How Avanti Fellows motivated high school students to embrace digital learning at home
Learner
High school students - Grades 9 - 12
Topic
STEM, At-home digital learning
Format
Online, hybrid (synchronous & asynchronous), Cohort-based model
Avanti Fellows empowers high-school students from grades 9-12 in marginalised communities in India by providing affordable, high-quality after-school support in science & math.
Their programs provide digital learning to prepare students to clear the entrance exams of engineering & medical colleges in India - helping them realise their dreams and lift their families out of poverty. Their program, Neev, is an at-home digital learning foundational Maths program for students of grades 9-10 in Haryana, India.
This case study addresses how Avanti re-designed Neev from a synchronous to a hybrid program using a custom video platform, Plio, WhatsApp Communities, and involving key stakeholders.
What’s Inside
Problem (2 mins read):
Understanding the different learner personas
Process (5 mins read):
Pilots, experiments & iterations
Implementation (5 mins read):
Making asynchronous learning work
Impact (3 mins read):
Improved learning at home
Problem
Understanding the different learner personas
Avanti's NEEV Live Class program in Haryana (an Indian state) offers at-home online live Math classes for high school students thrice a week.
However, Avanti realised that many learners couldn’t access smartphones during class. They decided to dig deeper to understand diverse user personas and their needs, motivations and pain points.
Three main categories of students stood out to them:
✅ The Go-Getters
30% of students who attended classes meaningfully (More than 2 hours of live classes weekly).
Highly self-motivated & typically sought academic resources outside of the school classroom.
Were already using YouTube and Google to resolve their doubts.
More likely to be at a proficient or above-average level in academics.
✅ The Rare Attendees
35% of students who rarely attended classes (Less than once a week) due to the infrequent availability of primary smartphone owners in their families during class times.
Highly motivated because on the rare occasions, when the primary smartphone owner comes home, these students attended the live class, even without continuity.
Typically at an above-average or average level in academics.
❌ The Program Drop-offs
5% of students who attended 1-2 initial live classes & then never joined again.
Attended the initial classes out of sheer curiosity and decided that the program was not to their liking.
Typically students who were irregular in school and/or had lower academic proficiency.
Based on this segmentation, it was clear that there was a need for an asynchronous learning component that would offer flexibility and opportunities to provide supplemental learning.
The hypothesis was that the go-getters would become early adopters of asynchronous learning and use the opportunity to learn beyond the live classes. It would also solve one of the biggest pain points for the rare attendees who could not attend live classes regularly.
Avanti also recognised that asynchronous learning may or may not be the right fit for the program drop-offs.
So what did they do next?
How did they apply these learnings to transition from a live-class model to a hybrid one?
It wasn’t a one-time effort; it was iterative. Here’s what happened.
Pilots, experiments & iterations
Rather than resorting to conventional methods, Avanti embarked on a systematic experimentation journey to iteratively make the design better for the target population.
Here is how Avanti approached this process:
Process
-
The go-getter user persona was the ideal early adopter. The hypothesis was that these learners who desire to solve their problem – in this case, getting extra study material to help them learn – will most likely choose to learn at their own pace.
A big pain point identified for this persona was - “She feels like she doesn’t get enough time with her father’s mobile phone and wastes a lot of time looking for answers and clarifications in books or online”
-
Collaborating with these users, they co-designed the learning experience, ensuring it was grounded in research. Avanti conducted multiple rounds of trials followed by an analysis of actions taken by students and their qualitative inputs to arrive at the core needs and the solution that worked best to solve them.
One of the key feedback received at this point was that students preferred the asynchronous sessions to be 10-15 minutes long with some form of interaction every 90 seconds. This determined the format of async engagement for the MVP.
-
An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) was created to meet essential requirements and allow for future feature iterations based on student feedback.
Here is what a student from the first pilot had to say - “Recorded class format is far better than live class because it has a new approach of first learn, second test yourself and then go for doubts.”
-
The MVP was launched, and observations from the field and continuous feedback cycles led to adding more features tailored to the student's needs until it met the desired goals for the early adopters.
Weekly assessment and dashboards for teachers were some features added based on the feedback from these iterations. The third pilot with 124 students achieved higher engagement and comparable learning to the synchronous program and helped establish the proof of concept.
-
Once the goals were met for a significant sample size, they rolled out the async program to their target population.
In January 2023, the program was launched to the entire target population (including go getters, rare attenders and program drop-offs). The early results which came at the time this case study was being written were promising.
-
This step is in progress. They will now continue to tweak the product to cater to the needs of all user groups within the target population.
From July to December 2022, Avanti piloted the MVP and iterated on it with early adopters.
In January 2023, the program was launched to the entire target population, and the results were promising. The final step of iterating the program based on inputs from different groups within the target population was ongoing when this case study was written.
Designing for the learner
They didn’t want it to be another traditional, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solution.
It was an evolving ecosystem, built hand-in-hand with the learners, responsive to their unique challenges and aspirations, and aimed to address learner motivation at a systemic level. Using the Octalysis Framework as the guiding methodology, solutions were carefully designed to focus on the core motivational drives. Following this approach ensured that the focus was on the learner, and as a result, all stakeholders impacting the learner were included in the design.
With solutions crafted through the Octalysis Framework, they achieved 10% higher engagement for the hybrid learning program than the synchronous live class one.
How did Avanti achieve this?
First, the learner needs were identified and solutions were designed keeping the learner and stakeholders in mind.
Need
The learner needs active learning and looks for quick gratification and feedback in the asynchronous component.
Solution
Plio - Avanti’s tried & tested in-house interactive learning tool
Active engagement
Quiz for immediate check for understanding.
Need
The learner seeks social validation from and in front of their peers, teachers and others involved in the learning process.
Solution
Communication
Connecting with the teacher & peers outside of class
Celebrating effort and growth
Need
The learner needs their parents and school to support them with the right resources & encouragement.
Solution
Stakeholder involvement at all levels to establish value and ensure clarity & uniformity of messaging to the learner.
Orientation sessions
Visibility of learner progress
Then, these three solutions were mapped to the learner's ecosystem. This ensured that these solutions were inclusive and integrated. Here’s how it was done:
Building the Program Journey
After considering the needs of the learners and the stakeholders influencing them, Avanti designed the program journey. Here’s how it all came together:
But how did each of these components work individually?
What does asynchronous learning look like in action? And what exactly is a ‘Plio’?
Curious? Let’s dive deeper.
Making asynchronous learning work
Implementation
1. Plio
Plio is an open-source tool Avanti developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to improve asynchronous engagement. The primary stakeholder for Plio is the learner; all components are designed to keep their needs at the centre.
Here is an example of a Plio on the Solar System -
Plios were designed considering the following core drivers of the Octalysis Framework - Development, Accomplishment and Feedback.
This enhanced the learning experience and provided Avanti with invaluable data on student engagement and understanding. They now had a window into how students interacted with the content, the sections they found challenging, and the topics that resonated most, which helped them build iteratively on the data.
“I took part in Avanti’s program for Maths, in which they sent recorded videos (PLIOs) 2 times a week and there was doubt class on one day. This has helped in our studies a lot - whatever doubts were there in recorded class (PLIOs), they were cleared in doubt class.”
(Source: Neha, a student of GSSS Chhapra)
What did they learn?
-
Students preferred Plios with teachers teaching concepts on a whiteboard, with pop-up questions substituting the real-time Q&A session compared to animated ones.
-
A big pain point students expressed in previous programs was the delay in getting results from most of the assessments or exams they give. Instant score on the dashboard and ability to reattempt turned out to be highly motivating & led to very high engagement.
A dashboard is one of the many ways you can provide instant feedback and progress visibility in a relatable and attractive manner to the learner.
2. WhatsApp Community
The WhatsApp community was born from the need for a common platform for all batch-related communication but soon grew to become the most significant source of motivation for the students to engage with the program.
Here is a sneak peak into one of the WhatsApp communities:
Avanti Fellows understood that it was crucial to create a safe space for their students to celebrate their efforts and seek help when needed. The community also organised need-based sessions to address students' challenges.
Learners were added to a WhatsApp group with their peers, Avanti teachers, and subject teachers from school. This group provided social support and cheered each other. This is an example of the core driver of Social Influence from the Octalysis Framework.
Based on student feedback, Avanti also incorporated a live doubt class at the week's end, where all students met their peers and the teacher. At the time of writing this case study, experiments were ongoing to check if any other form of engagement could replace the live doubt class.
“We like the Avanti Fellows Whatsapp group because we can share our dashboards, doubts & problems there. In school groups, we can’t even send messages.”
(Source: A student who was a part of the program)
What did they learn?
-
Students appreciated the flexibility of asynchronous components but sought a central moderator. They needed visible social support & accountability systems to maintain their motivation. This led to adding synchronous components like doubt classes and WhatsApp communities to the program.
-
Students valued social attention and recognition and were drawn to features that enabled easy sharing of achievements, fostered interaction with peers, and displayed accomplishments.
For Avanti Fellows, this included shareable dashboards and achievement cards.
3. Stakeholder Involvement
It takes a village to raise a child and much more than the traditional school system to prepare the younger generation for today’s competitive career landscape. This includes all the stakeholders - teachers (Avanti Fellows and the subject teachers), parents and the school.
Avanti understood the importance of involving all stakeholders in their live class programs. For the new asynchronous program, they tried to answer two simple questions:
How will the stakeholders understand the program?
What role can/should the stakeholder play during its execution?
They mapped out the activities needed to keep all the stakeholders informed and help them understand the program's value -
“I feel Avanti classes are the best way for my daughter to learn after school. The best part about was that my daughter could watch the videos whenever she got the phone.”
(Source: The mother of a student in 9th Grade)
Here is a sample aggregated report for the teacher -
What did they learn?
-
When stakeholders understand the program's value, students receive support, reinforcement, and accountability from multiple sources, it can lead to success.
-
The students were already getting instruction in Math and Science at school. This program was meant to support them and hence needs to be integrated with the mainstream by involving the stakeholders and aligning the content being taught.
Improved learning at home
Impact
As part of the experimentation approach, Avanti’s journey from early adopters to the target population led to many insights and iterations. With all the iterations, there was tangible impact, too.
An increase in the engagement levels:
For the pilots conducted with early adopters, 52% of the students were regular (>50% attendance) in the hybrid program, which was 10 percentage points higher than the live class program conducted earlier with the same set of students.
Out of the three components of the hybrid program, Plios had the highest usage
The average duration of Plios during pilots was 20 minutes, of which the average captured watch time was 72% or 14.5 minutes.
For the pilots done for the entire target population, 42% of the students were regular (>50% attendance)
Comparable learning outcomes:
For the pilots conducted with early adopters, students who engaged the most with more than 50% of weekly learning sessions showed an increase of 25.15 percentage points from baseline to end-line assessment. These learning outcomes from this program were comparable with the live class model.
The learning outcomes from this program were comparable with the live class model and provided leading evidence that this model could lead to similar learning. The learning outcome results were still awaited for the pilot with the entire target population when the case study was being written.
“I understood what was taught through the plio and the doubt class. I liked the questions in the plio a lot! They helped us understand even better. Avanti classes helped us revise Math very well.”
(Source: Ashish, a 10th Grade student of GSSS Chhapra)
Key ingredients of motivation used
Learn more about these ingredients in our Pocket Guide to Learner Motivation!
Social Interaction & Collaboration
The WhatsApp community was a core component of Avanti’s design. It made learning social by providing learners a safe space to ask questions and celebrate milestones.
Consistent & Specific Feedback
When learners finished a Plio, they got the quiz result immediately. This served as an instant feedback on their understanding of the concept. The option to redo the quiz allowed one to improve on past scores.
Personal Relevance & Contextualisation
The program complemented the students' existing Math and Science instruction at school. It supported and integrated with the mainstream by involving stakeholders and aligning content. Aligning the learning goal with the learner's purpose was crucial for sustained motivation, necessitating a synergistic approach with the traditional educational system.
Tools Used
Click on a tool to apply it in your context!
