Current Solutions and their Limitations
Access to reliable and effective education should be available to everyone seeking to learn, regardless of their location or schedule constraints. Fortunately, in today’s era, technological advancements have made it easily achievable without the need for extensive travel or changing of one’s schedule. However, there are some limitations with todays current solutions which leaves many students stuck in the “beginners loop.”
Existing platforms promoting online Islamic education undoubtedly serve a great purpose, yet we have noticed significant shortcomings in several areas. We have seen that current solutions heavily depend on website builders like Squarespace. Unfortunately, this approach imposes limitations as creators of the course are restricted to the features and capabilities provided by that third party platform. In this setup, the absence of a dedicated team of developers with a focus on education hinders the ability to create, innovate, and equip instructors with the necessary tools to effectively construct online courses which engage their community.
Another significant challenge we have identified is that many existing online education solutions utilize course videos that were originally recorded in live class settings or are simply not recorded in the most effective way. This approach poses a significant disadvantage for online students, as the content may not be tailored to their specific needs and context. Since online learning entails a distinct environment, it is crucial to provide educational materials that are purposefully designed and optimized for online comprehension, taking into account the unique requirements of remote learners.
These problems make online learning very difficult for students. Many students who attempt to study online get trapped in what we refer to as the “beginner’s loop.” Essentially, this describes a student who struggles to progress beyond basic content due to difficulties grasping the material effectively.
Nabda: An Engaged Learning Experience
Now that we know the limitations of the current solutions, we understand what we need to do in order to address these challenges head-on. We are working towards providing a platform that is accessible, interactive, and has the necessary tools for educators to connect with their students.
Technology can help facilitate a meaningful experience for students and instructors. By utilizing modern technology, we are able to provide innovative and helpful tools. There are three areas that we are focusing on as we build Nabda: An appealing and structured User Interface, interactivity, and automated feedback.
Building an appealing and structured user interface promotes user engagement, simplifies navigation, enhances the overall user experience, and visually represents content effectively. We have developed our own design system and believe it will serve to be effective as soon as teachers and students begin to interact with our platform.
Creating a platform that is interactive is pivotal in strengthening a student’s grasp on concepts. We prioritize interactivity by equipping teachers with a diverse group of interactive elements into their courses and including a wealth of questions, quizzes, and exams.
Automating feedback is a must when creating a platform that can potentially host many students. Feedback in any educational endeavor is required, however, as the amount of students grow, the more difficult it becomes to give feedback. We are utilizing machine learning (ML) to automate a portion of that feedback. We utilize ML in order to track student performance and provide them with meaningful input on how and where they can improve. We also utilize ML for other portions of the learning experience.
The structure of courses plays an important role in online education. Unlike in traditional classrooms where a teacher provides direct instruction, online learning relies on student-driven discovery, similar to reading a book. In this context, the teacher is absent, leaving the student to navigate the content independently. So, the organization and delivery of lessons become crucial, as they directly impact the student's ability to learn without additional guidance. Thus, careful attention must be given to how lessons are structured and content is presented to ensure optimal learning outcomes.
At Nabda, we take extra care in helping teachers craft their lessons to ensure they effectively facilitate online learning experiences, as mentioned before. We desire to provide every student with the best opportunity to learn online. We want to enable students to break out of the “beginners loop” and be able to explore and embrace the knowledge.
Development and Feedback
Nabda has been under development for a little less than a year, and we are actively working towards its full launch within a couple of months. For now, you can join our waitlist and get periodic updates to Nabda. We plan to release some content to provide a glimpse of what Nabda has to offer. As we continue to develop Nabda, we will test the platform and content in order to get the right feedback and further its excellence. By actively seeking feedback, we can actively improve and update the platform. Through this iterative process, we strive to develop a platform that is beneficial and provides an exceptional learning experience for students.