Bangladesh LIVE

Online education has been around for a long time to widen access and enhance equity in education. Hundreds of courses are now available from the world’s best universities and professors. Many of these courses have generated eye-popping registration numbers but very negligible completion rate. Because learning online is isolating, voluntary and thereby prone to distraction, often in absence of real-time engagement with the teachers and peers, which has always been a crucial component of learning.

So we envision Bangladesh LIVE, a union of e-learning platform and traditional classroom, where the educators/trainers can reach in a distant classroom LIVE, and the students can pursue courses in an organized setting.

Urban areas in Bangladesh have more academic/training facilities than rural areas. Bangladesh LIVE is expected to bridge this divide by bringing quality education/skill development opportunities to the people from hard-to-reach rural areas by utilizing ICT and resources from distant urban locations.

Zico and Sumon from a hard-to-reach rural coastal area in Bangladesh passed HSC exam from a local college. Both of them were willing to pursue their higher education in a Public University and looking for admission preparation coaching which was not available at their locality. Zico being from a relatively well-off family afforded the cost involved in staying away of his home, whereas Sumon did not. Although Sumon initially had resorted an eLearning platform for admission coaching but later lost interest, got distracted and eventually dropped out. Zico managed admission at the University of Dhaka and Sumon could not but get admitted at a local college.

Henceforth, Sumon again intended but could not partake in some quality skill development training, which is also not available around him but at district headquarter far away from his home.

Although more than two-third of the population in Bangladesh are from rural areas, students from rural areas like Zico and Sumon are struggling to get access to academic and training opportunities unlike their urban counterparts. The case is true for early childhood care to tertiary education/training facilities.

Availability of qualified resources/educators/trainers at rural areas is one of the explicit contributing factors to this problem.

We will primarily serve the youth from remote hard-to-reach rural areas in Bangladesh who are suffering from unequal access to quality education and skill development opportunities due to their geographic location. 

Being originated from such disadvantaged rural communities in Bangladesh, we, the team members of Bangladesh LIVE, have personally gone through the experience of unequal academic and skill development facilities in our respective place-of-birth. In addition that, from the constant hue and cry for quality education and skill development among our friends, families and relatives residing at those rural areas also make us aware of the current situation e.g. demand and supply of quality education and skill development facilities. For instance, although most of the rural families recognize the importance of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and Information Communication Technology (ICT) for their children, only a few qualified local school teachers of EFL and ICT cannot cater these demands. Opportunities to develop these skills out of academic settings are beyond their imagination.

Our solution will address these needs by bringing proven EFL and ICT courses (initially) with qualified teachers/educators/trainers relatively available in urban areas to those remote rural areas using ICT platforms and local facilitators.

Digital Divide is shifting from whether people have access to digital technologies to what people are accessing. There are about 2.7 million applications available on Google Play Store alone. Every day more data is added to the enormous collection of human knowledge, all of which is but a click away. Having a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, how we are using those is our concern. So first of all we would like to increase the outreach of ideal use cases of digital technologies for learning and skill development among rural youths. And we would like to do it in an interactive way (assisted learning) rather than let the learners take up the learning endeavor at his/her own pace voluntarily (self learning) which often ends in vain.

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MIT