All around the world, there’s an opportunity gap between two kinds of students, and it has nothing to do with gender, ethnicity, or income level. This gap is between urban students and rural students.
Together with the nonprofit Ed Farm, Kurani has designed a prototype classroom to bridge the divide between urban and rural students. It’s called the Connected Rural Classroom. The pilot location will live in Alabama, but leaders anywhere in the world can bring it to their rural area. Read more
According to 2019 data, 35% of US adults in urban areas held a bachelor’s degree or higher. For rural students, however, that number stood at just 21%. It’s a trend that dates back to the 1960s in the US, and likely far earlier in other parts of the world: If you grow up with limited access to high-quality teachers, you’ll grow up with limited access to opportunity.
“Every student, no matter where they live, deserves a high-quality education that puts life’s full menu of options in front of them,” says Danish Kurani. “One way to do that is through technology.”
The Connected Rural Classroom is a hybrid learning experience, in which top teachers from all over the US beam in, live, to instruct a handful of students at a time. These lessons focus on special topics that the school chooses to offer to a handful of students, and are held in the room’s amphitheater.
During this time, an in-room facilitator keeps the rest of the class engaged across several classroom zones. There are desks for group work, booths for partner activities, and private spaces for heads-down work. When lessons or presentations involve the whole class, the room can be arranged as an auditorium.
All throughout the space, technology helps students and staff stay connected. Beyond the main screen at the head of the class, the classroom comes equipped with iPads that hold the day’s lessons, so students and the facilitator can pick up where they left off the day before.
“This technology isn’t there just to make the room feel fancy,” Kurani says. “It’s to shrink the world, so that students have a close experience with whoever’s beaming in, whether it’s from Oregon or California or Illinois.”
The prototype follows from a major study nearly 20 years ago. In 2004, researchers were able to show that many more rural students went on to hold professional jobs when their schools were outfitted to broadcast recorded lessons than students whose education was limited to in-person instruction. The study lasted four years, and at the 10-year mark after the study ended, the “connected” students had completed more years of schooling and earned more money, on average.
The Connected Rural Classroom is designed to go even further, as teachers broadcast live, and can interact with students directly.
In addition, the classroom itself follows the science of learning in its design—for example, with smart lighting set to the exact color temperature of natural daylight, to keep students energized and focused. There are also finger paths students can trace to calm themselves down, noise-dampening materials in the ceiling, and partitions to promote private work.
As a result, the students who live in a town of 1,000 can access the same kind of education as their peers in a city of one million. “Today’s technology is absolutely capable of bringing a world-class experience to students anywhere,” Kurani says. “This classroom is proof of that.”
