Global Education and Oppia
October 2nd, 2019 marks the 150th birth year of Mahatma Gandhi. This year, as I read more and more about this great man whom we call the ‘Father of the Nation’, I find that his ideas and teaching are relevant in our day, just as much as a century ago.
India, in the days of the Mahatma, was still a poor country colonized by the British. Quality education was often to be sought abroad and accessible to mainly the rich and/or the ‘upper caste’. Mr. Gandhi was one of those lucky folks. He took this opportunity and turned it into a matter of responsibility towards his roots. In his experiments towards self-discovery, social change and the struggle for freedom, the Mahatma stood for many changes in our society — cleanliness, sanitation, women’s rights, education. Many years later, we still struggle with most of these issues, but without a Mahatma to guide us anymore.
As I grew up and moved across my country and eventually to the US, I feel the challenges that face us today are not all new. I do not negate the progress we have made but the impatient optimists amongst us are not definitely not overjoyed. Have we, as a society, been able to provide our children with the education they need to build a successful life?
“True education must correspond to the surrounding circumstances or it is not a healthy growth.” — M K Gandhi
UNESCO data shows that 262 million children and youth worldwide are out of school. More than 617 million children and adolescents are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. The importance of these markers cannot be overstated, studies show that education is highly correlated to a better standard of living, and reduction in poverty.
In the developing world, the reasons for these staggering numbers are manifold, some of these too daunting, and some missed opportunities. Lack of infrastructure, extreme poverty, social discrimination in terms of caste, race, sex, etc. are the ones that come to mind. Social unrest and inadequate safety are bigger barriers. Lack of access to toilets is still a major reason for school dropouts once girls reach puberty.

Constructive efforts to face these are no small feat. For instance— in heterogeneous states like India, the trickle-effect of welfare schemes is slow and unsteady. In other countries of political, economic or social unrest, such schemes might never exist or be sufficiently effective. All governments require support from their citizens to serve the country well. To remedy the situation, a solution has to come from the crowd.
And what tools do we have at hand, one may ask, for a problem of global nature? With the advent of technology and the presence of the internet, when being ‘online’ is cheaper than getting a meal, we ought to realize the power of the tool we hold in our hands, the one through which I reach you right now.
In July 2019, over 4.33 billion people were active internet users, encompassing 56 percent of the global population. Over 2 billion people in Asia and 400 M in Africa had access to the internet in 2018. These numbers are staggering and present a tremendous opportunity for constructive solutions to the problems that we continue to face in global education.
The Oppia Solution
Oppia is the brainchild of a highly-educated software professional working at Google.
“Oppia” in Finnish means “to learn” and to the educator in Sean, this is the need of the hour.
A 100% volunteer-run NGO, Oppia a freely available online library of highly-specialized, well-curated lessons that are accessible to children around the world through a website. Oppia also allows contributors to create lessons, on a myriad of topics and add to this sea of knowledge. But why is this different from facing a book or teacher? The lessons on Oppia are not only well-designed but also interactive. Being story-based, they are fun and relatable. Each lesson contains exercises that enable students to learn by practicing while enjoying the platform, instead of rote-learning for an exam that may not necessarily test their true understanding. Algorithms implemented in these lessons also make it possible to provide targeted, constructive feedback with these exercises.

Over 1.1 million users have visited Oppia to learn from their multiple lessons, available over affordable, android smartphones. To integrate multi-lingual communities, these lessons also feature audio-translations & text-based lessons that are accessible in low-bandwidth internet.
The Oppia team has tested the effectiveness of their lessons and methods in a randomized controlled trial done in New Delhi, India. The results they received have been heartening. In one such test with a basic Mathematics lesson on fractions, the team found that 90% of the children were able to correctly answer a pictorial-question on fractions when the question text was made available in the local language, Hindi, and with audio-subtitles compared to only 67% students without these additional resources.

For students who do not have sufficient quality text or help at their disposal, Oppia is attempting to bridge the gap through fun, story-based lessons. Oppia has come a long way since it started and the road ahead is longer yet and full of challenges. The team is motivated to face these and bring about a positive change in our shared world. We welcome you to visit Oppia and try out our lessons here.
For those who would like to contribute to the development of the platform, please visit the volunteer website here. Follow Oppia on Medium for more updates about our work and our team.
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” — M K Gandhi
