The students of Aparajita Literacy Program showed very less presence in class since the starting of spring 2014. As this program is students’ welfare oriented, it did not want to let this situation go like this. We, the Aparajita team were very concerned about this issue. We thought that the students don’t come to class because no more they enjoy the way we teach them the lesions. We started thinking various ways to attract the students in the class such as presenting the lesions in practical ways (for example making dramas from the lesions), arranging games, playing funny yet educative videos, showing movies during the weekends and so on was in the list of the activities we did to encourage the students. But still the students’ attendance rate remained poor.
This situation put us in deep anxiety and we arranged meetings to brainstorm about what can be done. After thinking from different perspectives, we came up with various ideas but because of some limitations, we could not implement those. Finally we decided to talk to each of the students individually so that we get to know the root causes of their no show. As there are some ethical issues regarding interviewing someone, we had to get approval from AUWIRB. We wrote a proposal to the IRB board and we got it accepted in fall 2014 after several review.
For the proposal, we prepared a questionnaire for the students which included questions about their family, work, interest in class, causes of dropping out, their expectation from the classes and the teachers etc. After the approval from IRB, the Aparajita team proceeded for interviewing the students.
Sadia, Mousumi and Nur.
Sadia, Mousumi and Nur.
