Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment
Instead of a passive, one-way lecture, SMILE engages students in an active learning process by encouraging them to ask, share, answer and evaluate their own questions.
SMILE is valuable for aiding the learning process in remote, poverty-stricken, underserved countries, particularly for cases where teachers are scarce.
The primary objective of SMILE is to enhance students’ questioning abilities and encourage greater student-centric practices in classrooms,[2] and enable a low-cost mobile wireless learning environment.
Since 2009, the NGO has helped pilot studies test the software around the world, including in countries such as South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Ghana, and Tanzania.
[5] Kim and his research assistants at Stanford University were the main contributors to the initial technical design of SMILE.
The PocketSchool research study[6] investigated a portable ad-hoc network solution that enabled a multi-user interactive learning environment in areas where resources such as electricity or access to the Internet is limited.
This research was part of multiple projects affiliated with Stanford's interdisciplinary Programmable Open Mobile Internet[7] supported by National Science Foundation.
SMILE was further developed by GSE-IT at the Graduate School of Education of Stanford University, and partnering organizations such as Edify.
SMILE has been listed as one of the most innovative tools for the schools of tomorrow by International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, chaired by Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of United Kingdom, in its 2016 report.
The software allows students to create open-ended or multiple-choice questions on mobile phones during class to share with their classmates and teachers.
The classroom management software allows students to share, respond, and rate questions on criteria such as creativity and depth of analysis.
[2][10] As facilitators of this system, teachers have the ability to choose the “mode of learning” which describes the different forms or activities of questioning that students engage in.
[2] Additionally, generating multiple choice questions is a critical facet of this learning model because it leads students to do thorough research to find the right answer and distractors.
Song, Kim, and Karimi describe this in their 2012 paper, Inquiry-based Learning Environment Using Mobile Devices in Math Classroom.
[15] A typical SMILE session involves participants making questions regarding healthcare topics most prevalent and of interest to themselves.
The Pi, designed for use in areas of low internet connectivity, provides a local WiFi access point.
The Plug requires a microSD card which acts as the hard drive and local repository of the offline resources.
The application enables students to actively engage in their learning by asking questions and its development is led by Wilson Wang and Rayan Malik.
In 2023, with the release of GPT large language models, the ability to classify questions based on Bloom's Taxonomy became much easier with prompt engineering.
In 2024, as prompt engineering and generative AI became more robust, the SMILE Coach project began intended to help facilitate career counseling.
[2] In 2012, the Ministry of Education in Buenos Aires looked into modifying the cell phone prohibition use in the classroom that had been in effect since 2006.
In addition to using SMILE, educators can now create executable programs on mobile devices to help facilitate learning in the classroom.
The power of mobile devices to reach the last mile and the last school is most evident where electricity and internet access is not guaranteed.
[24] Students were asked to generate math questions covering a wide range of topics, from triangle-angle sum theorem, to fractions, areas, and diameters.
[2] SMILE Global was tested with fifty-four KG2 students in August 2020 during a study led by Rayan S. Malik in Dubai.
The study found that while SMILE Global had no statistical effect on students' conceptual understanding, it significantly improved their question analysis skills and confidence.
Without putting the benefits of SMILE into the local context, teachers and students will find no compelling reason to adopt the pedagogy.
The success rate of implementing SMILE is dependent on how cohesively an inquiry-based pedagogy is tied to the curriculum taught at a school.
While SMILE can be implemented with the existing curriculum (for example, with students asking simple recall math questions), it is most effective as an additional platform to foster critical thinking.
