2018 was a busy year for the Oppia team. This post provides a short update about what the team accomplished last year, as well as our plans for 2019.
Testing lesson effectiveness
In December 2017, the Oppia team was busy preparing for a randomized trial of the Fractions lesson set in Delhi, India. These lessons had already yielded positive results in user studies, but we hadn’t yet conducted formal trials of effectiveness. If the lessons proved to be effective, this would have validated the creation process that we had developed during 2017. We could then create more lessons with the tools we had developed, with the knowledge that they would have a high likelihood of being effective, enjoyable, and scalable. If not, we would need to go back to the drawing board.
The randomized trial was carried out in February 2018 with two groups of students from a school in a low-income area in Delhi. Over a two-week period, one group was given the Oppia lessons, and the other was provided with copies of exercises from the corresponding school textbook chapters. Both groups were asked to do as much as they could, and we gave them a pre-test and a post-test to measure the effectiveness of the material. We found that, for topics encountered by both groups of students, the treatment group saw a significant score increase from pre-test to post-test (38% to 85%); this corresponded to a change from 40% to 41% in the control group. There’s more work to be done here, but we believe that this provides some strong positive indications that the approach we’ve developed for creating lessons shows promise. We are grateful to the EvalDesign team for their support with this work.
Working with nonprofits around the world
In June 2018, we started reaching out to nonprofits and charitable organizations around the world who work directly with students from underserved communities. We’re honored to have had the chance to work with Angel Xpress and Prayaas in India; as well as Njaka, Muutos, and NGT in Cameroon. These organizations work with underserved students in places where a good education is hard to come by. For instance, Angel Xpress organizes volunteers to tutor students from slums in Mumbai. We hope that the lessons that Oppia provides can help them scale their impact, since students can use them at home between sessions, especially in circumstances where volunteer time and availability are limited. We’re also encouraged to see how volunteers have used the Oppia lessons to enhance their small-group teaching, and that students are enjoying learning from the lessons.
Collaborating with students and non-profits also enables us to get feedback on the lessons through pilots and user studies. These pilots provide us with valuable perspective that help us make Oppia easier to use in various locales, so that we can make it easier for nonprofits, teachers, and parents to get started with the lessons. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback on the lessons that we’ve created: they seem to work well for students from various backgrounds, and students value the stories that vividly relate the material they’re learning to real-world situations that they encounter in their daily lives. This helps them stay motivated, and increases their excitement and desire to learn.
The most common piece of feedback we’ve received has been that parents and nonprofits want more lessons that are similar to the Fractions set. In order to meet this need, we’ve taken steps to streamline our lesson creation process, and we currently have 12 topics in development that, together, will provide a full Basic Mathematics curriculum. This curriculum is expected to launch in the summer of 2019, and we will be working hard to ensure that it is both effective and accessible for all students from around the world, especially those who would benefit from it the most. This is a significant organizational effort, since each lesson requires at least one writer and one designer, and there is a strong focus on telling a compelling story that keeps the students engaged and excited about what they’re learning. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our amazing teachers, artists and translators for their commitment and dedication to creating effective lessons for students who need them, as well as our lesson coordinator, Joe Yannaphol, who coordinates the overall effort.
Becoming more effective and efficient
In order to ensure that Oppia runs smoothly, it is important for us to maintain focus and reduce organizational overhead. During 2018, we took significant steps to improve team organization and streamlining: for example, we created sub-teams who are in charge of quality assurance, onboarding, and development workflow. This has improved the productivity of development and operations, and also strengthened the volunteer community that is the reason for Oppia’s success. Furthermore, the introduction of sub-teams has provided volunteers with meaningful learning experiences and leadership opportunities that they would not otherwise have, and we’re grateful to those who have stepped up to the plate. We also welcomed many new contributors to the Oppia community this year, including seven students who successfully passed the Google Summer of Code program.
Future plans
We have big plans for 2019! This year, we hope to complete the Basic Mathematics curriculum, as well as roll out a series of platform improvements dedicated to improving the effectiveness of the Oppia learning experience, including support for practice questions and curated lessons.
The time has also come for us to start doing more in terms of marketing and awareness, something we haven’t worked on historically while we were still in the experimental stage. These efforts started with a new (and long-overdue) website that describes the Oppia Foundation’s activities. We will continue to increase awareness of the lessons, so that students, parents, teachers, and NGOs are aware that they have this free resource at their disposal.
This year, we also plan to develop a process that would allow any organization that works with disadvantaged students to easily make use of the materials we provide, and to learn from the experiences of others in similar situations. By the end of 2020, we hope to be serving at least 50 nonprofits and schools around the world, especially those whose students would otherwise find it difficult to get access to good educational resources. If you would like to help improve education for underserved students in your community, please don’t hesitate to let us know how we can help.
Thank you!
Finally, we are very grateful to all our donors, supporters and contributors who are accompanying us on this journey, many of whom have found volunteering with Oppia to be a richly rewarding experience. Improving access to education is a goal we all share, and our impact is strongest when we work together. If you’d like to join the cause, please get in touch: there are many opportunities to participate, and we’d be happy to find a way for you to help out that aligns with your strengths and interests!
