Improving India’s Education System through
Information Technology
An IBM Report to be presented to
His Excellency, The President of India
© 2004 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Raisina Project Team: Education
 Sponsoring Executive: Nicholas Donofrio
 Lead: P. Gopalakrishnan, Director, India Research Lab
 Core Team:
–
Rakesh Agrawal, IBM Fellow, Almaden Research Lab
–
Subhankar Roy Chaudhary, BCS India
–
Albee Jhoney, India Software Lab
–
Harish Krishnan, Government Programs, IBM India
–
Nimish Sanghi, BCS India
–
Ashwin Srinivasan, India Research Lab
 Technology Deep Dive
–
[TEC – India South] - Albee Jhoney, Karthikeyan Ponnalagu, Murali Paramasivam,
Pankaj Pathak, Rahul Chenny, Sarvani Ganesh, Umasuthan Ramakrishnan, S
Venkatakrishnan
 Contributors
–
Sharat Bansal, BCS India
–
Michael R. Fernandes, BCS India
–
Peter F DeKam, eLearning EBO
 Executive Reviews
–
Shanker Annaswamy, India CGM
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Executive Summary
 India’s education system has made many advances in the decades since
independence. Yet much remains to be done to improve the reach and
quality of education.
– Student drop-out rates remain very high
– Teachers are poorly trained
– Teacher-student ratios remain very low
– Quality of instruction material is poor and often out-of-date
 Our study is about how Information Technology could be used to improve
the state of education in India.
 During the course of our research we have come to the firm conclusion
that:
– Teachers are at the heart of the educational system. Improvements
to the system must enable teachers to become better teachers.
– In collective wisdom lies strength. We would like to see a system in
which teachers, educationists, planners, administrators and students
across the nation can work together to provide the best possible
foundation for our youth.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Executive Summary
 We believe that the country should look towards developing:
1. New models for the design of curricula that are relevant and meaningful.
2. New models for authoring and updating educational and teacher training
materials.
3. New models for providing access to educational and training materials.
4. New models for imparting lessons to students.
 To achieve these goals, we recommend that India develops, as a priority, a
nation-wide Education Collaboration Network (ECN)
– Capable of Handling different levels of IT maturity, multiple languages etc.
– Highly distributed and leverages existing infrastructure (e.g. EduSat, Vidhya
Vahini Labs, Teacher Centers, e-Choupals etc.).
– Based on open standards for encoding and accessing content.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Executive Summary
An example of what is possible: knowledge sharing
Ashok,
Science Teacher, Rural U.P, new to teaching
• Ashok wants to improve his understanding of Newton’s laws for his lecture next week
• Neither his school nor he has a computer, though he has a TV at his house
• He goes to e-chaupal in his village, which has been integrated into the ECN, and begins his search
using an easy-to-use graphical interface
What he Finds
• a ranked list of material matching his requirement. Ranking is based on past
searches, accesses, and recommendations by other teachers.
Rural areas with low IT
maturity
• Notes from Mandira Mukopadhyay who teaches in Kolkata on how she taught
Newton's laws (original notes were in Bengali but were translated into Hindi by
Nimish living in Allahabad who knew both Bengali and Hindi). Ashok prints the
notes using free quota available to him for this purpose.
Uses existing infrastructure
Empowers teachers
• A video of a very insightful lecture by Prof Goyal.
• Some problem sets and test questions provided by other teachers. He prints
these support materials also.
Multi-lingual
Through the ECN Ashok is able to find material that will help him understand the subject
matter and obtain access to teaching aids that others have found useful.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Executive Summary
Another example: collaborative content creation
Uma,
A dedicated Physics teacher in Kerala
• Uma also wants to improve her understanding of Newton’s laws for her lecture next week
• However, unlike Ashok, she works in a school that has provided a computer in the faculty room and
there is one TV per class room attached to a VCD player.
• Uma uses the internet to get into the ECN and carryout her search
What She Finds
• Uma also finds the same material as Ashok. However, the ranking has changed
because of Ashok’s selection the day before.
• Uma burns a CD of the Prof Goyal’s video. Instead of lecturing herself the class,
she plays VCD, taking the role of the discussant, pausing the lecture to add
supplementary explanations from her experience or to field questions.
• She creates a new problem set combining ideas from the problem set she found
and her past problem sets and adds it to the ECN. She also adds comments
about her use of the lecture and how her students did on the new problem set.
Her material now becomes available to other teachers using the ECN.
Distributed, evolutionary
content creation
New pedagogy: teacher as
discussant
Accumulation and re-use of
teaching material
Through the ECN Uma is able to bring an expert virtually to the classroom. She also
enhances the material with her own contributions that are then available to others on the
network.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Executive Summary
What is needed: an “electronic joining of hands”
•A hardware and a software infrastructure built on industry standards that empower teachers,
educators, and administrators to collectively create, manage, and access educational
material, impart education, and increase their skills
ERNET,
Delhi
Vidya Vahini,
Lucknow
e-Chaupal,
MP
Teacher center,
Ahmedabad
JKC,
Hyderabad
EDUSAT,
Mumbai
IBM,
Bangalore
School Node,
Malappuram
|
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
EDUSAT,
Gauhati
Cognizant of existing realities:
infrastructure, languages, ITreadiness, different curricula, etc.
Leverage existing infrastructure –
Vidya Vahini, EDUSAT, etc.
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Executive Summary
What is Unique?

Right focus
– Teachers are at the heart of education system and network is designed to
help them teach better. (We are not talking replacing teachers with
computers.)
– Make use of computer technology to improve schools, rather than
concentrating on teaching computer technology.

Low entry cost
– Piggyback on existing hardware infrastructure.
– Rather than commissioning content, make use of the talent of our vast
educated population.

Inherent scalability
– Grows organically and exponentially due to network effect
– Costly regulation replaced by collective wisdom and distributed ranking

Multilingual
– Multilingual content created by distributed partial translations and automatic
consolidation
– Benefits from translating best in one language into another
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Executive Summary
A Framework for an IT-enabled Education System
Helping teachers
to teach better
Developing
educational
and
training
material
Developing
relevant
curriculum
Better operational
efficiency
Education
Collaboration
Network
(ECN)
Imparting
educational
and
training
material
Distributing
educational
and training
material
Better quality of
instructional
material
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Outline







Current State of India’s Education System
Scope of this report
Areas of benefit
Recommendations
Usage scenarios
Technology deep dive
Conclusion
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
India’s Education System: Achievements Through The Years - 1951-2002
1951
1981
2002(*)
Literacy Percentage
18.33%
43.57%
65.38%
Educational Instituions
Primary
Upper Primary
High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College
209671
13596
7416
494503
118555
51573
664041
219626
133492
Enrollements (in millions)
Primary
Upper Primary
High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College
19.2
3.1
1.5
73.8
20.7
11
113.9
44.8
30.5
Dropout Rates (%)
NA
82.5
66
Teachers (in '000)
Primary
Upper Primary
High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College
538
86
127
1363
669
926
1928
1157
1777
Pupil Teacher Ratio
Primary
Upper Primary
High/Hr. Seconday & Inter & Pre Junior College
20
20
21
38
33
27
43
34
34
0.64%
2.92%
4.02%
Public Expenditure (% of GDP)
Significant achievements have been made. But many problems remain …
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
India’s Education System: Non Infrastructural Issues
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Poor performance

39% dropouts in primary, additional 15.6% in secondary and additional 11.7% in higher
secondary

Pass out ratio is 50% at Class X and majority of them pass in 3rd division

Less than 8% finish all schooling to qualify for a college education
Poorly trained teachers

51% of primary teachers are higher secondary or below

Only 44% have received in-service training

Absence of learning material for teachers to update their knowledge
Poor teacher-student ratios

Ratio in primary is 1:43, secondary and Higher secondary is 1:34. About 9% of primary
schools have a teacher-student ratio > 1:100.

1.4% of primary schools have no teachers, 19% have only one teacher for all classes.
Poor quality of material

Too much emphasis on theory, poor quality textbooks, out-dated curriculum
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© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Scope Of This Report
This report focuses on the use of IT to enable teachers become better
teachers, and improve the quality of class-room instruction. The
recommendations apply across all levels of school education (primary,
secondary and tertiary). They can be adapted for the college
education also, but we do not focus on that here.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
A Subset of Education Needs
From the background material and through interviews the following issues
emerged as a few areas where IT is likely to make significant impact

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Improve teachers' competencies and skills.
Improve design and content of textbooks and instruction materials.
Identify appropriate teacher training programs for different disciplines,
abilities and roles.
Improve teachers’ access to teaching resources.
Increase effective teaching time.
Review curriculum, teaching methods, and examinations.
Improve the supply, quality and holding power of education,
particularly in the rural areas.
Address issues of regional disparities in standards of education –
specifically the teachers.
Personalize the teaching based on learning capabilities and inclination
of students.
Develop a system to motivate teachers and make them accountable
for quality of education.
Increase community involvement.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Areas of Benefit
 Our findings suggest that the following areas in Indian education would
benefit significantly from the use of innovative IT-based solutions:
– Helping teachers become better teachers
– For example: collective development of teaching support material and
providing access to this material to every teacher.
– Improving the quality and relevance of classroom instructions
– For example:
– Collective identification of how the curriculum being taught in our
schools should be improved and made relevant
– Collective monitoring of the deficiencies in our textbooks and the
creation of supplementary material to enhance them.
– Increasing operational efficiency
– For example:
– Better planning and management
– Efficient production of textbooks
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Helping Teachers Become Better Teachers
 Lack of good teaching support material
─ Almost no good teaching aids to help teachers
─ No help on lesson plans, projects, supplementary materials
─ No mechanism to share and re-use teaching resources
 How IT could help
Collaborative development of lectures, assignments, tests, etc.
Mass participation of teachers and students to comment or discuss sections
of textbooks or lectures
Development of training materials for helping teachers and administrators
enhance their skills
Enable access to model lectures, aids created by other teachers
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Improving the Quality of Instruction
 Curriculum not keeping pace with the new realities
─ Too much emphasis on theory, little emphasis on vocational aspects
─ Skills of “learning-to-learn” not developed
 Lack of quality in educational material
─ Very long gaps between updating text books
─ Errors in text books
 How IT could help
Mass participation of experts, teachers (and even students) in the development of
curricula
Tools for the timely creation of supplementary material
Provide new models for imparting education to enable flexible class hours and
compensating for low teacher-student ratios
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Improving Operational Efficiency
 Inadequate estimates of demand and supply
─ No “facility maps” available for levels other than primary school
─ No clear picture of the education requirements of the population by geographic
location, socio-cultural groups etc.
 Production, procurement and distribution of textbooks
─ Lack of availability of textbooks/workbooks contributes to drop-outs and failures
─ About 30% of the current costs are non-paper related.
─ Distribution is reliant on physical transportation to sales outlets.
 How IT could help
Nation-wide data collection of facilities and statistics to facilitate planning.
Supply-chain management techniques for improving operational efficiency.
Delay committing content to paper form until as late in the distribution process as
possible.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
Recommendations
| November 2004
© 2002 IBM
Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Framework for an IT-enabled Education System for India
Helping teachers
to teach better
Developing
relevant
curriculum
Developing
educational
and training
material
Better
operational
efficiency
Education
Collaboration
Network
(ECN)
Imparting
educational
and training
material
Distributing
educational
and training
material
Better quality of
instructional
material
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Recommendations

We believe that the country should look towards developing:
1. New models for the design of curricula that are relevant and meaningful.
2. New models for authoring and updating educational and teacher training
materials.
3. New models for providing access to educational and training materials.
4. New models for imparting lessons to students.

To achieve these goals, we recommend that India develops, as a priority,
a nation-wide Education Collaboration Network
– Capable of Handling different levels of IT maturity, multiple languages etc.
– Highly distributed and leverages existing infrastructure (e.g. EduSat, Vidhya
Vahini Labs, Teacher Centers, e-Choupals etc.).
– Based on open standards for encoding and accessing content.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Education Collaboration Network: Underlying Principles

Collective wisdom can be better than single expert.
– E.g. Wikipedia, Open Directory & Linux

The size of our educated population is our strength; a small fraction of
motivated educators, teachers and students working together will make
a big difference.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Expected Impact

In the near-term, the network will:
1. Enable the collective development by teachers and students of education
and training materials like supplements to text-books and teaching support
material.
2. Enable the collective identification, by teachers and administrators, of
deficiencies in curricula and associated text-books, and how these can be
addressed.
3. Act as a vehicle for providing access to education and training material to
teachers and students.
4. Act as a vehicle for experimenting with new methods of imparting education
and training.

In the medium-term, the network will enable:
– Enhancing the skills of teachers and administrators.
– The use of information-based planning and better methods for
procurement and distribution of materials.
– Support for a new pedagogy in class-rooms.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
Using The Network: Some Examples
| November 2004
© 2002 IBM
Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Scenario: Knowledge Sharing
Ashok,
Science Teacher, Rural U.P, new to “teaching”
• Ashok wants to improve his understanding of Newton’s laws for his lecture next week
• Neither his school nor he has a computer, though he has a TV at his house
• He goes to e-chaupal in his village, which has been integrated into the ECN, and begins his search
using an easy-to-use graphical interface
What he Finds
• a ranked list of material matching his requirement. Ranking is based on past
searches, accesses, and recommendations by other teachers.
Rural areas with low IT
maturity
• Notes from Mandira Mukopadhyay who teaches in Kolkata on how she taught
Newton's laws (original notes were in Bengali but were translated into Hindi by
Nimish living in Allahabad who knew both Bengali and Hindi). Ashok prints the
notes using free quota available to him for this purpose.
Uses existing infrastructure
Empowers teachers
• A video of a very insightful lecture by Prof Goyal.
• Some problem sets and test questions provided by other teachers. He prints
these support materials also.
Multi-lingual
As Ashok makes his selections, the
system notes his selections and uses this
info as an input to refine the ranking.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Scenario: Collaborative Content Authoring
Uma,
A dedicated Physics teacher in Kerala
• Uma also wants to improve her understanding of Newton’s laws for her lecture next week
• However, unlike Ashok, she works in a school that has provided a computer in the faculty room and
there is one TV per class room attached to a VCD player.
• Uma uses the internet to get into the ECN and carryout her search
What She Finds
• Uma also finds the same material as Ashok. However, the ranking has changed
because of Ashok’s selection the day before.
• Uma burns a CD of the Prof Goyal’s video. Instead of lecturing herself the class,
she plays VCD, taking the role of the discussant, pausing the lecture to add
supplementary explanations from her experience or to field questions.
• She creates a new problem set combining ideas from the problem set she found
and her past problem sets and adds it to the ECN. She also adds comments
about her use of the lecture and how her students did on the new problem set.
Her material now becomes available to other teachers using the ECN.
Distributed, evolutionary
content creation
New pedagogy: teacher as
discussant
Accumulation and re-use of
teaching material
As Uma makes her selections, the system notes her
selections and uses this info as an input to further refine
the ranking.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Scenario: Updating text books
Thanushree
A Social Science teacher in Belgaum
• Thanushree teaches 7th class Social Science in a school at the Karnataka-Maharashtra border. She
is using a text book in the Marathi language. She has to lecture on India in World Affairs. Her school
has an Edusat terminal.
Update errors in text books
What She Does
• She sees the map on page 107 that shows Pakistan as an island in the Arabian
sea and Tibet has moved to Bay of Bengal. It also shows SAARC members like
Bhutan, Bangaladesh, and Nepal as island-nations.
• Thanushree tells her students about this error.
• In addition, she goes to the Edusat terminal and taps into the ECN to record this
error in the book.
Collective identification and
improvement of education
material
Feedback on curricula
This feedback is saved, in a section on errata in the
current edition.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
Technology Deep Dive:
Building The Education Collaboration Network
| November 2004
© 2002 IBM
Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Education Collaboration Network: General Requirements

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Distributed data management
Multi-lingual
Evolutionary
Geographically scalable
Customizable for every deployment (state, board, community, institution)
Off-line information access models
Ease of use for novice and expert users
Reachability (reliable multi-channel access and integration)
Open standards based
Ease of maintenance and management
Auditable and measurable
Secure and privacy-preserving
Reduce TCO and scaling-of-cost (refer to utility models)
Allow personalization
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Education Collaboration Network: Physical View
Integration Space
Communication
Collaboration
Space
Computing Center
Edge Server
Space
Information Space
Directory
Integration
Presentation
Space
Computing
Center
Server Software
Platform
Data
Center
Data
Center
Computing
Center
ICT Hardware
Infrastructure Grid
Client Platform
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Web-based Architecture
 Client Platform
– Different classes of devices - PC, Simputer, PDA, TV, ...
– Client application integration based on open standards
 Server Software Platform
– Content Storage Networks, Compute Grids, Application Hosting
Environments,
– Open Standards Infrastructure platform for Integration and
Virtualization of server side resources
– Presentation controllers to handle multilingual requirements
 Software
– Open standards for encoding and accessing content
– Multilingual for authoring, organizing, and updating content
– Collaboration and search services
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Server Platform: Logical View
Application
Services
Presentation
Services
Integration Bus
Infrastructure
Services
|
Information
Services
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Server Platform
The Server Platform proposed is one that uses a Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) with the following blocks:
 Presentation Service
Multi-Device Access mechanisms, Data Caching, Personalization, Multi lingual
Support, secure and privacy mechanisms
 Infrastructure service
This block hosts the basic infrastructure such as Storage Management, Security,
Systems Management, Automation
 Info Services
Encapsulation of a group of services that handle content organization, lifecycle,
storage, distribution, authoring, search
 Integration bus
Forms the back bone for integration / collaboration / interactions between the
services
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Client-Server Integration
Thick Client
Thin Client
Low
Memory
Client
Noncomputing
Device
SOAP, HTTP, FTP, RMI / IIOP, ISDN,
Multimedia Streaming, WAP
SOAP, HTTP, FTP, Multimedia
Streaming
Presentation
Services
HTTP
Integration Bus
Infrastructure
Services
Information
Services
Cable TV Telephone Networks,
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
Conclusion
| November 2004
© 2002 IBM
Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Discussion
 We believe:
– The destiny of India will be fashioned in our classrooms.
– Teachers are at the heart of the educational system. Improvements to the
system must enable teachers to become better teachers.
– In collective wisdom lies strength. We would like to see a system in which
teachers, educationists, planners, administrators and students across the
nation can work together to provide the best possible foundation for our youth.
 IT can help build an education system in which:
– Teachers and students can participate in the collective development of teaching
support material, which can then be made available across the nation.
– Teachers and educationists can participate in the collective identification of how
the curriculum being taught should be improved and made relevant.
– Teachers, educationists and government planners can participate in the
collective monitoring of the deficiencies in our textbooks and the creation of
supplementary material to enhance them.
 As a result, we think:
– Teachers can become better teachers.
– The quality of educational material should improve.
– Planning and management of education should become more efficient.
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
It is time to act …
 We accept that technology alone cannot solve a complex problem such as providing universal,
high-quality education. Technological solutions have to dove-tail with the political imperatives,
traditions and norms, individual and societal motivational factors, and the priority of other
initiatives.
 However, we believe that by advancing technology options, we increase the policy choices and
improve the overall quality of the solution.
 We must leverage existing initiatives and invest further to implement a large scale collaborative
infrastructure that will provide broad based benefits to teachers and educators
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation
IBM India Research Lab
Acknowledgement
We gratefully acknowledge the input provided by the following individuals and organizations
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Dr.Arun Kapur, Prinicpal, Vasanth Valley School
Ms.Shalini Nambiar, Principal, Heritage School
Mr.Pankaj Agrawal, Joint Secretary (e-learning), Ministry of IT, Government of India
Mr.Vivek Bharadwaj, Secretary, NCERT
Prof Marmar Mukhopadhyay, Joint Director, NIEPA
S.Ramakrishnan, Executive Directror C-DAC
Dr.B.K.Murthy, Media Labs
Mrs Aruna Sundarajan, Secretary - IT, Government of Kerala
Mr.Roy Mathew, Directro, Kerala State IT Mission
Mr.Biju Prabhakar, Executive Director, IT@Schools Project, Government of Kerala
Mr.S.P.Gaur, ex-Joint Secretary, Ministry of HRD, Government of India
Prof J Veeraraghavan, Director Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan and Former Secretary
Education, Government of India
Dr.Gulshan Rai, Executive Director, ERNET
Chitra Ravi, Director, E-zVidya
Dr.Sanjay Nigam, Living Media
Dilip Chenoy, Deputy Director General CII
N.Srinivasan, Director General CII
Y.S.Rajan, Principal Advisor, CII
Jeanie Herbert, Founder, Destiny Education Mumbai Pvt Ltd
Bishop Charles Soreng (Chairman, CBCI Commission of Education & Culture)
Fr P. P George, (Secretary, CBCI Commission of Education & Culture)
Mr. Guilherme Vaz, Director - Schoolnet, Mumbai
Manash Chakraborty, CEO, Learnet India Ltd, Mumbai
Anjali Subramanya, Member - Advocacy and Research, Azim Premji Foundation
Various school teachers and students
|
© 2002 IBM Corporation