Offline Learning Balogun 1 Aisha Balogun Mohammed Offline Learning Mobile Application for Learning in Developing Countries Undergraduate Honors Thesis Electrical and Computer Engineering Department University of Wyoming May 1st, 2020 Offline Learning Balogun 2 Abstract Many citizens of developing countries cannot access online learning due to various structural and economic barriers. Because current models of online education such as Udacity, Khan Academy and Udemy require high internet bandwidth for videos and teleconferencing capabilities, people hoping to learn in developing countries cannot participate. I built a mobile application that enables the transmission of course content downloaded from Udacity without the use of mobile data, using Nearby Connections API. The working demo of the application has complete functionality according to the scope of the project and can be used to breach the structural barrier to online learning in developing countries. Background Information I began analyzing new structures for online learning development throughout fall 2018. Extensive outreach was conducted by hosting an Arduino workshop in Ilorin, Nigeria, in January 2019 that focused on practical applications of engineering sciences. Over $750 was fundraised for the success of the workshop. Participants were surveyed to quantify structural barriers to online learning. According to the survey with 34 respondents, the three toughest obstacles to online learning that Nigerian youth face include the following: high internet bandwidth, time commitment and tuition. (Balogun) Figure 1. Survey result on obstacles to online learning Offline Learning Balogun 3 Another survey was conducted consisting of about 150 respondents from both urban and rural areas in Nigeria in September 2019 (Baker). Of the 150 respondents to the survey, 49% of them have taken an online course before and of that 49%, 80% of them have had issues with online courses because of the internet speed. Figure 2. Result of second survey on obstacles to online learning Solution Summary My project is to design and build a mobile application called Offline Learning to enable the transmission of course content downloaded from Udacity without the use of mobile data. Offline Learning would enable the few people who have access to sufficient bandwidth needed to get the course content to distribute it to the masses who would ordinarily be deprived of the opportunity to learn using resources available online. Offline Learning is being developed as a solution specifically for Nigeria that will be modeled for other developing countries. Offline Learning will be a free platform that allows its users to teach themselves new skills utilized for practical application of their knowledge without the limitations of internet bandwidth. A mobile application is well suited for this implementation because in written responses to the second survey, users identified mobile devices as their primary source of internet access. Also, 97% of the survey respondents indicated they were interested in taking an online course in the future and 99% of them own a mobile phone with internet. (Baker) Alternative Solutions Investigated Varying alternative solutions were considered to address the problem statement. The first solution considered was to create and implement practical courses, like programming, in a format compatible with Offline Learning Balogun 4 structural limitations of Nigeria and other developing countries. The online courses will contrast current online, skill-building platforms designed for developed countries. First, to address low bandwidth, the platform would utilize images, text and audio as opposed to videos. These learning tools mitigate the internet bandwidth barrier because they function well with low bandwidth. Also, the platform would be consciously designed for interactivity like leveraging cloud computing to facilitate feedback. As another bonus, cloud computing allows processing to occur from a computer with better hardware infrastructure hosted in the cloud. Second, to increase motivation, courses will be organized as multiple 14-day sprints. To keep them liable for their work, users will make a refundable deposit that is given back after they complete a course. Once users complete a course, they receive a certificate along with their refund. The amount for the refundable deposit will be chosen after further analysis regarding affordable expenses in Nigeria. This solution was deemed non-ideal because 93% of the respondents who have taken an online course before (49% of the total 150 respondents) believed the videos were effective in learning the content. Moreover, with the pivot of Offline Learning, more focus can be towards increasing accessibility of already available outstanding online learning platforms like Udacity and Udemy, rather than potentially competing with them. Another alternative solution that was considered was having physical locations (stations) where people could come to collect the downloaded course content. However, there would be physical limitations to this as people would have to transport to certain locations. Moreover, it would be costly and impractical to have stations all across developing countries and there would be additional cost incurred to staff the stations. Furthermore, just transferring course content and videos through Bluetooth or NFC would be disorderly as the content would not be contained in one place, correctly labeled and organized. The last alternative solution explored was the individual use of Bluetooth and NFC for data transmission. Research showed that although Bluetooth has a wider range of operation - 30 feet compared to 20cm for NFC - and faster transmission rate - 2.1Mbit/s compared to 424 kbit/s - there were more advantages to making use of NFC over Bluetooth. NFC technology has better usability because it does not require pairing unlike Bluetooth which “might take few seconds to connect or sometimes it doesn’t connect due to some technical glitches or faults.” (Goyal). The complexities and time consumption of pairing could dissuade users of the mobile application. Furthermore, NFC consumes much less power than Bluetooth which is a factor to consider for implementation in developing countries where there’s irregular power supply. NFC is available on devices running on Android 4.4 or later (Hill). However, my decision to make use of NFC changed when I discovered that NFC beam had been Offline Learning Balogun 5 deprecated in Android 10. This prompted me to search for other technologies to achieve my goal and I learnt about Nearby Connections API. Project Goals ➢ Develop a mobile app that would allow the transfer of downloaded course materials from Udacity. ➢ Transfer of data without the use of mobile data. ➢ Retrieval of course materials in an orderly fashion, i.e. classified by lesson and chapters, as contained on Udacity. Market Presently, students in Nigeria learn about concepts in the classroom but lack a wholesome understanding of these concepts due to the absence of a practical learning approach. As a developing country, Nigeria has limited widespread public access to technology, especially in the field of education. There is demand for practical- based learning in Nigeria. The Arduino workshop organized in Nigeria in January sold-out in a few days, even though participants were required to deposit a registration fee. Users were engaged and enthusiastic and the success of the workshop was published in two daily Nigerian newspapers. (Appendix A) Increasing the availability of online courses which have a practical approach to lessons will be the foundation of fulfilling Nigeria’s educational needs. Offline Learning which works with Nigeria’s structural barriers will allow for widespread participation and adoption. The target audience consists of 18 to 29-year-old Nigerians who are either in college or recent graduates. The proportional market size is estimated to be 50 million people. Offline Learning aims to equip users with practical job skills needed for the workforce or to start their own independent businesses. Competition Presently, there are no applications that compete with the intended functionality of Offline Learning. While there are stand-alone online learning platforms like Udacity, Udemy, EdX and Khan Academy, they do not address the structural limitations of Nigeria or other developing countries. Functional Description ❖ User-friendly ➢ The implementation of the GUI would be intuitive to use. Offline Learning Balogun 6 ➢ Layout would be visually appealing. ❖ Data Acquisition ➢ An Application Programming Interface (API) would be used to download the course content from Udacity. ❖ Data Transfer ➢ Data will be transferred via Near Field Communication (NFC). ❖ Data Retrieval ➢ After the data is received, the videos would be organized in respect to the appropriate lessons and chapters with the use of metadata stored during download. Functional Block Diagram Technologies Used Nearby Connections API: Nearby Connections is a peer-to-peer networking API that allows apps to easily discover, connect to, and exchange data with nearby devices in real-time, regardless of network connectivity. Under the hood, the API uses a combination of Bluetooth, BLE, and Wifi hotspots, leveraging the strengths of each while circumventing their respective weaknesses. Offline Learning Balogun 7 Web view: The WebView class is an extension of Android's View class that allows the display web pages as a part of an activity layout. It does not include any features of a fully developed web browser, such as navigation controls or an address bar. All that WebView does, by default, is show a web page. Application Functionality The home screen of the app (1st picture) contains buttons for advertise (server) and discovery (client). When the server starts advertising and the client starts discovery, the two phones will connect, and the server phone loads up Udacity’s homepage. The server can navigate Udacity’s webpage and download course content from Udacity in the form of zip files and send it by clicking on the send button and selecting the file from internal storage. Figure 1: Application Home screen Figure 2: Udacity WebView Figure 3: Using Image Chooser to Send a File Team Members and Division of Labor This was an individual project. Cost Analysis Offline Learning is a software-based project that came at no cost to develop. If I were to publish the mobile app to the Google Play Store, it would cost a $25 one-time registration fee for the Google Play Developer Console Offline Learning Balogun 8 Results I was able to meet all the design specifications listed in my design contract. I do not believe anything more needs to be done to make this a marketable product and I am glad about the current way I did things. Beyond the scope of this project, I believe it is worth exploring an iOS mobile application with similar functionality to be able to cater for a wider audience. Offline Learning Balogun 9 Appendix A Nigerian-born US Undergraduate Gives Back to University of Ilorin (Unilorin) Offline Learning Balogun 10 Offline Learning Balogun 11 Offline Learning Balogun 12 References Baker, H. (September 2019). Online Learning in Nigeria Survey. Laramie, Wyoming, University of Wyoming. Balogun, A (January 2019). Arduino Workshop Follow-Up Survey. N/A, Georgia Institute of Technology. Goyal A. (May 2019). NFC vs. Bluetooth: A Detailed Comparison. https://www.endivesoftware.com/blog/nfc-vs-bluetooth Hill S. (October 2019). What is NFC? Here’s everything you need to know. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-nfc