Current Programs

What We Do

Digital StudyHall (DSH) is a research project that seeks to improve education for the poor children in slum and rural schools in India. We digitally record live classes by the best grassroots teachers, transmit them on the "Postmanet" (effected by DVDs sent in the postal system), collect them in a large distributed database, and distribute them on DVDs to poor rural and slum schools. Education experts and teachers use the system to explore pedagogical approaches involving local teachers actively "mediating" the video lessons. By harvesting a "viral phenomenon" of community participation, DSH aims to help train teachers and deliver quality instruction to underprivileged children. The project is a collaboration between computer scientists and education experts. The main aspects of DSH are:

A "people's database of everything"
A network of hubs and spokes
Mediation-based pedagogy
Technology for sharing community-generated video

People's Database of Everything

The Google book scanning project is attempting to create a digital database of all books ever written by humans. In a similar spirit, in the Digital StudyHall project, we are working on creating a digital video database of "everything." The DSH database, however, has some important unique characteristics.

First, the DSH database is video-centric. This is important for places like rural India, which, by optimistic estimates, has an adult literacy rate of about only 60%. Second, at least at the beginning, the DSH database is being populated with systematic and coherent sequences of lessons based on curricula designed and sanctioned by state boards, so that they can be easily adopted by our target schools. The video recordings adhere to the curriculum topic by topic, lesson by lesson, and chapter by chapter, so it is well-structured. This is in contrast to unstructured and nearly random collections of snippets of knowledge that is difficult to find easy adoption and acceptance in existing schools. Third, the recordings in the DSH database are made by the best teachers at grassroots level. These include the best teachers in middle-class urban schools, the best teachers in rural schools, and other idealistic and enthusiastic volunteers such as university professors, scientists, college students, and NGO staff members. In short, the database is created by the people, and for the people.

This approach has important advantages compared to traditional forms of content creation, which is typified by flash-ware and slide-ware (Powerpoint slides). Good teachers are often the best "performers." It is their "showmanship," their way of relating to their audience, their "people skills," that are their most potent tool, a tool that is beyond the reach of flash-ware or slide-ware. Although adhering to the guidelines of state board syllabus, the lessons taught by the best teachers are highly interactive and activity-based. Video, though not perfect, comes closest to capturing the "performance" in flesh. Another problem with the flash-ware and slide-ware approach is that it is slow and expensive, as one must insert a technical professional into the authoring process.

We envision building a database that contains all subjects, encompassing all grades, spoken in all local languages, covering all state and national boards. This is a database that every child (and adult, for that matter) should have access to. We believe such a database will have profound implications for liberating knowledge, democratizing learning, and revolutionizing education.

A Network of Hubs and Spokes

DSH is not a physically centralized system. Instead, DSH is designed to work as a decentralized network of hubs and spokes. Each hub is a center of education excellence and the hubs themselves "talk" to each other. The spokes are typically the poor rural and urban slum schools that need help the most, schools that lack good teachers, good content, and other resources. Each hub works on content production (typically in a local language), content dissemination in its neighborhood, teacher training, monitoring, and evaluation, and interacting and sharing with other hubs.

One of the most important roles played by a hub is to ensure that the content generated at the hub is appropriate for the target audience of the underprivileged children to be served by the hub. We cannot simply record lessons in middleclass schools and hope the resulting content can be meaningful for a rural audience. (English-medium vs. Hindi-medium, CBSE boad vs. UP board, for example.) At our Lucknow hub, we enlist the best teachers from a middleclass school, stage and record specially designed classes in front of an audience of children from the neighborhood slums, who share similar backgrounds as our other target audience. For a similar purpose, at our Pune hub, selected teachers from a middleclass school are sent to teach and get recorded in government schools in the neighborhood.

Yet another way for a hub to accomplish scalable content production and ensuring its relevance is to involve the spoke schools in the content production process. At our Bangalore hub, we identify the best teachers in the spoke schools served by the hub, organize them into a regular recording schedule, and the resulting content is shared with the other peer spoke schools. This approach not only ensures content relevance, but also motivates the spoke school teachers: the teachers being recorded strive to learn and use the best methodology to put on the best shows they can, and the peer teachers who receive the content are inspired to match their peers. Involving the spoke school teachers in this manner is perhaps an even truer manifestation of the philosophy behind the "People's Database."

To the first order of approximation, we at DSH see ourselves as "plumbers." We do not build schools from scratch. Instead, we work with existing schools, organizations, and teachers: they get to do what they have always wanted to do, but with the aid of a "digital pipe" that DSH helps them set up, they can now hopefully reach a larger population of under-served children more effectively.

All text and images are from the Digital Study Hall.

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