Online Tutorials: User Interface Design

Online Tutorials: User  Interface Design

Hema A Murthy and M Bhuvaneswari, IIT Madras E­mail: [email protected] Funded partially by: Intel Technologies,  Department of Science and Technology,  TeNeT Royalty, IIT Madras

Purpose: Education and Training • In the absence of good schools and good  teachers: – Enable students to pass the standard X  examination – The target users: children  •  How do we design the material to keep them  attentive? •  How can we make the lessons effective (given that  most children are I generation learners)?

Our First Experiment: Spoken  English • A system with a dialogue  – Beautiful pictures, animation – But NO TAKERS – Although material had rural content

• The reason – A child had to walk 3 Km (nearest kiosk)  for a  mere English Lesson! – The system did not interact with the child – Parents were quite unenthusiastic

Rural Children: not Ready for  Spoken English • Question: Is it too elitist? • Answer: TNSF survey – Most children in rural dropout of school early • Dropout rate as high as 40% in IX and X grades – No support system to help first generation learners

• Spoken English does not take them anywhere

– How do we correct this? • Solution: The TeNeT Online Tutorials

90 80 70

Age 7 - 14

Age 7 - 10

Age 11 - 14

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Level 1

Level 2

% of children who cannot read

(-) or (/ )

(/ )

% of chidren who can't solve numerical sums

Annual survey of education in India: Pratham

Online Education in the Vernacular:  TeNeT Online Tutorials Village Internet  Kiosks or Schools  

Tutorials, tests, solved  question papers

Online learning materials for “Rural” areas “Rural” Focusing on rural needs,  demands, …

What are the Issues in developing   Online Materials? • Poor infrastructure – Low bandwidth links (only 16 Kbps was  available) – School does not have Internet

• The users are Children – How do we make them effective (to ensure  attentiveness)? – Most children walk about 3 Km – need to  maximise the learning for time spent.

Our First Lesson • Video Lectures on lessons from the curriculum – No TAKERS • Too passive

• Everybody is VARY of a COMPUTER  Teacher • Lessons MUST be Interactive – Experiments on Attention Span of Children • About 2­2.5 minutes  • No explanation should be longer than this 

Our Second Lesson • Multiple Choice Questions – Radio Buttons • Children find it difficult to focus the mouse • Large buttons required

• Subjective Questions • Typing in the text box provided – finger typing • For correcting a punctuation – as long as 20 mins!  • Correction became difficult – Too many different answers possible

Old Version: Radio Buttons

Old Version: Punctuation

New Version: Punctuation

Back to the Drawing Board • School teachers were brought on board – Good teachers – Teachers who correct papers

• Strategies for cracking a Question Paper – Grammar correct ==> full marks! – Map marking/Diagram marking ==> full  marks! – Short/Long Questions – keywords are important  ==> Guarantee 50% marks

Focus on Learning that can  Guarantee Passing Exams • Which Subjects to focus – TNSF Survey: English, Maths, Science and  Soc. Science (in that order)

• English – Focus as much as possible on grammar – Letter writing – focus on relevant information

• Which languages – Each state has a VERNACULAR medium of  instruction ==> how do we SCALE?

Change the UI • Radio buttons converted to LIST BOXES • Encourage KEYWORD based learning – Short and long questions  • Answers hover around a few keywords • Bulletise the answers – Multiple choice on keywords

– Map marking and diagrams • Use HOT keys

The Learn Session(Biology)

The Learn Session (Maps)

The Learn Session(Physics)

The Practice Session(Maths)

The Practice Session(Maps)

The Practice Session(Soc. Sc: Long  Questions)

Other Issues • Assessment of students – Generation of question papers – Answer Online – Evaluate and give feedback 

• How do we ensure students go to the kiosks  and learn? – Incentives to study – get corporates to pay for  education at kiosk

• How do we monitor lessons at the Kiosk?

Online User Login

Question Paper Generation

Evaluation of the Paper

Questions: Will this work in a  REAL Exam? • Conduct a MOCK examination • 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 – First year, children were asked to write complete  answer and mark keywords. – Interestingly children marked the right keywords

Mock Examination 2006 • In January 2006 the Online Tutorial Mock Examination was conducted • It covered seven districts – Thiruvallur, Bhavani, Alagumalai, Nellikuppam, Mayiladuthurai, Orathanadu and Theni • 18 kiosks participated in the exercise • 680 students took the exam of which 158 were non Online TT students • Majority participation was from Thiruvallur, Bhavani, Theni, Mayiladuthurai and Orathanadu

Results of Mock Exam

265

257

pass

fail

Online TT pass – fail percentage (Total number of students – 522)

41

pass

117

fail

Non- Online TT pass – fail percentage (Total number of students – 158)

• Online TT students had a 50 percent (approx) pass record • Non-Online TT students had a 25 percent (approx) pass record • The huge number failures reiterated the necessity for products like Online TT that essentially aims at aiding students to pass their Board exams.

Board Exam 2006 Registrations picked up after the Mock exam 750 Online TT students took the Board Exam 93

fail

Results have come in for 580 students 487 have cleared exams bringing the pass percentage to 83.96%

487

The state pass percentage is 77.6%

pass

Performance in Mathematics and Social Science has been commendable

SSLC performance of 580 students

Students in Bhavani, Aranthangi and Theni have performed well overall Though Thiruvallur’s Board exam performance has been better than the Mock exam, marks scored by students continues to be poor

Summary of results: Public Exam • Results over the years – 2005 – 80% – 2006 – 84% – 2007 – 85% – 2008 – 89% – The results of 2008 are really significant given  that the students were continuously monitored

Online TT: some snap shots

K Marudhuvendran, School Topper, Alinjivakkam

Software development – How do   Scale? • The requirement • • • •

Web­based content (constraints on bandwidth) Interactive learning Bi­lingual content and voice overs Tools should be easy to adapt for other languages  and boards • Community MUST participate in CONTENT  development

• The solutions • Tools for content generation • Development based on – PHP, MySql, XML, Qt

Generate Usage Reports:  Corporate Requirement

Data at Kiosks using a Word Processor

Data Entry Using the Tool

The corresponding HTML page

Where do we go from here? • Can we build speech and handwriting  interfaces into the application? – Currently the system ONLY uses mouse clicks • A sort of directed learning

– Students can actually speak out/write out the  answers? – Can we modify the system to enable: • Microphone, handwriting?

Screenshots

Screenshots

Screenshots

Web Interface for TTS

Issues/Challenges • Kiosk Environment – Too noisy – Too much reverberation – How do we make ASR work in SNRs as low as  zero dB? – Mikes of very poor quality  • How do we handle the mismatch in the  environment?

Framework for Online Exams

Online Subjective Exams: Oral

Online Handwriting based Exam:  Signup

Online Handwriting based Exams

Online Evaluation

Where do we go from here? • Spoken English Programmes – Use of Automatic Speech Recognition and Speech  Synthesis – Development of tools for Spoken English  • Directed dialogue systems? • System continuously corrects the student? • Focus not on accent but on speaking fluently – Speak with a Malayali accent/ Tamil Hindi

Spoken English  Level ­1

Level 1: Building vocabulary

Spoken English Level ­ 1

When the girl is clicked the object is zoomed and 

Spoken English Level ­ 2

Level­2 Building Sentences

Spoken English Level­2

Level 2: The child picks words from the words given  and forms a sentence.   The system can read/record the spoken sentence and evaluate the spoken sentence

Where do we go from here? • Pace the learning based on the ability of the child – Machine learning techniques for education • Focus on pedagogy – Also focus on K­12 program

• Speech interfaces along with machine  learning can go a long way in helping with  education.

Disability, ICT, Rural India • About 3% of India’s population suffers  from some form of disability – A large percentage of this comes from rural  areas • The tutorials have been modified to enable  interaction for children with severe motor disability  (ideas borrowed from HOPE)

Disability, ICT, Rural India • We need Low cost Assistive Technologies to be  built in local languages – Speech recognisers, Speech synthesisers, handwriting  interfaces – Communication devices  » Eye­pointing devices, switches 

• We need JAWS like screen readers for the visually  challenged – Example, SAFA (from Webel Technologies)

• Conscious attempt by scientists and engineers to  make any Speech enabled tool SAPI compliant

Summary • ICTs have come to stay – Given the literacy levels in India (65%), speech  interfaces can go a long way in bringing the  marginalised sections into the mainstream – Technology must be inclusive – Quoting Mahatma Gandhi • “Education should be so revolutionised as to  answer the wants of the poorest villager, instead  of answering those of an imperial exploiter.”