Abstract:
'Parents’ participation and actual engagement in their children’s education is one of the most important predictors of children’s academic success. Much of this research, though, has emerged from developed countries and contexts. Little is known about how illiterate and low educated parents can support the education of their children. In 2011, 74% of the population in India was literate [Literacy in India - wikipedia.org]. However, in absolute terms, India consistently has a large number of illiterate persons: 249 million adult illiterates in 2011. Additionally, 158 million adults had education only up to primary school or less, and another 89 million adults had education only up to middle school. We intend to support these 495 million adults with less education (ALEs) from India, and an estimated 1.5 billion people like them worldwide. Importantly, this challenge can only be resolved when all adults have attained a certain expected level of education - possibly equivalent to about 10 years of schooling. It could take two more generations to achieve this milestone at the global level. Meanwhile, a lot remains to be done to aid this process.

Meanwhile, only within the last decade has ICT shown a promise by moving beyond its traditional user base by reaching the hands of new users. Apart from having less education, these “emergent” users may be poor, may be located away from commercial and political centers, and may be culturally different not only from the traditional (that is urban and educated) users but also from each other [Devanuj et.al, 2013]. The penetration of ICTs, and particularly mobile phones has been rapid. As of March 2017, India has a teledensity of 93% (compared to 83% from March 2016).

While the penetration of ICTs has been relatively quick, to a large extent these have not helped ALE parents support their children’s education. We plan to develop such tools which may enable ALE parents to engage in the academic activities of children, ensuring a better outcome. An important part of our research is to explore the best approaches that are appropriate to design and develop such intervention(s).

Publications:

• Padhi, Deepak Ranjan, Anirudha Joshi, Abhishek Shrivastava, and Rucha Tulaskar. "Hierarchy or List?: Comparing Menu Navigation by Emergent Users." In Proceedings of the 9th Indian Conference on Human Computer Interaction, pp. 29-34. ACM, 2018.

• Padhi, Deepak Ranjan, Pankaj Chavan, and Ritayan Mitra. "Understanding systems thinking from the perspectives of experience and diversity." In 2018 IEEE Tenth International Conference on Technology for Education (T4E), pp. 122-125. IEEE, 2018.

• Padhi, Deepak Ranjan, R. Adeline Mellita, and M. Sreekumar. "A Novel Frame Work of Design Realization Course at IIITDM Kancheepuram: Critical Evaluation." In International Conference on Research into Design, pp. 1039-1049. Springer, Singapore, 2017.