MIT’s Connected Learning Initiative brings digital tools to students and teachers in underserved communities in India
Born as a collaborative effort between MIT, the Tata Trusts, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences’ Centre for Education Innovation and Action Research in Mumbai, the Connected Learning Initiative (CLIx) works to leverage contemporary technology to provide quality educational context and experiences at scale directly to students and educators. CLIx’s blended learning experiences first launched in schools in January 2016 with a goal of improving the professional and academic prospects of high school students in underserved communities in India. During the last year, CLIx has continued to make great strides in curriculum, teacher professional development, implementation and research, and has developed several platforms and interactive digital tools to strengthen the resources available to schools. CLIx is currently working toward implementation in approximately 478 schools, for 33,000 students and 2,400 teachers in four states (Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram) in India through 2019.
As part of this work, the MIT team delivered and open-sourced the final version of an assessment authoring platform and players for use in curriculum modules. The development of an open-source Unplatform and content player extended the program’s reach to under-resourced schools by delivering ePub3 versions of the CLIx curriculum to standalone computers. To further the Initiative’s mission of improving the Indian education system, MIT transitioned responsibility for web hosting and support of assessment authoring, the OpenEdX server for teacher professional development, and interactive and platform tools to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Understanding that successful implementation could lead to a wider range of impact, CLIx research activities focus on evaluating the overall project, as well as providing support for the domain and teacher professional development teams. In the past year, the MIT team helped to develop learning outcomes studies to understand the efficacy of selected CLIx modules in a subset of schools and another study to understand CLIx adoption at the remainder of participating schools.
To build on these studies’ findings, the MIT team continued to work with partners in India on the design and development of an inquiry-based, technology-integrated curriculum. In particular, the Initiative’s efforts focused on the development of physics, biology, and astronomy modules. MIT supported the development of curriculum materials to strengthen teacher competencies and confidence in the classroom.
In March 2018, UNESCO awarded CLIx the 2017 King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education, which recognizes innovations in leveraging information and communication technologies (ICTs) to increase access to quality education.