Connecting with the Unconnected: Collaborative Design for a Mobile Learning App in Rural Malaysian Secondary Schools Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic

During the pandemic, learning had to take place online. Children who came from the remote and rural areas were among the most disadvantaged in education due to geographical separation and limited infrastructure. Many existing learning tools were not able to be used in these rural areas, as integration of video conferencing and other functions required high bandwidth. Instead, it was found that teachers had resorted to disseminating the materials by hand to the students, or ab(using) their own private social media applications to share notes and assignments to the students. This prompts a low bandwidth solution to be designed specifically to aid mobile learning in areas where connectivity was a challenge. Several students and teachers from rural, secondary-level schools including that in Song, Sarawak and Bachok, Kelantan, were invited to co-design a web application, BURDLE (Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide in Learning) that can be used on both desktop and mobile phone. BURDLE requires a small amount of bandwidth to function as it strips off unnecessary functions in most learning management system and has the look-and-feel of general social media apps, offering familiarity and fluidity among its users. The design process and challenges in designing and evaluating the performance of BURDLE is presented in this study.