Spoken Tutorials for Everyone

In our project, we are addressing the problem of unemployment and
poverty alleviation.  Because of poverty, many students are forced to
drop out of education at an early stage.  For example, many don't go
beyond their high school education.  The fact that a college degree
may not help get a job hastens this decision.

Our solution is to provide IT training audio-video tutorials, Spoken
Tutorials, through which the employment potential can be improved.
Spoken Tutorials are created for self learning.  They are dubbed into
all 22 languages of India.  As the video part is retained in English,
employment potential is not lost.  They can be used offline.  As only
open source software is covered by Spoken Tutorials, our solution is
accessible to everyone.  Our content is released under CC-BY-SA
license.  It is possible to get a certificate of training at less than
a dollar.

There are many developing countries that have the same problem
explained above.  Our solution is universal and hence applicable
everywhere.  For example, we have more than 200 Spoken Tutorials
dubbed into Persian.  All developing countries have a need to
implement IT projects in a big way, as these lead to development.  For
the success of these projects, affordable and trained workforce is
required.

A McKinsey study conducted in early 2000 found that 75% of
engineering graduates and 90% of other graduates are unemployable.
This is perhaps a major reason why the Gross Enrollment Ratio GER is
low at 27% in India.  This is also the reason why about 50% of
engineering seats are vacant in Maharashtra, a state in India, as
engineering education is expensive.

Unfortunately, however, there is a big shortage of trained workforce
in India.  For example, the trade body of the IT industry NASSCOM
estimates a shortage of 1.4 million people in software development
jobs.  

The seeds of this anamoly are sown at the school level.  According to
the National Statistical Office, about 13% of students enrolled in
schools drop out, without completing their education.  The number of
students who stop their education after high school is a lot more, as
seen by the low GER, a major reason being one of economics.

IT training can provide a low cost solution to the above problem.
Unfortunately, most students do not have access to good quality
schools and teachers.  They lack funds to buy the required software,
which is usually expensive.  Many students, especially at the K-12
stage, are not fluent in English, and hence most training courses are
not accessible to them.  Access to good quality bandwidth is another
difficulty.  Finally, access to computing devices is a major issue.

The above mentioned problems are faced by many developing countries.

Lack of access to good schools and good teachers is addressed by
making our IT training method, Spoken Tutorial, suitable for self
learning.  Example based active learning and novice check of the
underlying script are used to make Spoken Tutorials suitable for self
learning.  Through a research study, we found that self learning also improves the self esteem and self confidence significantly, which is also an important contribution to the target population.

Dubbing the audio of Spoken Tutorials into 22 official languages of
India makes our content accessible to students not fluent in English.
Leaving the video in English helps retain employment opportunities.
As our tutorials are made only on open source software, the learner
need not buy any software.  Spoken Tutorials are released under
CC-BY-SA license and hence are accessible to everyone free of cost.
It is possible to use Spoken Tutorials offline, and hence bandwidth is
not a limitation.  Through an institutional subscription mechanism, it
is possible to get a Spoken Tutorial online test certificate for less
than $1.  Finally, those who do well in these tests are found to be
good by IT companies in job fairs that we conducted recently.

We have been promoting low cost computing devices, such as tablets and
laptops.  We create Spoken Tutorials that explain how to use these
devices.  Moreover, these devices can come pre-loaded with relevant
Spoken Tutorials.

The target population we serve is not fluent in English.  Their
close relatives such as their parents and siblings, other relatives,
and the friend circles they move in, are also not fluent in English.
Parents of current students know that those who were good in English,
for example their classmates, generally came up in lives.  As a
result, there is a tendancy to send their children to English medium
schools, even if they cannot afford.  Unfortunately, the English
medium schools that they finally afford do not impart good language
training.  These children lack confidence, above all.

The target population we serve is not economically well off.  They
cannot afford to go to good schools that have good teachers.  They do
not have access to good bandwidth.  They don't have the money to buy
expensive software - of course, very few buy software in India,
unfortunately.  They also cannot afford computing devices.  During the
pandemic, many children in a family are sharing for studies one low
cost smart phone that their father may have.

The target population also does not know what to study, and what
topics will help them get employment, etc. 

All these problems are well known.  Our solution addresses most of
these issues.

Pedagogy is the most important part of our solution: Spoken Tutorials
are created for self learning.  One has to reproduce all the commands
shown in the relevant open source software, to complete the training.
The same high quality training material, developed at IIT Bombay, is
made available to linguistic minorities as well, through the dubbing
process.

As learning happens through the tutorials, there is no need for an
expert to be available to conduct the training.  Anyone who has
undergone a training can become a facilitator.  As the learning method
is standardised across all topics, they can facilitate all other
trainings as well.  The online timed discussion forum maintained by us can
help answer individual questions not covered in tutorials.

As already mentioned, one unexpected benefit of our learning approach
is the increased self confidence of learners.

Those who are rural and remote parts, and those who are not fluent in
English, and those who are not economically well off, are all served
by our method, as already explained.

We have created 1,200 Spoken Tutorials of 10 minutes each in English.
These cover about 75 topics.  Including dubbing, we have more than
12,000 Spoken Tutorials.  These cover topics like programming, web
design, and simulation.  These also cover important K-12 topics like
office productivity through LibreOffice, graphic design, animation,
several software in mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, and
accounting.  They also cover the learning management system Moodle and
the concept mapping software Freeplane, which are useful to the school
teachers.  

We have trained 7 million students and 200,000 teachers.  Many of our
trainees have gotten into IT companies.

More than 1,000 educational institutions have signed up for our subscription
mechanism for online tests.  Unfortunately, during the pandemic, this
mode of conducting invigilated online tests has suffered.  We have
come up with an individual learning/certification mechanism for $3 to
$7 per certificate.  With all of these, we have raised about $750,000.

We are not in scale, however, because the above income is not
sufficient to support our activity.  To achieve that, our scale has to
be a lot bigger.  Our method requires a lot of people, each
contributing very little.