Simple Education Foundation
This write-up is about my experience of working as a Communication Designer with an NGO called Simple Education Foundation. This was my first attempt trying to combine visualization and contribute to a community that strives to create a healthy landscape for strengthening quality child education by working with rural schools in remote pockets.
About SEF
Simple Education Foundation is a non-profit organization based out of Delhi. It began in 2013 with the belief that every child must have access to quality education irrespective of their social and economic backgrounds. The organization attempts to implement holistic school transformation programs that help strengthen government schools from within Simple Education Foundation.
They implement the ‘Whole School Transformation’ model, which is designed to empower key stakeholders to lead the change they envision for their school communities. SEF is honed by the belief of continuing to work directly with low-income school communities in diverse landscapes and understand their challenges and needs, to develop successful design transformation models that will make quality learning more relevant for their ecosystem and ultimately enable stakeholders to take charge of learning and teaching quality within their schools.
“To live in harmony in this ever-changing world, we believe our children will continuously learn, reflect and grow into self-aware individuals who act with alignment in head, heart, hand, and soul in service of all beings.” — SEF’s Student Vision.
An integrated curriculum was designed rooted in the philosophy of the Head, Heart, Hand, and Soul that prioritizes the integration of 21st-century skills & socio-emotional skills with academic learning daily. This was envisioned to share a collective sense of how these four elements could be implemented and evaluated to ensure the growth of students and the SEF community by developing different skills and dispositions regarding the same.
Nature of work & data gathering
The main project dealt with designing a prototype for SEF’s learning units to make it more visible and relevant for educators and students within the system by understanding their curriculum that included the 6E model and SEL (Socio-emotional Learning).
But to get a solid base for our prototype, the priority was to conduct user research. The pandemic had a serious impact on children’s learning and it made it even more challenging for both students and teachers to adapt to E-learning. There was a multitude of problems being faced at both ends. So I and my teammate interviewed school teachers who majorly seemed to find online video/Whatsapp-based teaching hard since network issues in remote villages area isn’t an exception and it is also a matter of affordability.
Here is the list of the questionnaires that were addressed.
Q1.What media do they currently use as forms of communication among themselves and with the students and parents? Are there any restrictions on it as of now?
“ WhatsApp and Zoom are mainly used for interaction with students and parents /Now Google Meet is also being used post orders from SDMC (South Delhi Municipal Corporation). Calls are also made to families, to discuss challenges, etc. In-person spaces have been used inconsistently to interact with parents- book distribution, ration distribution, etc. There are major restrictions with media platforms where many students aren’t able to access Zoom classes (Different challenges- not having a device, multiple siblings sharing, bandwidth issues, etc.). WhatsApp learning and teaching have been found to be ineffective and inconsistent- in terms of improving student growth or learning. There hasn’t been much interaction with the families of new students who are being added to their respective classes due to a lack of planning and structure. Device unavailability and accessibility are other major issue being faced. There are only one or two devices per household and it gets challenging when parents’ work timings clash with the online class when the child needs a device to attend sessions. Data usage limitations add on to more pressure especially if there are siblings who need to attend sessions at the same time”.
Q2. How much of a difference is observed by them with in-person classes and online classes?
“It is challenging to connect with all learners as many students are unable to join online classes. Monitoring student work in detail, and observing students and their work is something we’re unable to keep track of. Online classes are a lot slower compared to in-person learning and teaching. Technical glitches on the teacher’s end, lack of devices, difficulty in internet connectivity, unfamiliarity with tech, etc. are other problems being faced. Teachers who are the age fifty and above take their own time with technology — (especially screen sharing on Zoom). There is a lot of skill gap and it takes time for them to adapt”.
Q3. Are teachers interested in researching more on the subject or do they just stick to what the Government syllabus provides them?
“It’s a combination of both since it is a matter of time management too”.
Q4. How has the attention span of students varied across the different media used for classes?
“This varies across grades. The attention span in younger students is approximately around 20 minutes on Zoom. Hands-on activities work better since they are more engaging and enable students to remain more focused. Students respond to material that is more colorful and activity-based”.
Q5. How much visual content do you aim to incorporate into a single class?
“More visual content for the younger grades (1,2,3) — makes learning faster and easier”.
Q7. Are there any further challenges that you would like to touch upon?
“Smartphone availability during the morning school hours for Zoom classes has been quite challenging since it requires parents to carry it along for work as they are unemployed. Battery draining is another problem educators face and we often receive calls during class intervals. There have also been major tech-related challenges regarding video.
Q8. Most students seem to have only one device per household for attending classes and such, this leads to issues such as simultaneously occurring classes for multiple siblings. What do you do in similar situations?
“Having a timetable is helpful. Teachers can hold classes in different slots. Fewer number of classes are preferred to avoid exhausting internet pack”.
Q9. How many classes per day do students have?
“It is usually an hour of Zoom class per day but some educators prefer taking two classes depending on the content they want to cover and if students can join at a later time
Q10. How do students respond to videos/learning material being sent over Whatsapp?
“There’s a low response on WhatsApp. This method is inefficient due to isolation. There’s a need for students to constantly be reminded over calls regarding the content shared via Whatsapp.
Q11. Is student response enhanced for animated material/videos rather than static visuals? Is there a difference or is the response the same? If not, what do you think can be done to improvise?
“Yes, videos work better. Videos that are too long don’t work well and a discussion is needed to be intervened to get better engagement. Teachers sending their videos where the concepts are broken down- are also helpful (contextually relevant material). Static videos get boring (just images and dialogue boxes). Facilitators will have to pause and make an effort to make it more interesting through interaction. Videos having more movement get a better response”.
Q12. How did children cope with online classes initially? How have they adapted over a while?
“It has been difficult to get students onboard to the Zoom platform. It is crucial to build a sense of culture and routine, especially for first graders. A certain level of parent onboarding also is required and helps especially with smaller grades where parents are helping children operate the phone. Children enjoy seeing each other in these spaces, watching videos, and performing fun tasks together”.
Q13. What are the few creative techniques being incorporated to enhance learning?
“Going by ‘Think, Pair and Share’ we have set up a classroom routine that also includes meditation. Students engage in interactions where they collaborate and share ideas through hands-on activities. There are also ‘Fun Saturdays’ happening in the Bhim Nagri school for students in grade 5 as of now. Breakout rooms are actively used. Videos are also shown during classes around which the content is structured and discussions are encouraged. Integrated learning activities are conducted along with subjects comprising SEL (Socio-emotional Learning) and art.
Q14. Is storytelling/narratives being used while teaching? If so, what are they and how are they being used?
“Storytelling through images helps but requires fluency and a lot more pre-planning.
After gathering primary data, we took our research forward by understanding how E-learning works and if similar forms of narratives could be built to visually equip SEF’s curriculum model with visibility and simplicity as much as possible for both facilitators and students.
We browsed through platforms like Byjus, Khan Academy, etc. to get better ideas about their content framework. Many of the popular e-learning platforms use gaming to make content more spell bounding and engaging. We thought of using a similar approach for their learning units as well.
Gamification: Is It the Future of E-Learning | by Sciforce | Sciforce | Medium
Though this seemed exhilarating, we weren’t supposed to gamify the entire curriculum because then there would be no requirement for facilitators at all. The R & D team wanted something more explicit and it was to be focused particularly on educators since the 6E model was a new development from the R & D’s end and it hadn’t been implemented yet. Though gamification sounded interesting, we had to drop it altogether.
The other choice we had was to use iconography which got approved. The R & D team took us further into their integrated curriculum that enabled us to feel its essence and give more depth and direction to our work.
Introduction to the curriculum model (learning units) and how it works
SEL
Social-emotional learning (SEL) describes the mindsets, skills, attitudes, and feelings that help students succeed in school, career, and life, such as a growth mindset, grit, and a sense of belonging at school. Educators use many names for these skills, such as “non-cognitive skills”, “soft skills”, “21st-century skills”, “character strengths,” and “whole child.”
Social-emotional learning is an important part of a well-rounded education. Research shows that SEL is an important lever for boosting academic achievement. Positive social-emotional skills are also correlated with improved attendance and reduced disciplinary incidents — (SEL-User-Guide.pages (wi.gov)
The pandemic that took its toll on children’s learning encouraged the R & D team to add SEL into the curriculum to make academic learning interdisciplinary.
The curriculum plan that spans six weeks is an online learning module for grades 2–4. It had been crafted for facilitation through Zoom, Whatsapp, and Gmeet. It aims to inculcate socio-emotional learning.
6E model
The 6E model is a structure consisting of six elements that are included in their chapters each week depending on the context and subject they are learning. The 6E’s are Evoke, Explore, Extend, Evaluate, Embody, and Essentials. The diagram below further explains what each of the E’s signifies.
SEL and the 6E model are combined along with the syllabus to inculcate values and understanding for personal growth to ensure a strong sense of independence within the child. They have been structured around concepts they learn that keep them more engaged and active.
Iterations for 6E’s
The R&D team introduced something known as the Facilitator’s Guide which encompasses an introduction to SEL and 6E elements and the role they play within the system. They have also been given certain guidelines as to what each of these key-learning units must be included in and in what manner within their academic lessons.
What we were supposed to do was to visually enhance the guide and make it more simplified for better understanding. Since we fell short of time to ideate on the entire guide, we started off ideating on iconography to represent each of the E’s. They came about as very abstract going by the description of each of them. So we decided to rule out making the icons by fixating on the definition of each E, to avoid abstraction, and complex visuals and just take a more literal approach to make it visible.
After multiple iterations (that spanned across three weeks), we came up with a final iconography map that dots each of the E’s together on a paper plane (SEF’s logo).
You can check out our ideation process on Shreya Ravi on Behance.
(Apart from the main project, we also worked on internal branding projects with the Comms team which were minor since they included making easy-to-use invites and newsletter templates to benefit student interns for better outreach within their communities).
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Cheers!
