Upload files to Kolibri to add additional resources into lessons #14024
Description
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Overview
Requirements
The requirements define the scope and success-criteria of the project. They should not be adjusted without logging decisions and notifying stakeholders.
What problem are we solving?
The inability to responsively customize and localize materials prevents educators from fully integrating Kolibri into their teaching. These limits on autonomy are due to curriculum misalignment, lack of contextual relevance in learning resources, and reliance on program administrators and external staff for content/channel updates due to limited internet access.
Why this? Why now?
- Diverse content types: including lesson plans, worksheets, videos, quizzes, interactive content, and PowerPoint presentations
- Localization: There is a strong demand for the ability to modify content to reflect local contexts, making materials more relevant to students (e.g., replacing “whale” with “tilapia” in Uganda).
- Boosting engagement: The lack of ability to customize the content in channels and lessons is a blocker for teachers making more use of Kolibri. Multiple teachers report this will boost adoption, as it will bridge the gap between their teaching styles, individual learner needs, and the curriculum.
- Greater autonomy and flexibility: Teachers want more direct control over editing and adding materials. Since many schools lack internet access, local uploads would allow teachers to add and manage content offline, reducing reliance on updates from content creators or infrequent program staff visits.
- Now? Because we should have done it 7 years ago.
Outcomes
Specific needs that are being addressed, and how we will know when the project is done
- Add resources from multiple sources (new uploads, existing uploaded files, or channel content)
- Edit resource metadata
- An organized uploaded resource library that can be reused across multiple lessons
- Storage monitoring and bulk cleanup tools to free up device storage
- Share non-viewable files for student download when Kolibri can't display them natively
- Uploaded resources should be treated identically in lessons to imported resources
Constraints
Budgets, deadlines, technical limitations, and other constraints
- Storage limitations - have ways to inform users of how much space local uploads will take on learner devices
- Completely offline first - This experience is intended to work completely offline and should use design patterns that fully accommodate that
- Digital literacy - there are many complex technical concepts involved with decentralized file sharing. We should present information and decisions at any point as simply as possible
- Device performance - any constraints from the limitations of low-end devices when it comes to processing and file compatibility
- Edge cases to handle:
- Interrupted uploads and recovery
- Uploading a duplicate file - use hash based storage like existing Kolibri to handle
- Invalid/corrupted files - validate files before upload
- Unintentional deletion or editing
- Possible syncing conflicts? Care taken with identifiers
Out of scope
- Share custom lessons and resources with colleague coaches
- Upload back to Studio
- Creating courses offline
- Inappropriate content flagging
Context
Relevant background information including Notion opportunities, Google docs, clearinghouse entries, slack conversations, Github issues, or any other relevant background information
Report from Clearinghouse
Ability for educators to upload: lesson plans, worksheets, videos, quizzes/questions, and other interactive content
- Feature that enables educators to upload their own resources.
A simple user-friendly portal/landing page where educators can easily upload their own teaching materials, such as lesson plans, worksheets, videos, and interactive content.
- Feature that enable educators to create and upload their own Quizzes/assessment
Quiz Builder Tool: an interactive quiz builder tool that allows educators to create, customize, and upload quizzes in a different format e.g., drag/drop, multiple choice, short answer, true/false, etc.), multimedia integration, and randomized question order and grading.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/34dfc019-fdb0-4b61-9292-9e69275a8d30
Local upload will create an opportunity to localize existing materials
The content cannot be customized, easily changed to support contextualization. Sometimes learners are viewing a resource and parts of it don't apply to the Uganda context, i.e. mentions of a whale are not relevant, instead they would prefer to be able to change it to say tilapia because that's something that's known to the learners
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/a36b93de-8ac6-40e8-98b7-033d424b3302
The ability for a teacher to include their own resources will increase adoption and engagement
Teachers wanted the ability to customize and contribute their own content to Kolibri, not just access pre-created resources.
Allowing for more customization, contribution and content creation of local content by teachers themselves, since they are the ones delivering the material. Having a way for teachers to more easily package and distribute their own lessons through the Kolibri platform may have increased adoption and engagement over time.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/868d8873-4d72-459f-9641-2327e1092c74
We should consider best practices in the OER field when it comes to file and metadata management
I'd like to recommend that we take OER indexing best practices into account in further analysis. Doing so at the outset can help us avoid the disorganization, misattribution, legal violations, file duplication, search functionality breakdown, metadata mismanagement, and data "noise" of known crowdsourced OER libraries
In order to save time and help summarize, I've created a document [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C36d3bpmGgyZqRnGGBOvSWS_v1LHXyDclX1ebOMH0cM/edit#gid=0) to help add this context to the existing local content creation research and analysis done so far
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/2defce6c-0610-4fe7-b343-044f8b0b78a3
Local upload would solve the issue of no internet access where Kolibri is being actively used
Request: Local content upload #332
Ability to use K.Studio offline is [often] asked since most places don't have access to Internet.
Even a script to package content (books,videos) would be helpful.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/dc399367-3bf3-46eb-87e7-61da515fdf47
Requests for specific "column match" question type (QTI compatible?) and PDF upload
During meetings with Nalanda during the 2019 India trip, they flagged two specific offline content needs:
- They want coaches to be able to create their own "column match" questions "to save paper"
- They want teachers to be able to "upload their own PDFs"
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/ebef35ce-6471-400d-bcc9-c725a4651f02
Local upload will create an opportunity to localize existing materials
Megshala
During an interview with Megshala, they discussed how in the long-term they're interested in an automated localization process. They want to keep the same structures of the activities documented in their resources, but allow people to swap in localized versions of the content.
Once the localized versions are created, they would like the localizations to be pushed upstream, and then future users would be able to see both the original and localized versions.
CInI
Observed in a class in India that a coach was teaching their class English vocabulary using an app, but many of the concepts were contextually irrelevant (e.g. "Bison").
Divya mentioned that it would be great if they could swap in more contextually-relevant material while still keeping the same basic structure and format.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/9f347550-a7d0-4414-918b-2e9bfafe643d
Local upload allow for flexibility in learning and alignment to the curriculum
Survey question: What have been your biggest challenges?
"One of the key challenges has been that Kolibri does not contain local content that is in line with the curriculum in the country. This means there is a lot of deviation between what students should be learning and what Kolibri provides. Secondly, teachers are unable to include new assessment resources e.g. more questions that will enable teacher have more flexibility concerning the learning materials"
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/575ec01b-2d1e-4d17-9f17-68debc4087cc
Local upload would allow for customization of content needed after Kolibri is set up in the offline environment
On that note, I would like to know if anyone has tried to run a cloned version of Kolibri studio offline and linked it to their Kolibri server in order to add content to Kolibri offline. I am looking for a means to add content to kolibri offline and I thought about cloning and running the Kolibri studio and linking it to my kolibri server since the communities where my platform will be deployed in has very limited/no access to the internet.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/9a134276-7750-4a7a-bff3-2b05ff2fed8d
Some want to upload content as a workaround to bring in content without permission?
His use-case is an example of how people go about bringing in content for which they may not have permissions. The goal is to allow for displaying directories of local content inside Kolibri, but doesn't require using Kolibri Studio to build a channel.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/76322d6b-07a8-49e2-8519-11c50c035433
Upload of powerpoint presentations
During the Kakuma trainings, one participant stated that he would like to be able to add custom PowerPoint presentations to Kolibri so his students can review later.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/771ffb9c-78df-43de-b156-b9e8318806a2
The ability for a teacher to include their own resources will increase adoption and engagement
They had trouble keeping the teachers engaged and interested in using Kolibri. When asked what would help address this, said it would help if teachers are able to upload own lesson. Most requested question was how to upload their own lesson. Teachers can have their content and have their students want it. Not easy to have that custom content. Students are excited with tabs, helps learning and engagement. If can bring lesson, don't need internet, won't struggle. Can understand at own rate.
Kakuma - shortage of textbooks, inadequate teacher training/knowledge.Schools have 1 or 2 teachers who serve all students in Form 1-4. Upload vid on kolibri - 1 teacher can serve many. That’s the gap this feature can help until curriculum alignment is complete.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/cc0e781f-a96a-4c42-883e-d15bf15f7288
It is too slow for the the admin to update content on Studio and physically bring the update later
If Kolibri supports the use of digital learning materials in mother tongue languages, what are the most important things you would expect to be able to do? Why? Please give specific examples.
Ability by the teachers to add more content resources such as photos and video clips and edit existing ones without depending on the content creators because some the schools are located where content creators visit once in a week to update content.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/7e11bfa4-96d2-4a97-a9ca-688f7fd3de85
Consider for future compatibility:
Transferring locally included resources up to a Studio channel
I have set up 2 years worth of lessons for Tanzanian secondary school mathematics (year 1 and year 2) on a local installation (laptop) of Kolibri. However, I realize now that future updates and changes would be better propagated to client machines if they were stored as a channel via Kolibri Studio. Is there a way I can transfer the lessons wholesale from my local set-up onto Kolibri studio? It is quite tedious trying to replicate my local installation onto Kolibri Studio video for video for hundreds of videos and would love to hear if there is a way to automate this migration.
https://app.enjoyhq.com/sh/doc/a97ce844-238b-41ca-a771-8f6ef26c88ec