Publication

Abstract : This exploratory study examined the potential for adapting Online Labs (OLabs), an innovative educational initiative of Digital India, for use in secondary schools in Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa. OLabs provides exposure to and participation in scientific experiments for students attending low-resource schools and cannot provide expensive laboratory equipments. Following a site visit in India, we examined Cote d’Ivoire curriculum documents and interviewed a variety of Ivorian stakeholders including school principals, science teachers, and students to evaluate needs and identify which experiments might be best suited for the Cote d’Ivoire context. Thirty experiments across the three scientific disciplines were identified as appropriate, and of these, 12 were translated from English to French, the official language of instruction in Cote d’Ivoire. These 12 experiments were published online and tested in Cote d’Ivoire by Ivorian teachers in terms of connectivity, user registration, accessibility to the translated experiments, and clarity of the content of translated experiments. The translated experiments were tested by teachers (n = 5) from Cote d’Ivoire. 80% of participants in this test rated the connectivity platform as good and indicated that the translated experiments were easily accessible. However, their deployment, monitoring, and empirical evaluation will necessarily need to be accompanied by public authorities and organizations of goodwill.