SEMÉ
2018-2022
Carnegie Mellon University
About

About

“I would like to have a broader intellectual base… to continue growing, evolving, always in the education sector.”

87% of students in Sub-Saharan Africa fail to achieve proficiency levels or reading. More specifically, in Côte d’Ivoire, only 53% of adult men and 33% of adult women are able to read and write at an appropriate level. The problem is, Côte d’Ivoire is not the exception, but an example of a learning crisis across developing countries.

A growing literature suggests that instead of focussing solely on students, programs should involve teachers, who are not only the center but also the solution to the current learning crisis. Focusing on teachers' aspirations, rather than needs (Toyama, 2018) could be the key to solving the education crisis, which is even more pronounced in rural areas.

Rural teachers are more gravely affected due to scarce infrastructure and the fact that they are sparse and isolated. Innovating teacher mentoring systems as Teaching at the Right level (TaRL) struggle to scale what could be a successful tool of improving teachers self-efficiency (Bandura, 1997) and motivation, and thus increasing their capabilities to achieve some of their aspirations.

Considering the above, SEMÉ at Carnegie Mellon University hopes to design a successful (feasible and sustainable) technological tool to mentor teachers in order to support them in:

  • their implementation of TaRL or other teacher professional development methods;
  • and their attainment of other teaching aspirations?




Publications

  • Designing a Human Centred Chatbot to Mentor Teachers in Developing Contexts

    HCIxB CHI Workshop ’20, Hawaii, USA
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  • DIA: A Human AI Hybrid Conversational Assistant for Developing Contexts

    ICTD 2020, Guayaquil, Ecuador
    Learn More
  • I'm fine where I am, but I want to do more: Exploring Teacher Aspirations in Rural Cote D’Ivoire

    ACM COMPASS 2020, Guayaquil, Ecuador
    Learn More

Team

Vikram Kamath

PhD Student

Baptiste Moreau-Pernet

Data Scientist

Eloísa Ávila

Research Assistant

Maya Greenholt

Research Assistant

Amy Ogan

Thomas and Lydia Moran Assistant Professor of Learning Science

Tim Brown

Professor Engineering & Public Policy, and Electrical & Computer Engineering

Contact Us

We look forward to hearing from you!