Serving the Underserved:A Technological Perspective

Rakesh AgrawalMicrosoft Search Labs

Mountain View, California

Backdrop

• 2/3 of the world’s 6 billion people live in the developing world. More than 1 in 6 live on less than $1 per day.

• Huge inequity in the availability of healthcare, education, and opportunities that condemn millions of people to lives of disease, poverty, and despair.

Inequities exist within developed societies too.

In this talk…

• Focus on school-level education for concreteness

• Draw upon the experience from participating in the 2005 IBM study for the President of India on the use of IT for improving education

India’s Education System: 1951-2002

1951 1981 2002(*)

Literacy Percentage 18.33% 43.57% 65.38%

Educational InstituionsPrimary 209671 494503 664041Upper Primary 13596 118555 219626High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 7416 51573 133492

Enrollements (in millions)Primary 19.2 73.8 113.9Upper Primary 3.1 20.7 44.8High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 1.5 11 30.5

Dropout Rates (%) NA 82.5 66

Teachers (in '000)Primary 538 1363 1928Upper Primary 86 669 1157High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 127 926 1777

Pupil Teacher RatioPrimary 20 38 43Upper Primary 20 33 34High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College 21 27 34

Public Expenditure (% of GDP) 0.64% 2.92% 4.02%

Significant achievements, but problems remain …

Problems of School Level Education in India

Poor performance• 39% dropouts in primary, additional 15.6% in secondary, additional 11.7% in

higher secondary

• Pass out ratio is 50% at Class X and majority of them pass in 3rd division

• Less than 8% finish all schooling to qualify for a college education

Poorly trained teachers• 51% of primary teachers are higher secondary or below

• Only 44% have received in-service training

• Absence of learning material for teachers to update their knowledge

Poor teacher-student ratios• Ratio in primary is 1:43, secondary and Higher secondary is 1:34. About 9%

of primary schools have a teacher-student ratio > 1:100.

• 1.4% of primary schools have no teachers, 19% have only one teacher for all classes.

Poor quality of material• Poor quality of textbooks, out-dated curriculum

Source: IBM Report on Improving India’s Education System through Information Technology, 2005

Attacking Complex Problems*

1. Define goal2. Find the highest-

leverage approach3. Discover the ideal

technology for that approach

4. In the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology on-hand

1. End the disease2. Prevention3. Vaccine that gives life-

time immunity 4. Prevention by getting

people to avoid risky behavior (requires its own four point plan)

Framework Application to AIDS

* Bill Gates. Harvard Commencement. June 7, 2007.

Applying the Framework to Education

1. Define goal2. Find the highest-

leverage approach3. Discover the ideal

technology for that approach

4. In the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology on-hand

1. Quality education to all2. New pedagogy3. Individualized learning

with teacher as a discussant

4. Internet-based mass collaboration to help teachers teach better and improve the educational infrastructure

Framework Application

Education Web

• Participation of experts, teachers, parents and students in the development and revisions of curricula

• Sharing and collaborative development of lectures, assignments, tests, etc.

• Tools for capturing feedback on textbooks (errors, better explanations, supplementary readings)

• Collaborative translation and localization of educational material

Technical Challenges

• Tools for creating and updating content (Wikipedia++)

• Trust and authoritativeness of content

• Personalization of search to find the material suitable for one’s own style of teaching

• Making material accessible to teachers who do not have a internet connectivity (make use of e-choupal experience)

• Bootstrapping and incentives

Is Serving Underserved a Valid Research Field?

Microsoft Research’s Digital Inclusion 2005 RFP Award RecipientsDigital Inclusion Kit in Health and Higher Education Mesh Networking: A Testbed for Security Issues and Community Actions Integrated Healthcare Information Services through Mobile telephony in Botswana Robust and Low-Cost Networking for Rural Kiosks Wi-Fi Enabled Phones for Bridging the Cognitive Divide and Transforming the Classroom Experience Project of Modern Long-Distance Education for Agricultural and Pastoral Area in Tibet Autonomous Region Design and Development of a Low-Cost, Low-Power Portable Medical Device Appropriate Technology Interaction for Facilitating Peer-to-Peer Internet Microfinance in Uganda Poor Man’s Broadband: Peer-to-Peer Dialup Networking Deployment Wireless Ambient Networks on Heterogeneous Rural Environments DSH and CAM: Leveraging Low-Cost Technology for Rural India Wireless Grids: A Technology for Rural Networking AIR: Advancement Through Interactive Radio Immersive Language Learning Using Smart Phones Smartphone Health Information and Epidemiology Network (SHIEN) — Vietnam Speech Interfaces for Health Information-Access in Underserved Communities Early Warning Flood Systems Based on Sensor Networks

Microsoft Research, India

TECHNOLOGY FOR EMERGING MARKETS: http://research.microsoft.com/research/tem

Multiple mice and cursors on a single PC

Consuming content at rural kiosks

Learning from recorded lectures

Concluding Thought

Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.

Bill Gates. Harvard Commencement. June 7,

2007.

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