VEDIKA LALL / WORK / SCHOOL KI GHANTI

School Ki Ghanti

An investigation into the causes of the Digital Divide and building new approaches to reimagine learning, by making it more accessible and inclusive.

︎ An award-winning inclusive design solution for Covid 19 Pandemic-related learning barriers.
︎ Semi-Finalist: Geneva Challenge 2022, Addressing Challenges of Poverty Alleviation.
︎ Duration: May 2020 - February 2022

How can simple, low-cost technologies become a catalyst for universally equal and accessible learning environments? As we move towards an increasingly digitised world are we taking everyone along?

In the 21st century, education is still a privilege for those with abundant resources. There is a need to find alternate and complementary interventions for students from vulnerable communities and disadvantaged backgrounds. We took a pandemic to accelerate this process and think of such interventions. On 24 March 2020, with the announcement of a lockdown in India, millions of children stepped out of formal education as people stepped inside their homes. Schools remained shut for months, leaving many children at home with no access to education.

SOLUTION

School Ki Ghanti ('school bell' in English), or SKG, is an intervention that uses a simple voice broadcasting system to disseminate audio modules to educate underserved children aged 6 to 12. It focuses on children from impoverished neighbourhoods and low-income households, mainly affected by situations like the recent Covid-19 Pandemic. To compensate for lost school days, we send out pre-recorded audio-based content via a voice broadcasting system every Monday to Friday at 4:00 p.m.

Tags:
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Design Research
System Design
Interaction Design
Communication Design
Social Entrepreneurship
Project Management
User Research
Intervention Design

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TECHNOLOGY AND THE SYSTEM

The technology of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) interacts with callers, obtains relevant information, and routes call to the listed recipients. In the suggested system, voice broadcasting service, a part of the IVR is deployed to send out automated phone calls to a list of phone numbers in seconds. The phone thus acted as radio, with pre-recorded lessons uploaded to the IVR dashboard and broadcasted at a specific time.

Our primary research revealed that 4:00 p.m. was the most relaxing time for at least one parent to have returned from work, and a phone was made available to the children. Therefore, we eliminate the need for not just fancy learning tablets or computers but even a smartphone, a need most learning technology fails to resolve.

1. We connect with local NGOs or individuals and leverage their network in underserved communities to cater to the children by retrieving their names and contact details, primarily phone numbers.

2. The IVR company equipped us with a digital dashboard to manage and schedule content to reach the registered students.

3. Each module was planned to be around four to seven minutes long. Furthermore, since we did not have the aid of props, we emphasised using voice modulation to capture the kids' attention. Sound effects are also added to make the calls more fun.

4. At the end of every session, we also gave them a fun activity so that the whole intervention did not remain one-way,

5. The IVR company will assist us in obtaining quantitative data on the number of minutes heard by each listener, allowing us to track and create a metric system.

6. SKG is not just a delivery system; it also measures the listenership and engagement levels of the listeners to constantly reiterate the service and send out detailed reports to our partners to maintain transparency and strengthen collaboration.

WAYS OF LISTENING AND ENGAGING

With one simple mobile phone, we hope to change the way our listeners learn. During our user testing, we observed organic ways of collaboration sprouting around SKG. When a farmer's family could not even afford a handset, dedicated teachers reached out to them, where students listened to our modules on loudspeakers. If one of our listeners misses their scheduled call at 4, their mother listens to the lesson and narrates it to them. We primarily foresee two distinct ways our listeners will access and hear our calls, giving rise to new learning experiences.

Scenario 1:
The phone call will be sent to the parent's registered mobile number. The parent can then ensure that the child actively listens to the call. As demonstrated in many cases throughout the pilot, they can listen to the call with the child.

Scenario 2:
Along with one of our partners, ‘The Child Trust’34, based in Delhi, NCR, we carved out a listening model for children from farming communities, where the remote facilitator makes the phone available to them in groups of ten. They would follow social distancing norms and listen to the call on speaker phone, after which the facilitator would facilitate a discussion and the exercise.

FUNDING MODELS

We intended to elicit an informal funding method to begin the pilot's implementation. These funds were designated to cover the cost of outgoing calls. We sought sponsorship from audiences we encountered on social
media platforms such as Instagram and LinkedIn.

Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding helped the SKG pilot get off the ground by acquiring the essential cash flow boost. We planned most of our campaigns online, provided time limits for raising funds, and specified precise monetary goals.

For our pilot, we have collected INR 55,000 from crowdfunding through Milaap40 and INR 3,300 through individual contributions. In month 1, we had 54 supporters for our cause.

Crowdfunding on FuelaDream41- Raised INR 1,89,920

Impact Funding
Impact investments to aim to have a beneficial, demonstrable social and environmental impact and a financial return. As a result, we want to connect with donors and philanthropic organisations to show how we can improve outcomes for the communities in which we want to operate.

Adopt-a-Child Programme
We intend to develop a programme that allows people/ collaborators to sponsor a learning module for as many children as they wish at INR 30 per child per week. Below is the breakdown of INR 30*. These funds are being utilised to sponsor the cost of broadcasting calls via the IVR system and fulfil legal obligations.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

We advise adopting a proactive quantitative data analysis and feedback evaluation mechanism to improve the modules' effectiveness consistently. For meaningful impact, we propose a system that tracks children's engagement levels across groups through parameters like how often they pick up the call and whether they hear the entire story. During the pilot, we gauged the response to the content identified different cohorts by creating a testing survey-based feedback model that assessed the success of the intervention based on the following criteria:

Interest
Retention and Learning

Below are the two parameters we articulated during the pilot to understand the engagement of our listeners:

Answering Rate;
Number of calls answered by the individual listener concerning the total number of calls made in a week. Success threshold was 60%

Engagement Levels;
The duration between answering the call and disconnecting is used to measure engagement levels. Success was measured with a variable threshold for each call depending on the length of the pre-recorded call.

As we sent out calls to children, we witnessed a consistent upward trend in the number of calls answered, barring a few days where we faced technical issues. Call answer rates vary between 70-80% on average. Average engagement levels were 60%.

After the pilot, we contacted 100 listeners who received calls from SKG daily to record their feedback and experiences using a Google Form.

We discovered that:

91% of the children are excited about our daily storytelling calls.

90% of the children listen to our storytelling calls regularly.
95% of the children like the stories.

96% of the children understand the stories being told.

84% of the children do the exercises narrated in the storytelling calls.

Nearly 71% of the children shared/narrated the stories with/to their friends and family.
Only 2% of children face difficulty in story translation and explanation.

More than 40% of the children were interested in recommending SKG to their friends.

More than 85% of the children want to continue the SKG calls.

3 of 10 Children are occupied with tuition or school homework

2 out of 10 Children have to help with household chores.

THE BENEFECIARIES

Listeners
Primary school children, and first generational learners from underserved communities of age 6-12 years.

Parents
Parents are reassured that their children are participating in a learning cycle. Their role is critical since
they are the ones who allow their children to use phones.

Educators
SKG provides them with a tool to reach out to their students outside the classroom and keep them in the learning loop.

Remote Facilitators
They serve as our bridges between listeners, their families, and the SKG team, ensuring that the listeners are informed about the calls and that the SKG team receives listener feedback regularly.

NGOs/Child Welfare Organisations
SKG brings a new dimension to their low-cost welfare strategies.

The Team
Storytellers, writers, design researchers, visual artists, and data analysts all impact the children,
reminding them that they are not forgotten.

Policymakers
Benefit from real-time, actionable data collection through the SKG system to inform local, state, and
central policy initiatives.

IMPACT AND OUTREACH

We began our intervention in Patna, but through the pilot, word of mouth, and social media campaigns, we reached 700+ children across seven cities in six months, working with 20 partner organisations. We had made 42,060 calls in two languages up to that point, creating 52,203 minutes of engagement. This was majorly attributed to all the collaborations.

Being a part of some of the country's largest welfare organisations boosted our performance and supported us to maximise our reach. As one of the many partners of Katha's 300M movement, we wanted to be more disruptive—faster, frugal, far-reaching, and more efficient. Katha's founder and Padma Shri awardee, Mrs Geeta Dharamrajan, introduced us to their unique earth-friendly curriculum that helps children become Reader-Leaders. Soon after, our collaboration with Sesame Street India, whose two characters provided additional voices and enhanced our audio modules, brought recognition to our intervention.

Endorsements from dignitaries such as Dr Swati Popat Vats, the founder of the Early Childhood Association45 and Poddar Jumbo School46, facilitated us in reaching a national audience. Together we enforced digital literacy in India, learning for all, and the importance of child advocacy.

INSIGHTS AND VISION

The partner organisations' engagement with listeners plays a significant role in raising awareness and directly influences SKG's listenership levels.

Most of our listeners are first-generation learners. Although the parents are not well educated, they are eager to help their child learn by ensuring that he or she answers the call.

A 5-minute-long narrative requires great efforts, including planning the schedule, content, communication, and impact analysis while keeping the target audience in mind and aspirations for scalability to reach the lakhs of children who are currently deprived of any learning opportunity. Building a multidisciplinary team with a range of skills and networks would be crucial to realise this ambition.

“Sunny Kumar, an eight-year-old boy from Patna, lives with his parents and older brother. His father works in a small office as a peon. His mother works as a housekeeper in various homes. Both parents want their children to learn and are working hard to provide them with a good education for a bright future. Because no one in his family had a smartphone and no internet connection, he could not attend his online classes during the COVID-19 crisis. Sunny can learn through stories thanks to School Ki Ghanti. He makes sure to complete the activities. He has a high retention capacity because he remembers the entire story as well as the information provided by the story.”

The team’s vision was to make all children feel included, help families and communities bridge the digital divide by providing resilient learning tools. We want to reach out to all the children in the country where SKG acts as a harbinger of the little joys of finding a friend over the phone and instil hope.