UC Berkeley Challenge on Building Smart Cities

Education Sector
Introduction.
Indias education system is a stumbling block gravely affecting its growth. India is going to
experience a paradox of nearly 90 million people joining the workforce but most of them will lack
requisite skills and the mindset for productive employment according to a report in DNA. The
core reason being glitches in the education system.
Government of India and many institutions like YAJNIK, EDUSAT 2007, NMIMS, IIT-b and BITS
Pilani have taken many initiatives in past to alleviate the education system. Although they have
yielded notable results, they need to be accelerated.
With 100 smart cities coming up in India, new technology can play a key role in improving the
education system.

What Students in UCB has done?

Issue identification
In the initial stages, the team members brainstormed to bring all the ideas on the table. However,
they werent able to identify the problems in India well and came to a collective decision of
talking to education sector experts in India. They conversed with a volunteer at an education
non-profit and a Philips employee who was born and brought up in Vizag and identified the
following issues

Lack of resources for the students ( eg. books and technology)

Quality of teachers
Teachers to student ratio
Quality of education in government schools versus private schools
Poor supply chain management
Corruption.

Idea
To develop and implement a website platform and app which serves as a learning platform for
practical and industry oriented skills.
What the website would offer?
The website would have complementary courses to the current syllabus and inculcate the
students in activities which make them more employable. The course projects would expose the
students to various industry-related issues and drive them in pursuing a career of their choice.
The site will also have certification policies for teachers as well as students.

Business perspective
Their value proposition is smart education. With the website in place, arguably, the teacherstudent ratio will be less of a problem and learning methodology will improve.
A market study to understand user dynamics is also among the list is one of the first activities
they are planning to work on. Subsequently, the team plans to collaborate with some major hiring
industries to create certification programs and enhance their recruitment drives.

What IIT-M Team can focus on?

Education sector primarily needs attention in the following 3 categories.
1. Primary education

2. Secondary education

3. Training and Resources

The 3 categories are discussed separately below.

1. Primary education.
The burning issue in providing primary education is the poor quality of teachers in the
government schools. To add to the misery, teacher to student ratio further worsens the
knowledge that each student gains. The teachers in the rural areas are working at an abysmally
low pay grade of 3000 per month and they are neither motivated nor exposed to the new
teaching techniques.
To overcome this challenge, a techno-management framework can play a crucial role.

1. A voucher system can be introduced wherein every child is given a voucher/coupon of say Rs.
(300 + 100) a month as a monthly fee.

2. These voucher of 300 can be redeemed at the school as the monthly fee and the voucher of
100 can be utilized by the student to go a private school (or govt. organized video rooms)
nearby (in holidays) and enroll in separate complementary courses.
3. The private schools or should have video screening facility.
4. The vouchers can act as an incentive.
a. For the 300Rs voucher - If the teachers salary has a fixed as well as variable
component where the variable component depends on the number of vouchers,
the teachers will be motivated to teach better and invite more students to the
class.
b. For the 100Rs voucher Private schools will get a cut from the 100Rs. This way
they will try to have more video screening facilities and also support students.
5. Zooming out, on a bigger scale, we will be improving the students taking the video courses
and projects.

6. Once the video rooms are set up, there can be competitions and informative sessions for
students of different locality online.
7. These video rooms can also serve as a portal to educate and train teachers with the new
methods and asses their performance by asking them to share their videos online.

2. Secondary education
Undergraduates, graduates and industry working professionals can aid in providing
secondary education. Various NGOs like TeachforIndia work on the same platform. However,
I think the participation can be highly accelerated if the following two places are in place.
Education portal This should list the topics in secondary education. Each topics
notes should be provided in pdf formats and undergrads from all over the country can
be invited to share their tutoring videos.

Video conferencing rooms - Every college should have a video conferencing room
where students can go and make their own lectures. The best video must be
shortlisted and CD/DVDs must be made and put on the website.
To incentivize the community to make more videos, badges, fellowships and
certificates can be provided.

3. Training and resources

Not given much thought into this area for now.

4. Educating communities

Crude idea of turning banners on the roads, bus stands into led light information boxes.
(eg. those on railway platforms).
Screens near bus stops where commuters can read about their rights, laws that everyone
is supposed to know etc.