Design for Change | Tata Fellowship | Duration: 2 years | Locations: Mumbai, Khun, Boston, Dahanu
Learn English Through Stories
Learn English Through Stories
Students generate content for learning even as tablets tutor and teachers facilitate
I pursued my Masters of Design in communication design at the prestigious Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of technology, Bombay in Mumbai, India. Here I also fulfilled the role of Tata Fellow at the Tata Centre for Technology and Design. The Tata fellowship is a unique program that focuses on developing design and technology solutions that can take on the unmet needs of resource-constrained communities, within India and across the world. The program puts stress on on-field research and dissemination, conducting pilot studies and community outreach.
Within this program I worked with Prof. Alka Hingorani’s #lets team, short for Learn English through stories. The project aims at facilitating English language learning in resource constrained environments, through engagement with stories written and illustrated by the children themselves. There are two primary motivations, one, to reinforce the role of children as content creators rather than mere consumers, and two, to enable learning outside of a structured English language classroom.
LETS uses digital applications that employ Same-Language-Subtitling, voice overs, and voice recording software to encourage active listening and reading aloud. The books and stories illustrated and brought to imaginative life by the children supplement the animated stories they see and hear and respond to on tablets. The project is intensely collaborative, melding art and language and literature in ways that turn accepted relationships—teacher/learner, creator/consumer—on their heads.
TCTD, Mumbai
Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of technology Bombay, Mumbai, India
Within lets my role was two fold:
Lets: To work together with the team to facilitate lets’ vision—conducting baseline studies, on-field studies, collaboration with organisations, designing children’s books, facilitating art and storytelling workshops among others.
Dahanu Tales: Creating a product in addition to Lets digital application as part of my Master thesis. A game that uses alphabet specific alliteration to gamify language learning through oral repetition.
Design Process
Collaboration with organisations
G.S.S. Khun: A school in the remote village of Khun in Himachal Pradesh, the location of initial outreach, baseline studies as well as content creation facilitated by storytelling and art workshops.
Grammangal, Aina: A school following constructivist based approach in the village of Dahanu near Mumbai. The site for further research, on-field studies, prototype testing and validation.
Massachusetts Institute of technology, Tata Centre for technology and design: A visit to MIT for an exchange of ideas, research methodologies and networking
Sensibol: Our application development partner, Sensibol helped with qualitative assessment of proficiency with english and creating the Lets app.
Agastya Foundation: Agastya has a "Campus Creativity Lab" located on a 172-acre campus in Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh,[4] which houses science and art centers including an astronomy center and planetarium, center for creative teaching, an innovation hub, a science model-making center, the Ramanujan Math Park, an open-air ecology lab and many more. The campus receives over 650 children every day and also trains teachers from seven states in India. I carried out workshops with children. The idea was to facilitate exchange of ideas and methodologies.
Nirman: A youth initiative parented by SEARCH (Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health) founded in 1986 by Dr. Abhay and Dr. Rani Bang for rural health care and research. At Gadchiroli, Maharashtra I participated in workshops and community outreach that postulated effective and profitable work for the bottom of the pyramid in the field of health.
Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management: Management courses at SJM SOM in order to keep an overview on the economic aspect of design for bottom of the pyramid
Need
The need was articulated by two kinds of people that Professor Alka met in the larger Kullu district during her doctoral research years ago. Shyam Lal Ji a teacher in a school, who continues to be LETS’ primary contact, and the other was a person engaged in helping educated young men and women find means of livelihood other than farming (which is the primary occupation in these hills) without having to migrate to towns like Chandigarh and Delhi. He had lived in Delhi for years, and felt strongly that these young people should have an option to live and work in the hills and valleys where they’d grown up, and yet be able to participate in the larger, more cosmopolitan worlds represented by cities.
English as medium: 70% of all content on the internet is in english. With the internet reaching the nooks and corners of India, it becomes the medium through which people with limited access to infrastructure can self-learn.
The need for assistance in English language learning came from the field itself. Educators from G.S.S Khun, Himachal as well as Grammangal , Aina, Dahanu both, felt the need for the language to be taught or engaged with in more effective ways.
Problem identification
Curriculum: The curriculum taught via NCERT books or state board books is not contextualised to the socio-economical and historical culture of the place and is not mindful of its geography. When context and language are both alien the gap between student and language increases. English curriculum has Shakespeare and Wordsworth. Writings by native authors or authors that write about the region. (Lack of relatability with the subject matter) is absent. The content does not address the struggles and concerns of its audience, thus lacking empathy.
Teachers : themselves have low confidence and facility with language. They often use the native language to teach English, using a ‘translative approach’. While it helps students to use the structure of the familiar language to peg the new one, it is fraught with several problems. This translative approach is not done with conscious thought given to pedagogy Furthermore languages such as Hindi and English are different in several ways. English is phonemic, meaning that the pronunciation of a word isn’t always the same as the spelling. In spite of the drawbacks of this method it exhibits the “power of the familiar”, allowing students a framework on which they can peg and find similarities as well as dissimilarities. The lower confidence and unfamiliarity with the language calls for an incidental teaching of teachers as well.
English language is alien: In an environment where the language isn’t encountered at home, spoken at school, heard on media platforms or seen on signage, the language appears more alien. It becomes difficult to ‘surround’ or ‘immerse’ the student in it. There is no audio-visual input either.
Students aren’t part of the process of education, something that isn’t specific to resource constrained environments but an overall malaise of the education system. When students are more involved in the act of learning, ownership and acceptance, desire to learn increases.
Initial work
Outreach through Storytelling and Artworkshops: In order to understand the context of the users we did art and storytelling workshops with the children. Furthermore we spent time in their environment (fly on the wall) understanding their context and the presence of english or their lack of in their environment.
Storytelling and Art workshops carried out as part of the LETS team at G.S.S Khun, Himachal Pradesh
Kullu’s Curious Kollu: Integrating the illustrations and nature from Kullu, I created a children’s story book. The intention of the storybook was to imbue confidence in the children and impart a sense of ownership.
Insight: The outreach with the book taught us that engaging with content where they felt a sense of ownership (owing to the illustrations drawn by them) and can relate to (owing to the story set in a neighbouring town, borrowing from their landscape) makes it easier. The engagement with an alien language is made easier through content familiar to them.
Kullu’s Curious Kollu is a story set in the kullu valley. Kollu, a sloth bear is unable to understand how he finds food, on his journey he meets villagers from Kullu villages, priests and creatures like octopi among others. It was conceptualized after an initial field trip to G.S.S.S Khun, and Government Primary School, Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, in November 2014. Illustrated using drawings and sketches the students made then, and photographs that were taken during the trip, the book draws from the familiar and personal experiences of students to facilitate English language learning in remote rural areas. Made under the guidance of Prof A. Hingoran. Ruchi Shah and I created the layout and design of the book under the guidance of Prof A. Hingorani. The initial draft was written by me and several other edits and versions were created by Aarti Latkar and Prof. Hingorani. The illustrations were created in collage medium from the artworks of 35 students from G.S.S, Khun and government school of Kullu.
Baseline Study: A baseline study was conducted in May 2015 to measure the level of english proficiency of students in standards 6th and 8th. Post the initial visit, the project looked at book box. Book box is more than an out of the box method, it breaks the box. This is a strategy that uses same language subtitling to allow the viewer to listen to stories and read the accompanying captions, which are highlighted as reading progresses, somewhat like Karaoke singing. The English language project collaborated with Sensibol technologies as well for audio feedback mechanisms in order to check English proficiency. The collaboration with Sensibol technologies and book box nestled into the LETS application.
Insight: From the baseline studies one of the key points that emerged was — 10-15% of students struggled with alphabet recognition. Confusing ‘b’ and ‘d’, ‘p’ and ‘q’ among other such pairs
Stories created by Children: Further round of storytelling and art workshops were carried out. This time with an intention to create children’s books that would be later turned into animated stories that could be used following the book box method. Also checking if these stories with context and ownership improve their proficiency and engagement with English.
Secondary Reearch
Looking at existing attempts at improving English language learning in India and the world. Some of these were
http://flintobox.com/ Flintobox is a service for different age groups ( 2-3, 3-4, 4-8) that uses activity based learning and Montessori-like tools without bringing in an Indian context.While this service is targeted at urban households, it doesn’t bring in the context of even an urban Indian city let alone a rural scenario.
Constructvism
Constructivism is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. Within constructivism, social constructivism finds favour with my viewpoint. The social constructivist paradigm views the context in which the learning occurs as central to the learning itself (McMahon 1997). In several regions that we have visited it is seen that culture’s reflection on language and teaching is often missing. I could observe this constructivist theory applied at Grammangal, Aina at Dahanu. The fact that the teachers were themselves limited in their English proficiency made it however difficult for them to successfully apply their constructivist ideals. Furthermore in this area, their existed very little presence of English, whether in radio, tv, advertisements of signboards, making English alien. Distancing it from the children’s real life contexts.
Montessori Method
Alphabets made using felt for texture
Even as Montessori is appropriated by different school in different ways, some of the basic requirements laid down by Montessori are
Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children ages 21⁄2 or 3 to 6 years old by far the most common
Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options
Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours
A constructivist or “discovery” model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction
Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators
Freedom of movement within the classroom
A trained Montessori teacher
Activity based learning
Activity based learning believes in the idea that children are active learners rather than passive observers. Activity based learning builds confidence as well as the ability to take one’s own decisions. Curriculum is divided into milestones. One goes to the next level on one’s own pace. It seems to be a good method for mixed age classrooms where students can make their own decisions
Hole in the Wall
Students engaging with computers fixed in walls in Hole in the Wall project
Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, England experimented by placing a computer in a wall with access to the keyboard and screen and observed how children learnt through peer learning and through active participation. While there may not be enough statistics or numbers to support his claims, it is an incredible idea. Moreover it does support the belief that children are active learners and learn through discovery.
Dr. Seuss’s Books
Dr Seuss’s books help in the phonemic aspect of English language, assisting pronunciation along with pushing imagination with entertaining text and beautiful illustrations. They allow children to enter an interesting world, and are simple and very insightful in their word usage.
Mathematical Toys and Origami
wobbling wall of cubes
Much research went into toys that are used for incidental learning. The research was prompted by lateral thinking rather than a set path down the English language learning road. I looked into Mobius strips, hexaflexagons (3 face, 4 face, 12 face) , wobbling walls of cubes, 3D hexaflexagons and a myriad ways to use them as learning tools or tools of play. This research was heavily contributed to by Youtubers like Vart who go beyond DIY and explain ways in which origami goes beyond craft. Origami held particular interest as it is frugal and encourages self-learning.
Primary Data
I stayed at Grammangal, Aina, Dahanu for two weeks to observe and understand the lives that the students led. The functioning of the school, student’s behavior, their engagement with their surrounding as well as the subjects taught in school. During this trip I came across several educators and their interpretation of the socio-cultural landscape of the place, most notably Ulka Tai, Santosh Dada and Suryavanshi. The trip included a visit to the Rangkhod village to get an insight into the everyday lives of people.
1. Translative approach to teaching English, using Hindi and Marathi to teach the language: Teachers use Marathi words to explain English words and sentences instead of using simpler English words or using rules to connect one word to another. The students are also encouraged to use dictionaries. Unfortunately, this translative approach is rooted in the teacher’s limited grasp of the language itself.
2. Context of English:
English as a language is totally alien to the people of Aina. Signboards, banners or hoarding that use English words like ‘tailor’, ‘bus’, ‘wine’ are used as transliteration, sans the latin script.
The curriculum doesn’t reflect the concerns of the place. Their stories, their people and their livelihoods aren’t reflected in the text. Instead it speaks of urban culture or stories from the west. This gap in content creates a big one in language learning.
English is considered as a subject rather than a language. It isn’t encountered at home, engaged with through TV or any other media. The school is English and Marathi medium, yet no instructions are given in English nor is it reflected in labels/signage.
3. Low confidence in reading aloud and speaking.
The students at Grammangal are made to speak in the assembly for 10min everyday. They do so in Marathi, it is evident that most of them have very little confidence in speaking or reading aloud. If 5 students are to speak, fours of the students end up copying what the first one said. They would choose easier topics like the walk from school. Thus, teachers encourage them to speak about topics other than their daily routine and to be original.
In the English class when students are asked to speak up answers, frequent prompting is done to influence and little output emerges. Moreover the quality of input given by teachers isn’t enough, as teachers have limited facility with the language themselves. Audio or audio-visual input in English is absent, so is any input at home, resulting in very limited English input in their surroundings.
4. Several people that I encountered here were dismissive of the tribal culture. Some teachers for instance would judge them on their drinking habits, choice of religion and even the crops they grew. The people from the community themselves do not speak of their culture with much confidence. It is thus essential to use content that acknowledges their lifestyle and shows potential for possibilities.
5. Students from Zilla parishad schools who join Grammangal later are weaker, so teaching is often done in separate groups. In English lessons while a group is made to tackle words and their meanings and sentence structure, the other is helped out with spellings. Often the latter group, i.e the Zilla parishad students would have issues in identifying characters, spelling words as well as pronunciation.
6. Children have a rich engagement with nature, animals and work at home, much of which is never reflected in the stories that surround them in school curriculum. They would talk about several hunting expeditions, the kind of animals they’d hunt and later eat. Their relationship with certain animals, their distrust of cows, fascination with snakes and indifference to most birds. We would come across flowers that one could use to whistle and lotuses that would open up on their whim. On the trip to Rangkhod, Akshay and Ajay were our personal guides, pointing to us the local names of several trees. Akshay’s father is a self- taught ‘vaid’. He claims that he can find a cure to everything and identify a plethora of trees and herbs simply by looking at them, however he cannot name them. Thus, his ability to transmit knowledge that he himself would like to pass on, is severely constrained. The pervasive influence of the English language in the daily lives of the people can enable them to tap their potential fully and facilitate dissemination and exchange of knowledge, thereby leading to a happier and more empowered community.”Some of the insights vis-a-vis student’s engagement with English language are:
External Inputs
MIT visit
s part of the project I visited the Tata Center for technology and Design chapter at Massachusetts Institute of technology in Boston. Here we exchange research and design methodologies. Projects like Sugar Labs, Plant based water filters among others were presented. We understood the economical aspect of design for change, in that it has to be a model that not only uplifts the people but also is sustainable. Additionally I exchanged project ideas with the professors and students at Media Lab at MIT. This workshop was for a duration of two weeks and the exchange was continued later electronically
Agastya Foundation
Shoe Art workshop with children at Agastya Foundation
At Agastya Foundation I carried out workshops with children. Agastya Foundation helped me in my interaction and people skills with children, children that came from a rural context who didn’t share a language with me. I carried out a shoe painting workshop with them.
Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health
Search works with marginalised communities – rural, tribal, women and children – to identify their health needs and develop community empowering models of healthcare to address those. The models, focusing to reduce deaths, diseases, poverty and suffering, are tested rigorously by way of research studies. At Search’s centre at Gadchiroli as a part of tata fellows we looked at on field strategies. Furthermore we interacted with locals to understand their problems, viewpoints, infrastructure and identify problems. The experience helped me interact with people on ground and live their reality even if for a limited time.
Design Explorations
Tippy Tippy tap toy
A familiar toy juxtaposed with animals(from the context of children) and adjectives describing them. Incidental learning of adjectives and synonyms is intended
Advantages: Frugal, Incidental learning, borrowed from context
Disadvantages; Pictures and colours take precedence over word
Hexaflexagons/ Dodecahexaflexagon
Hexaflexagons are paper hexagons folded from strips of paper which reveal different faces as they are flexed. A Dodecahexaflexagon is a hexaflexagon that is designed such that it has 12 faces, faces that are discovered through flexing. Moreover the order in which you flex it would lead to a huge number of possible traversals. The idea was to write stories on each of these faces. Stories whose nature should be such that traversal from any face to any other face would create a sequence that in turn makes meaning as well as stories. The toy would enthral the reader into flexing the toy till they can explore all possible story patterns.
Abecedarian BooK
k Using contextual stories to teach A-Z characters drawn from the socio-cultural and geographical landscape of Aina, Dahanu. To reinforce akshar gyaan/ alphabet knowledge, these stories were to use alliterations. Repetition of letters through alliteration or by making stories cantered around a character whose name started with the letter were some strategies envisioned. The idea of the abecedarian book held promise, however the engagement with it could be less active. In my secondary research it became clear that rereading a book increases comprehension, phonemic awareness as well as engagement with the language. However, in resource constrained areas where the language is alien, who would read the book to the child multiple times? Readers’ families cannot read English most times and teachers may not be able to give attention to students. Thus more work was done on the same. Students with their limited proficiency may be able to read however more interest needed to be generated.
Tippy Tippy Tap toy
Hexaflexagons
Oliver Jeffers’ Abscedarian book
Dahanu Tales
A game using oral repetition of alphabetic specific alliterations weaved into stories. These stories were created using my understanding of the student”s context, culture, daily life, fauna, flora and folklore. Students repeat these stories based on the number on the dice rolled, they move forward through letters only when they successfully repeat the sentences. They are helped with transliteration texts and vocabulary (montessori like) tools to understand the words.
“Cawing Crows on Crazy Cows, Caw Caw Constantly,
Cawing Crows Create Confusing shadows Crazy Cows Can no longer follow,
Last of Caws, Last of Cows, Cawing Crows under Crazy Cows”
SECOND Update
Text and visual design and format.
THIRD Update
This game was tested with the kids at Grammangal, Dahanu. Testing of game was met with positive feedback. Students played the game enthusiastically and enunciated the sentences with increased confidence. Peer to peer learning is assisted by the game. Player pieces keep some students engaged while they wait for their turn, while other more competitive ones would prevent the other student from completing. They did so by prompting using similar sounding words, preventing the player from seeing the sentence or using the player pieces to distract. The use of context, familiar images and words (like balewaadi, taadi) is engaging.
Testing prototype of Dahanu Tales with students at Grammangal Aina
FOURTH UPDATE
In resource constrained areas one resource maybe used in multiple ways. The same game board maybe used as a storybook, thus I designed the game board, mindful of other potential uses. Hanging on the wall when narrating a story, spread on the floor whilst playing. The game is designed for a minimum seven kids to play at a time, it is printed on cloth and laminated to protect it.
Game Mat with vocabulary boxes and playing figures
Playing figures
Vocabulary Boxes
Transliteration and translation help guides
Conclusion
English language opens up a lot of opportunities. It allows people the chance to become a part of a larger community of thinkers, creators and doers. It helps one to imagine alternate realities. It also help in disseminating knowledge and information.In environments where it is alien, it is reduced to being a subject only rather than a language.
My projects attempts to increase engagement with the language, to use the familiar to teach the alien. Stories and visual imagery from the environment clubbed together with sentences rich in alphabet specific alliteration. It all comes together in the story based game called ‘DahanuTales’.
While the game has been successful in engaging the student. It tries to increase a student’s confidence in speaking and reading out loud. It does so by taking the aid of transliterations and translations. The project has gone through lots of explorations and trials, allowing for several visual design explorations. It has taught me to be closer to the user and understand their concerns and joys.
Initially, I was overwhelmed by the vastness of the project, the idea that there are several axis on which work has already been done. After visiting the field the context became clearer, the problem more defined. The constraints set owing to the more specific nature of problems influenced multiple trials and iterations with visual design as well as problem solving.
Dahanu Tales A-G, Round 1