STEMinist - a chatbot based tutor

The core tenets of India's education system are standardised curriculum and exams. Mainstream curriculum does not incorporate elements of computational thinking, career exploration and gender awareness. This model is unlikely to be effective in a rapidly changing 21st Century world of work pointed to the need for knowledge application, rather than knowledge acquisition. 

Our solution - a Chatbot - seeks to enable anytime, anywhere learning for students to learn at their own pace and build self-learning behaviours which are critical for the future (specifically a post pandemic world). Through the chatbot, we also aim to create access to women STEM role models, for adolescent girls, whose stories are relatable and inspirational. 

 If scaled globally, the solution can enable young people to become confident learners, create their own learning pathways, and access wider networks and resources. The chatbot will build learning  behaviours among users equipping them for the future of work.

Globally, women make up less than a third of those employed in STEM and in India their share is only 14%. A study of 1900 female students conducted by Quest Alliance showed that while 73% wanted to pursue a STEM career, only 59% intended pursuing STEM education post 10th grade indicating a lack of understanding career pathways. Another study (84% girls) indicated that nearly 37% believed that men are better than women at Science and Math. During the COVID-19 pandemic, An estimated 32 crore children were affected by the restrictions and nation-wide lockdowns. With continued school closures, dropout rates and lack of career aspirations have been high among students. Access to digital learning was particularly problematic.

Through our solution, we aim to break barriers that learners have to prepare for the future of work. These include breaking gender stereotypes, providing exposure to technology skills to learners from underserved communities, building STEM and career exploration mindsets, enabling anytime, anywhere learning at one’s own pace to enhance learner agency.

Our solution is to provide blended online and offline learning to students in about 400 government secondary schools in the states of Karnataka and Odisha  

Our solution involves building a chatbot to provide a self learning experience for young boys and girls. They will have access to learning content around five themes - self awareness, gender, career exploration, STEM careers and coding for social good. Thematic webinars will be held to reinforce learnings and the chatbot will be equipped to clarify any doubts. A facilitator will handhold learners through the user journey.  To supplement this, we will also conduct parent and teacher engagement to create a supportive environment for the learners. 

A baseline and endline survey will be conducted to understand the changes in learner perceptions and skills. 

We would like to use this challenge to build the chatbot solution in order to offer it to state education departments in Odisha and Karnataka in order to scale and reach maximum learners.

The key constituency for the program are adolescent students in government secondary schools with a particular focus on girls. The secondary stakeholders include the teachers and parents who are key influencers when it comes to decision making for the students.

While access to education for women has steadily increased in India over the last decade, we are far from achieving gender equality. For instance, the gross attendance ratio of girls in rural areas is only 58%, indicating that nearly 42% of girls enrolled at this stage do not attend schools regularly (MHRD, 2018). In higher education, girls who pursue science subjects are found to congregate in certain courses which support traditionally female-dominated occupations, like nursing (86% girls to 14% boys). There is also a gender gap, particularly in courses related to science, mathematics and engineering. The gap further widens due to poor school-to-work-transition, where women constitute only 14% of the total STEM workers in India, compared to the world average of 28.8%. From over 500 recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India’s top award for Science and Technology, only 16 have been women.

Further, a high digital gender gap adversely impacts women’s education and employment. The Mobile Gender Gap Report (2019) estimates that women are 28% less likely to own a mobile phone and 56% less likely to use mobile internet. The World Economic Forum (2016) estimates that if this current disparity continues, only one woman will gain a STEM related job for every 20 lost globally.

Through our work and surveys conducted, we have also seen that a high percentage of girls believed that men are better than women at math and science and that while a number of them wanted to pursue STEM careers, only a small percentage intended pursuing STEM education post 10th grade indicating a lack of understanding of career pathways. The pandemic has deepened these adverse impacts on girls and pushed them further away from their education journeys. 

Our solution seeks to combat these by providing awareness and access to learners despite the pandemic and other social challenges. We will do this by providing opportunities to interact with relatable role models to inspire students to dream big. The chatbot will also help develop career exploration mindsets and build confidence to use technology, specifically geared towards rapidly changing work scenarios and the future of work.

Our solution aligns well with the dimensions of the challenge. It is built to meet learners where they are - in their homes- to allow for anytime and anywhere independent learning at their own pace. The solution also provides awareness around how gender influences their everyday lives, career awareness specifically to encourage girls to continue their education and pursue careers, and enhance confidence with using technology. The solution also seeks to engage parents in order to create a supportive environment for learners.

STEMinist - the chatbot- has been developed and is currently being piloted in the state of Karnataka with 250 students. It was developed as a response to COVID-19 schpp; closures and remote learning needs and is being offered free of cost and is being used actively by 65% of the students. We are also actively collecting feedback from the students who use the chatbot sporadically on how it can be improved.

The chatbot through its constructivist pedagogy takes the student through a learning process which is not only engaging but also promotes 21st century skills of creativity and collaboration. Currently we are offering a course on coding via block based programming languages called Scratch Jr but aim to scale the chatbot to also provide STEM, career and gender related content.

Our solution's innovative propositions are:

• It provides anywhere, anytime learning breaking boundaries of geography and accessibility

• Focus on STEM career-pathways and digital literacy essential for future-of-work, ensuring girls access career opportunities

• Position STEM mindset as integrated into daily life and emphasise blurring of boundaries between STEM and non-STEM pathways 

Currently the solution is serving about 250 students.

Moving forward, we hope to serve students across 7 states in India - about 150,000 - 200,000 students

In the long term, this solution could be adopted by state departments across the whole country who can implement it in every government school.

Currently there are about 5 technology experts, 5 program implementation staff and 2-3 content specialists on the team.

The team has been working in the Secondary Schools/ STEM mindset space since 2015 and specifically on the chatbot solution for one year (since 2020). The team at Quest has worked extensively in designing curriculum for girls and women, addressing gender violence, working with adolescent girls in remote and rural India in delaying the age of marriage and first pregnancy. Teammates also include tech experts and content specialists who are qualified to design solutions and content aimed at young girls from marginalised and vulnerable communities. The team is also suited to design material for the virtual space using aspects of technology while ensuring accessibility for all. During the pandemic, the team’s focus and efforts shifted to taking all of our work virtual and digital solutions were ideated, prototyped and put into action to continue our work with learners.

The organisation also makes continued investments in research and advocacy specifically for more girls in STEM.

In order to build an inclusive and diverse team, we do not discriminate based on gender, religion, race, ethnic origin, or any other criteria and we are an equal opportunity employer. We have a diverse staff force made up of people from various states of India. Our staff is 53% female and our senior leadership is 60% female. The organisation culture is geared towards making people comfortable to voice their opinions and challenges and this is reflected in our monthly team meetings and learning days. We follow the principle of WIBE - Well-Being, Inclusive, Belonging and Equity in all our work - We have a dedicated 'People Team' that is responsible for ensuring the workplace remains inclusive and safe. As a policy, 5% of the Quest staff come from the communities we work with, thereby keeping our work rooted in the context of the communities we work for. 

The Quest leadership team has experience of working with young people from elementary, secondary schools and the vocational training space. The team at Quest has worked extensively in designing human centered technology solutions, mentoring and facilitating programs with young people, adapting tech based on local needs - be it language, remote connectivity or other areas that require adaptation