The Study of Learning Environment to Augment Adult Basic Education in the Domain of Basic Arithmetic

Abstract

The Study of Learning Environment to Augment Adult Basic Education in the Domain of Basic Arithmetic Illiteracy is a dilemma. According to report of UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) 2016, there are 758 million adults of the age of 15 years and above who can’t read or write a simple sentence. Serious efforts are, therefore, needed to overcome the matter. Apart from application of the traditional methods of education, innovative ways are required to be introduced to address the large scale illiteracy. One of the innovative ways of learning is learning with the aid of technology. Although technology is being used for mainstream education, yet very rare technologyassisted solutions are available for the learning of adult illiterates. The solutions designed for the learning of adult illiterates are targeting functional illiterates (persons who can read and write basic sentences) only. However, the efforts pertinent to the development of technology-assisted educational environment for the absolute illiterate adults (persons who cannot read and write basic sentences) have so far been insignificant. This research aims at achieving the objective of adult education based on technology-assisted solutions. For this objective, contents are designed in 3D environment to develop the numeracy skills in the absolute illiterates. The reason for choosing 3D learning platforms is to reduce the text dominant interfaces so that one of the main barriers to the use of technology in the learning of illiterate adults is addressed. In order to find out the effects of belongings and the usage of the objects of learners’ interest in learning environments, 3D learner-centered environments have been designed and evaluated. Learning environments are mainly divided into two different categories; one is the general environment (non learner-centered, without considering the interests and belongings of learners) and the other is learner-centered designed environment. For this purpose, separate learning environments are designed for each class of ix learners, taking into consideration their interests and belongings. To add the impact of mobile technology on the learning of illiterates, all the applications mentioned above have been designed for android system. Empirical studies have been conducted to find out the significance of the proposed 3D mobile based learning environments. The results of these studies demonstrate that higher learning efficiency is achieved due to incorporation of learners interests and belongings while designing the learning environments.