Massively Empowered Classrooms:

A blended learning environment for India

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…)

The problem: the quality cliff

The problem: the quality cliff

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…)