The Eduphone: Interactive Elearning for Developing Countries

This paper reports an effort to make distance education in developing countries inclusive by introducing interactivity in an easily accessible manner. A Learning Management System used with communication enabled by mobiles has been developed. This is used in combination with video and innovative pedagogy to create a large-scale accessible interactive learning environment for students. The issues addressed by the work are (1) how to arrange accessible low-cost distance tuition requiring only minimal ICT infrastructure and (2) how to make education interactive. Goal 1 is achieved by building a learning management system using exising sms infrastructure and testing it in Bangladesh. Goal 2, much more complicated and a long-term effort, is addressed by the pedagogy developed and implemented in TV/video lessons to accompany, and guide, the electronic communication. This paper briefly describes the project which involves technology design, development and testing, curriculum development, teacher education for interactive learning, and a new business model for educators.