team
Summary
• Our interest– Goal: Uplift the quality of engg education in India– Blend MOOCs and Moodle-like models in a robust
system– Studying “blended models” in India (huge social and
technical challenge)
• Technical changes– Build flexibility in grouping, hierarchy, authority, and
deployment of content to reach all universities in India.
– Synthesize a good grader (problem creation, grading, correction, teaching…)
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