As a part of the program, tablets were handed out to students across 400 villages, receiving a participation of 30,000 students from class 5 to 8
The Hybrid Learning Program works with students from the rural villages of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. As a part of the program, tablets were handed out to students across 400 villages, receiving a participation of 30,000 students from class 5 to 8.
The program was launched in July 2015 by Pratham, an NGO working in the education sector since 1995. A tablet is shared among ten students with five in each group. These groups are heterogeneous with a mix of boys and girls from Class 5 to 8 who are given the freedom to choose when they want to meet during the day and what they want to learn on the tablet. A parent is appointed as a leader to supervise the one-hour meeting and to charge the tablet. Some of the many pre- loaded activities are—videos explaining the properties of light, geometrical figures and an application which teaches simple English.
Leela, a seventh-grade student from Nadi, a village in Rajasthan says, "I have never seen a tablet before, we were happy about meeting in mixed groups and learning together. Previously, after school, the only kind of recreation would be to cook food, today I have something more constructive to do." With the desire to be a teacher, Leela speaks simple English with the help of the videos provided.
The Hybrid Learning Project is the brainchild of Madhav Chavan, who has been working with Pratham for the past two decades. He was inspired by the "Hole-in-the-wall-project," a path-breaking research carried out by Dr Sugata Mitra, Chief Scientist at NIIT, where a computer was placed inside a wall of Delhi's slum area, and the participation of students with the computer was observed. "Today we have a limited approach to education. For example, if a student gets a question wrong in an exam, he ends up with fewer marks and is termed a failure, which is unjust. If one is a Science student, he/she must be scientifically literate and must learn about concepts related to science, not depending on school work alone," says Chavan.
To gain access to content, students have to log in via a password provided, and attendance is marked. "We once realised that none of the tablets were password protected any more, as the students managed to hack into the system. Soon, we re-worked on our security through our back-end process," shares Neha Sharma, the overall Project Head at Delhi. Few villages have access to the Internet. However, the team encourages parents not to provide SIM cards as it will be difficult to keep a tab on the sites visited by students.
"Initially, students were shy and would seldom talk to each other, now they have become comfortable, as the program has helped them develop healthy interpersonal skills," says Swarnali Das, the Field Project Head in Rajasthan. "It was a roller coaster ride as our field staff did not know what Bluetooth and WhatsApp were, let alone operating a tablet. Everything had to be taught to them from scratch," she says.
"Initially, I required assistance to communicate with children. But the joy that the program brings is gratifying," said Gopal Kahar, a 39-year-old field staff.
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