Covid19: Technology-mediated Education

Samira Hosseini obtained her BSc degree in Applied Physics from the University of North Tehran, Iran, and her MSc degree in Polymer Chemistry and a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She served as a postdoctoral associate at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico while holding a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. Currently, she is Director of Writing Lab in the Center for Educational Innovation at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico. She also holds the position of research professor at the School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnologico de Monterrey. She is the author/co-author of more than 25 scientific publications, 19 book chapters and is the inventor/co-inventor of 4 intellectual properties. She is a member of the Mexican National Academy of Researchers (level one) and is on the Editorial Board of different international journals.

Primarily, this project aims to provide state-of-the-art facilities, training and development programs, resources and opportunities for faculties and students who are deemed to be traditionally left behind in terms of learning opportunities and/or socio-economic status following the UN´s sustainable development goals defined in the year 2015 (UN, 2015). To this effect, this project intends to implement its objectives and methodologies by targeting the primary audience (HEIs, faculty members, students, host communities) in its proposed plan in order to enhance their teaching and learning experiences and give them a competitive advantage in and outside of the Universities, socio-economic prominence, geographical locations, and the world at large. This project will develop a customized learning management system (LMS) to ensure digital literacy and continuous teaching-learning process for the named stakeholders and institutions during and after Covid-19 through technologies such as gamification, learning analytics, and machine learning.

     To identify four higher education institutions (HEI) in rural areas of Mexico that are traditionally left behind in terms of digital (virtual) learning following the current Covid-19 contingency.

1.  To address the digital literacy gaps and levels among disadvantaged groups of students in HEIs in Mexico through the situational (diagnostic) analysis and sustainability plan for implementation of the solution.
2.  To implement a customized learning management system (LMS) usable in different devices and operating systems such as Windows, IOS, Linux, PCs, laptops, tablets, androids, etc. for sustaining teaching-learning and to ensure that learning standards in low-setting areas are not lowered particularly during this pandemic.
3.  To incorporate a Learning Analytics (LA) dashboard and Predictive model with the LMS that uses active data about the users and machine learning algorithm to monitor and predict learning progress.
4.  To incorporate gamification elements in the customized platform by assigning levels of ICT literacy for the users (beginner, intermediate, and expert) and to help motivate them to transit each level through awards, recognitions, and certifications.
5.   To share the results of the pilot study, experiments and roll-out the solution to cover other parts of the world and international audience/market.

Whereas, the customized platform and learning resources will be provided and implemented online and made accessible to all the participating institutions and students. The proposed system will be designed to enhance engagement, motivation, and change of attitude (e.g. negative mentality to learning, or lack of motivation) towards digital-mediated education or e-Learning in the rural areas or geographical locations of Mexico.

 Project Summary and Supported Technologies include:

·      Learning Management System (LMS): implement a customized learning platform for the students and e-content delivery.

·      Gamification: incorporate gaming element to help motivate the students and facilitate change of attitude towards learning (e.g., through awards, leaderboards, badges, and certification)

·      Technology-Mediated Learning: support and enhance the students learning experience through digital technologies and learning progress or transitions (i.e. from Beginner to Intermediate and Expert levels)

·      Learning Analytics: provide dashboards for monitoring and analyzing the students’ progress, and to help derive information that can be used to provide personalized support for the students based on the student’s profiles and individual learning styles.

·      Machine Learning: utilize active data (IEEE, 2020) captured about the students learning process to predict the learning behaviors, patterns, and adaption of the contents e.g. through chatbots and predictive models.

Faculties and Students in four higher education institutions (HEI) in the rural area of Mexico, and then beyond following the outcome of the pilot study and implementation.  These HEIs are in communities who have difficulties accessing even the most basic required materials such as internet and other ICT tools. We know that between 2007 and 2017 attaining higher education among 25 to 34 year-olds in Mexico rose from 16% to 23%, although this is still far below the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average (44%) and below countries such as Colombia and Chile (30%). There is also a huge disparity along the ethnic or cultural lines. In 2015, only 6.6% of indigenous 25 to 64 year-olds (OECD, 2020) had completed a higher education degree, compared with almost 19% in the rest of the population in Mexico.

Our project aims at providing basic access to ICT tools, and then promoting acquisition of digital skills. It becomes evident that poor access to ICT training will result in professionals not adequately prepared to participate in the labor market and respond to the needs of the national commerce and productiveness, which will only deepen the unfavorable social conditions that they currently face.

Our proposal is developed by taking into account the levels of digital literacy for the stakeholders (teachers, students, etc.) in response to the Covid-19 epidemic and mode (virtual) of learning towards ensuring a continuous and effective learning experience for those in rural areas or low-settings (case study of Mexico). Educators has been faced with the challenge of achieving quality education and effective learning content delivery at this present time of the pandemic. We note that the way in which learning takes place will proportionally change with the contingency plans and innovations particularly following the advancement of technology-mediated (virtual) learning (Woolliscroft, 2020, IEEE 2020). The teachers and students are not left out with the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic on education. The most affected will be those who participate in teaching and learning in low-settings, otherwise, are said to be traditionally left behind in terms of opportunities and technologies for quality education (UNICEF, 2018). Therefore, this project strongly believes that technology-mediated education can be accelerated for all irrespective of background or geographical location as defined in the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDG) (UNICEF, 2018) through investment in world-class digital or technological solutions. 

Our main goal as a team is to further the research on educational innovation. We are passionate and committed to exploring and understanding the power of education and its transformative potential. However, to learn that there are regions in Mexico that are struggling to gain access not just to quality educational opportunities, but to the possibilities of ICT skills is troublesome to us. We felt that in order for us to continue furthering research, we needed to address some of these inequalities so that we could not only attain more benefit and acknowledgement about ICT usage, but also instill and aid other communities to discover and appreciate the value of digital skills and its implication (value) in the globalized era.

Myself and the Solution Team are affiliated with Tecnologico de Monterrey (TEC, 2020), a private institution in Latin America (LATAM) which under its Institute for Future Education initiative has developed a digital for tertiary education program (D4TEP) aiming to support the digital transformation of the HEIs in LATAM and third world countries such as Caribbean and Asia (Teclabs, 2020). The goal is to develop educational programs to help accelerate plans of the HEIs towards development and improvement of their digital transformation strategies and roadmap for future education and sustainability in the diaspora. In these lines, we have partnered with different organizations like Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Education Sector – Mexico Division in completing a recent project on “Impact of digital technologies on the advancement of teaching and learning process in higher education in LATAM: the state of preparedness in the time of COVID-19 pandemic”. The study uncovers the extent to which digital technologies have been used to advance the teaching and learning processes in HEIs in LATAM, as well as determine the bottlenecks and barriers to why digital technologies may not be effectively implemented for teaching-learning by applying a factorial diagnostic analysis for its investigations. The results of the IDB project show that not only do the users hold the emphasis on lack of digital technologies or infrastructures as one of the main challenges for education in those regions, but also digital literacy for both the educators and stakeholders can heighten the transformation of teaching-learning processes in HEIs.

As part of my volunteer activities in 2014 and 2015, I have been working at the United Nations to educate refugee children. I was living and working in Malaysia at the time, and the refugee children were mostly from Myanmar. The schools were mostly hidden as some of the children were from the family of political asylums. They were located in some dangerous neighborhoods in Kuala Lumpur, and we were at constant risk while commuting in such areas. Moreover, we had to report cases of Tuberculosis (TB) among the students. The hygiene was poor, and there were many diseases the refugee families may contract in such conditions. These unpleasant circumstances made many volunteer teachers leave the schools within the first few weeks of their service. Despite the situation, I stayed active for as long as I was living in Malaysia and provided my services to this vulnerable class of society. Similarly, in this newly designed project, we will run various programs in underprivileged areas in Mexico where poverty and crime may go hand in hand to threaten public safety. However, we are determined to succeed in the mission we have ahead of us regardless of the adversity we may face.

I have been working as the leader of Writing Lab for the past two years. In this role, I am leading a team of 8 assistants, 5 academics, and two coordinators while the network of our national volunteer members in the peer-tutoring program has reached 344 (98 mentors and 246 mentees) people. At writing Lab, our primary mission is “Breaking Barriers, Promoting Knowledge Acquisition and Research Passion through Collaboration and Advanced Educational Innovation for Achieving Quality Production”. We provide services to the entire community of employees at Tecnologico de Monterrey. This involves training our faculty members across 26 campuses of the country and conducting collaborative projects with our national and international network of scientists and administrators in higher education. We have reached out to more than 500 professors to provide our services and trained over 490 professors in all aspects of research and educational innovation. The outcomes of our work at Writing Lab over the past two years have been promising, granting my team and me “The Hero of the Year” award for this team's outstanding achievements. I hope this experience can fuel the new project we propose to have a more significant impact across our community. 

It is expected at the end of this project that the practical hands-on digital learning experience for the students will fast-track assimilation and application of efficient learning and technology-mediated education following the challenges and aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic in rural areas of Mexico and beyond. Thus, contributing to education and socio-economic development of the country both within and across the national boundaries.  

The system at the end of its implementation will provide participating students, faculties, and management with functionalities that enable them to view the topics, access the courses and lab materials, as well as other useful documentation for study using their personal computers and devices from any location and at any time.  

Also, the personal opinion of the stakeholders about the offered courses/program will be actively collected and analyzed and used to foster overall objectives and individual learning experiences for the students.   

In general, the customized learning management system will stand out because it will allow for an organized wide variety of technologies, resources, and activities in one place aligned with the basic aim of sustaining the existing learning pathways for the students and socio-economic development of the host institutions and nation in the diaspora.