1. Shikkhok.com
-­‐
An
Altruist-­‐built,
Ultra-­‐Cheap
MOOC
Pla6orm:
Building
an
Open
Content
Educa?on
site
for
Rural
South
Asian
Students
Ragib
Hasan
ragib@cis.uab.edu
Assistant
Professor
University
of
Alabama
at
Birmingham
and
Founder
–
The
Shikkhok.com
project
www.shikkhok.com
2013
ISIF
Award
Winner
for
Innova?ons
in
Educa?on
BDNOG1:
May
24,
2014

2. (pronounced
Shik-­‐khok),
is
a
Bengali
language
word
that
means,
literally,
“One
who
teaches/educates”

3. Shikkhok.com
Shikkhok.com
was
founded
by
Dr.
Ragib
Hasan,
a
computer
scien?st
and
professor
from
the
University
of
Alabama
at
Birmingham,
originally
from
Bangladesh.
Shikkhok’s
volunteer
teachers
include
researchers,
educators,
and
professionals/experts
in
various
fields,
who
are
spread
all
across
the
world.

4. How
to
change
the
world
with
li5le
investment
(using
the
power
of
the
Internet
and
Crowds)?
Low-­‐income
and
rural
students
in
South
Asia
with
limited
knowledge
of
English
do
not
have
access
to
quality
educa?on.
How
can
we
provide
top-­‐quality
educaBon
at
a
very
low
cost
to
the
millions
of
students
in
rural
Bangladesh
and
India?

5. Shikkhok’s
soluBon
• Develop
a
highly
localized
MOOC
with
a
hybrid
Internet-­‐non
Internet-­‐based
dissemina?on
model
• Use
the
crowdsourcing
model
for
both
content
development,
deployment,
and
marke?ng,
spending
as
li5le
as
possible

6. Who
we
are?
Educators:
Volunteers
spread
all
around
the
world
who
are
passionate
about
sharing
their
knowledge
in
na?ve
languages
Students:
Underprivileged
students
facing
language
and
technological
barriers

7. • Bengali
is
the
4th
largest
language
in
terms
of
na?ve
speakers
(250-­‐300
million
speakers
in
Bangladesh
and
India)
• Students
in
rural
areas
oeen
do
not
have
access
to
quality
teachers,
books,
or
good
schools.
• Higher
educa?on
opportuni?es
and
content
is
scarce
in
Bangladesh
and
India
– Only
50,000
opening
in
Bangladeshi
universi?es
and
colleges
for
incoming
freshmen,
while
there
are
more
than
300,000
eligible
students
– Many
students
drop
out
due
to
lack
of
cheap
higher
educa?on
opportuni?es
or
extreme
poverty
Background

8. Background:
InformaBon
Technology
to
the
rescue
…
• While
regular
compu?ng
devices
are
not
common/
affordable
in
rural
areas,
Mobile
phones
and
hence
Mobile
internet
have
significantly
high
penetra?on
in
Bangladesh,
even
in
rural
areas
(100
million
mobile
subscribers
as
of
early
2013,
in
a
160
million
popula?on)
• A
mobile-­‐op?mized
Bengali
language
MOOC
can
serve
as
an
alterna?ve
educa?on
pla6orm
for
rural
and
non-­‐
tradi?onal
students
• And
an
innova?ve
non-­‐Internet
based
delivery
mechanism
can
allow
rural
students
with
no
internet
access
to
get
high
quality
educa?on

9. Why
reinvent
the
wheel?
Because,
Exis?ng
MOOCs
are
not
enough
• Coursera.com
has
208
courses,
ALL
provided
in
English
language
• The
Khan
Academy’s
excellent
online
educa?onal
videos
are
also
in
English
• Unfortunately,
Bengali
transla?on
of
Khan
Academy’s
videos
are
not
popular
among
the
students
in
Bangladesh
and
India
(most
video
lessons
have
an
average
of
only
100-­‐120
views
in
1
year.
Example:
hkp://
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL58BD1F917975C9BE).
• Anecdotal
reasons
include
mismatch
between
the
lessons
and
academic
syllabus
in
Bangladesh/India,
cultural
mismatch/”lost
in
transla?on”/ar?ficial
and
literal
transla?on
– As
a
comparison,
Shikkhok.com’s
Culinary
arts
course
videos
received
an
average
of
300+
views
within
1
week
of
publica?on
(hkps://vimeo.com/user14642276/videos/sort:plays/format:thumbnail)

10. Project
Requirements
• Educa?on
medium
must
be
in
Bengali
• Content
must
be
highly
opBmized
for
mobile
phone
browsers
with
limited
and
slow
data
plans
• Lessons
must
be
short,
include
both
text
and
mul?media,
and
have
easy-­‐to-­‐use
student
registra?on,
feedback,
and
evalua?on
schemes
• Must
be
highly-­‐available,
low
access
?mes
even
in
Bangladesh
and
India
• Must
be
designed,
delivered,
and
publicized
at
a
very
low
cost,
and
provided
to
students
for
free
• Must
not
depend
only
on
the
Internet
to
deliver
content.

11. IdenBfying
the
Challenges
• Technical:
Iden?fying
the
best
tools
and
design
principles
• Team:
Organizing
and
coordina?ng
a
distributed
team
• Stakeholder:
Gepng
effec?ve
feedback
and
aken?on
informa?on
from
the
users

12. IdenBfying
the
Challenges
Cost:
Popular
MOOCs
such
as
Coursera.com
have
millions
of
dollars
in
venture
capital
funding.
– Coursera
itself
has
$22
million
funding
– Such
funding
is
unlikely
for
educa?ng
rural
students
in
Bangladesh
and
India
– Marke?ng/adver?sing
such
a
site
to
the
masses
is
also
expensive.

13. IdenBfying
the
Challenges?
• Overcoming
the
language
barrier:
Students
with
limited
English
language
proficiency
cannot
u?lize
exis?ng
MOOCs
such
as
edX,
udacity,
or
Coursera,
so
how
do
we
ensure
maximum
impact
for
such
students?
• Finding
teachers:
How
to
gather
teachers
with
the
right
exper?se
and
technical
know-­‐how?
• Reaching
stakeholders:
How
to
publicize
and
deploy
content
to
the
intended
audience?

14. The
Shikkhok
Solu?on
• Explore
Human
Computer
InteracBon
principles
and
methods
to
effec?vely
reach
the
rural
students
• Take
extreme
penny-­‐pinching
measures
to
develop
the
pla6orm
at
a
low
cost
• Use
social
media
markeBng
strategies
to
publicize
the
service
to
the
target
audience
• U?lize
non-­‐Internet
based
supply
chains
to
deliver
content
to
the
rural
students

15. Design
Strategies
Design
–
Use
an
itera?ve
model
for
crea?ng
the
most
effec?ve
user
interface
which
has
to
be
mobile
friendly,
less-­‐graphics
intensive,
and
suitable
for
both
smart
and
non-­‐smart
cell-­‐phone
browsing
–
Follow
a
User
Centric
Design
methodology
by
constantly
evalua?ng
user
responses
to
lessons
and
modifying
teaching
tools
accordingly

16. Design
Strategies
Development
–
Use
rapid
prototyping
and
design
methods
to
develop
courses
(lessons
and
lectures
augmented
per
user
feedback
and
view
counts)
–
Use
ultra-­‐low
cost
and
open
source
tools
in
a
crowdsourced
model
–
Use
Social
Media
marke?ng
for
free,
leverage
the
power
of
cloud
to
distribute
content

17. Design
Strategies
Evalua?on:
–
For
evalua?on
of
lecture
style
and
content,
measure
user
responsiveness
and
aken?on
span
for
each
lecture
(use
webpage
stats
to
calculate
how
long
users
stayed
at
each
lecture
page,
how
many
users
came
back
to
view
further
lectures,
i.e.
user
reten?on)
–
Measure
user
engagement
by
correla?ng
lecture
views
with
par?cipa?on
in
quizzes
associated
with
lectures

18. (Ultra-­‐cheaply)
Designing
Shikkhok.com
• Over
summer
2012,
we
rapidly
developed
Shikkhok.com
pla6orm
• Total
development
cost:
only
US
$15.00
• Total
number
of
registered
students
(first
6
months)
=
20,000
(aeer
20
months,
=
70,000)
• That
is,
cost
per
registered
student
=
US
$0.00075
only!
• Total
number
of
courses
designed
=
55
• 5500
lecture
views
per
day,
from
4000
unique
visitors

19. (Ultra-­‐cheaply)
Designing
Shikkhok.com
• To
minimize
development
costs
–
– Adapted
open
source
CMS
(Wordpress)
to
provide
authoring
pla6orm
– Mobile-­‐op?mized
front
end
– Host
all
media/videos
on
free
online
repositories
such
as
Youtube,
Dropbox,
imgur
– Use
Google
forms
and
embedded
scripts
to
automate
user
registra?on
and
MCQ
quiz
processing
• Cost:
Domain
name:
$5/year,
100
MB
low-­‐cost
host:
$10/year
(Development
(mostly
wordpress
theme
tweaking)
done
by
one
volunteer
for
free)

20. (Ultra-­‐cheaply)
Designing
Shikkhok.com
Site
design
and
graphics:
Crowdsourced
via
Social
network
contacts
(received
5
submission
from
a
volunteer
within
a
few
hours
of
request
on
Facebook)

21. Insight:
Social
Media
is
extremely
effecBve
GeVng
content
and
volunteers
To
gather
a
team
of
volunteer
teachers:
– I
posted
a
request
on
Facebook
– 10
volunteers
signed
up
in
1
day
– Two
courses
were
developed
by
day
2
– By
week
2,
5
courses
were
running
– By
week
8,
15
courses
were
started
– By
month
8,
25
courses
running,
with
5
courses
completed

22. Design
principles
and
strategies
for
online
educaBon
via
a
mobile
phone
Plain
text
(not
mul?media)
is
s?ll
the
king
of
content
– Users
of
mobile
phones
have
to
pay
per-­‐KB,
so
less
images
is
beker
– For
videos,
youtube
based
low-­‐res
streams
and
downloadable
3gp
formats
work
the
best

23. Reaching
rural
students:
An
InnovaBve
DistribuBon
Channel
• A
major
challenge
was
to
create
a
non-­‐
Internet
based
distribuBon
channel
to
reach
rural
students
without
Internet
access
• SoluBon:
Develop
innova?ve
distribu?on
channels.

24. InnovaBve
DistribuBon
Channels:
Using
exisBng
Social
InteracBons
Our
Approach:
Approach
1:
• Create
short
3gp
version
videos;
put
a
collec?on
of
courses
on
USB
s?cks,
give
out
to
phone
vendors/shops
in
rural
bazaars.
• Students
visi?ng
the
bazaars
can
load
the
videos
on
their
phones
for
free
or
for
a
nominal
fee
(charged
by
the
vendors,
not
us)
• (We
found
this
model
to
be
very
useful,
as
rural
bazaar
phone
shops
are
already
used
as
a
distribu?on
hub
for
music
videos/
songs,
and
people
are
used
to
going
there
to
load
videos
on
their
phones)

25. InnovaBve
DistribuBon
Channels:
Cheap
compute
boards
for
Shikkhok
Kits
Approach
II
– Use
ultra-­‐cheap
Raspberry
PI
computers
(Each
Pi
costs
only
$35)
– We
put
a
large
number
of
courses
on
SD
cards
on
each
PI,
add
a
donated
keyboard,
mouse,
and
ship
this
to
rural
schools.
(No
internet
needed,
we
preload
everything
on
the
SD
cards,
and
make
a
kiosk-­‐like
interface
easy
for
even
non-­‐computer
users)
– The
schools
can
hook
the
Pis
directly
with
regular
TVs,
and
have
the
video
lectures
delivered
to
students

26. SoluBons
-­‐
User
engagement
strategies
that
work
…
To
engage
users
in
easy
discussion,
integra?on
with
exis?ng
social
networks
is
the
best
strategy:
– Using
wordpress
na?ve
commen?ng:
about
2/3
comments
per
lecture
– Using
Facebook
comments:
at
least
30
“like”
and
5-­‐10
comments,
ques?ons
per
lecture

27. SoluBons
-­‐
MarkeBng
strategies:
uBlizing
social
media
Social
media
based
“free”
marke?ng
campaigns
worked
very
well
• Did
not
use
regular
adver?sements,
rather
used
Facebook
and
Twiker
to
publicize
Shikkhok
• Got
3000
fans
on
its
Facebook
page
within
a
few
days
• Each
lecture
announcement
is
viewed
approx.
by
4200
people
within
one
hour
or
so
(stats
via
FB
Insight)
• Total
fans
as
of
May
24,
2014:
24,579

28. What
we
have
achieved
We
demonstrated
that
localized
strategies
work
beker
than
globalized
universal
MOOCs
(local
language
based
and
cultural
context-­‐aware
content
is
more
effec?ve)
• E.g.,
Unlike
Khan
Academy
Bangla,
we
did
not
translate
exis?ng
MOOCs,
rather
developed
localized
content
from
scratch,
which
turned
out
to
be
more
useful
to
students.
(our
video
lectures
viewed
many
?mes
more
than
the
translated
content)

29. What
we
have
achieved
• We
developed
a
set
of
tried-­‐and-­‐tested
design
principles
for
educa?onal
content
delivery
over
mobile
internet
to
rural
students
• Evaluated
various
site
design
and
lecture
content
to
determine
the
best
possible
strategy
and
content
formats
that
serve
the
mobile-­‐internet-­‐using
rural
students

30. What
we
have
achieved
• Our
user
centric
design
and
constant
feedback/
evalua?on
loops
allowed
us
to
detect
strategies
that
work
(mobile
op?mized
video,
Facebook
Integra?on)
and
that
do
not
work
(e.g.
live
sessions
with
teachers
using
Google
HangOut)
• Constant
user
engagement
strategy
allowed
us
to
improve
our
lecture
content
(lectures
with
lower
user
reten?on/aken?on
span
are
re-­‐wriken/
developed)

31. What
we
have
achieved:
A
micro-­‐
lesson
model
that
YOU
can
use
Our
biggest
contribu?on
is
the
generalized
set
of
design
and
evalua?on
principles
for
the
development
of
a
localized
micro-­‐lesson
model
that
can
be
effec?vely
used
by
e-­‐learning
systems
in
other
languages
in
other
parts
of
the
developing
world.

32. The
results?
Some
numbers
…

33. Results
–
some
numbers
…
• Since
it’s
start
on
August
1,
2012,
Shikkhok.com
has
– 50
online
courses
on
diverse
topics
such
as
Bioinforma?cs,
Neuroscience,
Computer
Programming,
Finance
101,
Calculus,
Cloud
Compu?ng,
Cancer
Nanotechnology
– Total
number
of
students
registered
for
all
courses:
70,000
(actual
student
count
larger
since
registra?on
isn’t
mandatory)
• The
Computer
Security101
course
alone
has
3000
registered
students
– Total
number
of
quizzes/tests
taken:
50,000+

34. Results
–
some
numbers
…
• Total
unique
visitor
count
in
in
20
months:
1
million
• Total
lecture
views
in
20
months:
3
million
• 80%
visitors
are
from
rural
Bangladesh,
using
mobile
phone
browsers
• Shikkhok.com
is
gepng
5000-­‐6000
unique
visitors
a
day

35. Quarterly
Visitor
data
as
for
2012-­‐2014

36. Results,
that
ma5er
• Shikkhok.com
is
the
first
e-­‐learning
MOOC
site
in
Bengali
language,
completely
free
and
open
for
everyone
• Students
from
rural
Bangladesh
and
India
regularly
contact
us
to
express
their
sa?sfac?on:
– “I
wanted
to
study
Computer
Science,
but
had
to
drop
out
of
school
due
to
poverty.
Shikkhok.com
has
given
me
the
chance
to
enter
the
wonderful
world
of
computer
science
once
again”
–
tes?mony
from
a
user
from
Jamalpur,
Bangladesh

37. Shikkhok.com’s
Awards
Winner
of
2013
Google
RISE
Award
Winner
of
2013
ISIF.asia
Award
for
InnovaBon
in
Learning
and
LocalizaBon
Winner
of
2013
Deutsche
Welle
Best
of
Blogs
and
Online
InnovaBon
Award
Winner
of
2013
Internet
Society
Community
Grant

38. Future
goals
• To
create
a
complete
set
of
courses
for
grade
6-­‐10
of
Bangladeshi
school
curriculum
– Project
?meline:
Summer
2014
– Technical
content
development
begins
from
May
2014
– Content
distribu?on
and
pilot
studies
in
several
Bangladeshi
schools:
September-­‐October
2014.
• To
create
a
complete
set
of
courses
for
grade
11-­‐12
of
Bangladeshi
highschool
and
college
curriculum
(Fall-­‐winter
2014)
• Reach
at
least
200,000
students
and
100
schools
by
the
end
of
2014

39. Summary:
What
did
we
learn
from
Shikkhok.com?
• Lesson
1:
It
is
possible
to
design
successful
MOOC
e-­‐learning
sites
at
ultra-­‐cheap
cost
via
an
altruis?c
volunteer
model
(Shikkhok
cost
only
$15
to
develop
and
deploy
compared
to
$22
million
for
Coursera)
• Lesson
2:
Aken?on
to
HCI
design
principles
such
as
user
centric
design
can
allow
beker
reten?on
of
users
and
improved
aken?on
to
content
• Lesson
3:
To
reach
rural
students,
focus
should
be
more
on
non-­‐
Internet
based
textual
content
designed
for
low-­‐bandwidth
mobile
phone
browsers
• Lesson
4:
Localized,
na?ve
language
educa?on
is
more
successful
than
the
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Ques?ons??