- What is U-Learn?
- Young people need to be supported in developing new and complex competencies, not only to lead economically productive lives but also to live together in a rapidly changing world and to transform themselves into ‘‘self-directed learners who can address their own wants and concerns and can advocate for their goals and aspirations’’ (UNESCO and UNICEF 2013, p. 24). In this light, there is an urgent need to revisit the fundamental questions about the goals and purposes of education for a more holistic, integrated and humanistic vision of learning.
- Whereas it is deemed to be crucial, 21st-century skills are neither easy to build in a classroom setting and nor can one learn this skillset simply by reading about it. Moreover, it is also difficult to evaluate through a classroom test or assessment. U-Learn in India aims to bridge this gap – it provides a context-specific alternative for young-people to learn 21st-century skills through a dialogue that is collaborative, personal and through a medium of their choice – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Telegram!
- It is jointly being developed and tested by Yuwaah, Udhyam Learning Foundation, UNICEF India and U-Report to enable young Indians to become responsible and active citizens of the country and the world. As the pilot has reinforced, U-Learn has potential for massive scalability and presents itself as an effective solution for imparting 21st-century skills online to 300 million young people in India directly on their phones.
- The Journey So Far...
21st-century skills can be applied in educational, career, and civic settings throughout an individual's life. ULearn tasks are designed with the aim to build Intrapersonal skills (like self-awareness, initiative, and negotiation), Social skills (like communication, relationship building, and civic sense), Multi-literacy skills (like financial literacy, digital literacy, and technological literacy) and Higher Order Thinking skills (like critical thinking, creativity, and decision making)
- The platform is currently available in both Hindi and English with equal uptake in each language. The highest numbers of U-Learners are coming from the leading states of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Delhi amounting to a total of 15236 young people all over India at the time of reporting. Out of the total unique 7049 U-Learners who completed either one or more task - exactly 50 per cent were girls! This is an extremely promising insight from our first pilot.
- How Does It Work?
- U-Learn is a real-time and interactive bot that converses with a learner on their phones using either WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Telegram. The interactivity provides for a self-paced and personalized journey that takes them through several point-based assignments with a strong focus on learning-by-doing. The bot is a friendly companion on this journey encouraging the learner to complete real-world tasks in their immediate environments - all the while ensuring that the learning journey is fun and rewarding!
- To experience U-Learn simply send us uLEARN on WhatsApp and Facebook!
- The Journey Ahead!
- The pilot wraps up by early November with a total of 10 assignments on U-Report. Afterwards, the U-Learn team plans to regroup to get user-feedback from U-Learners, analyse the collected data, and enter the second iteration with improved design and a host of new features.
- In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you. Do keep writing to us at ureportindia@gmail.com and let us know what you think about U-Learn and your suggestions to improve it. Keep an eye out for new tasks this December!
