Rural students across the globe face unique challenges attaining their education – ranging from struggles with accessibility to obstacles with connectivity, curricula and lessons that don’t reflect their realities, and limited opportunities for career exploration and mentorship.
In the United States, these young people comprise approximately 20 percent of public school students, in addition to an estimated 2 million rural students in non-public school settings such as charter schools, private schools, micro-schools, and homeschools. Measuring the academic achievement of this diverse group is complex due to substantial differences across rural communities – with some scoring ahead of the national averages for nonrural learners, while others score below.
Supporting this student population in accessing effective and reliable education is critical for advancing educational equity – yet despite efforts to address these challenges, barriers persist both nationwide and globally.
Advancements in learning technologies – and programs driving educational innovation – have created new opportunities to better support the distinct needs of rural students. Among these opportunities are the Tools Competition, which seeks to spur high-impact solutions tackling critical issues in education; and the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute (LEVI), which drives collaboration across disciplines to double the rate of middle school math progress for students from low-income backgrounds.
These programs, alongside other initiatives from across the field, are helping to illuminate the ways educators and developers can apply new technologies to support rural learners. Here, we’ve drawn on learnings from these programs and the field to identify trends supporting this often-unseen student population.
Overcoming Limited Connectivity
Technology can reach its limits when facing the common challenge of unstable internet or limited connectivity in rural settings. And, for many rural students, remote or home-based learning may be their best or only option. Developers are responding by providing high-quality content that is accessible offline. For example, Learning Equality is dedicated to bringing high-quality educational opportunities to learners in low-resource or developing regions around the globe. They aim to improve assessment quality in these challenging learning environments by enabling balanced pre- and post-testing, regardless of internet connectivity.
Targeting Unique Accessibility Challenges
Rural students face a number of accessibility-related challenges, such as under-resourced schools, teacher shortages, and a lack of teacher expertise in certain content areas. These obstacles feed into broader challenges seen in some rural areas, such as higher school dropout rates or lower levels of educational attainment. From the field, VLab Education’s tool simulates virtual lab environments – recreating real-world science experiments for students who might otherwise not be exposed to a traditional lab.
Rural students face a number of accessibility-related challenges, such as under-resourced schools, teacher shortages, and a lack of teacher expertise in certain content areas.
Broadening Career Exploration Opportunities
Too often, learners in rural settings face limited opportunities for career exploration in industries beyond their communities. Developers are expanding the possibilities for career exploration by offering remote or hybrid work-based learning opportunities – leveraging AI tools for career discovery, and creating immersive experiences alongside industry partners. For example, GIGs for Kids by SLA Labs seeks to connect students from rural or underserved areas with remote and hybrid work-based learning opportunities from the convenience of a mobile device.
Increasing Opportunities for Mentorship
Geographic isolation seen in many rural communities can mean limited opportunities to connect with peers or mentors. Edtech can foster peer-to-peer collaboration, connect young people with topical experts, and encourage learning at the community level. Graspable Math Teams facilitates synchronous, interactive math work online – and while collaboration and problem solving are crucial in math education, remote instruction is often limited to lecture-style lessons and solo coursework. By accessing this tool, students can jointly solve algebraic problems on an interactive whiteboard.
Using AI to Deliver Quality, Remote Instruction
Advances in AI are also paving the way for high-quality instruction to reach more students, regardless of their geographic location or local teacher shortages. For example, Carnegie Learning’s MATHstream intervention harnesses the power of generative AI video instruction to reach thousands of students through computer-based, hyper-personalized math content. Using mobile accessibility, the team ensures that their intervention is available to students who may not attend traditional classrooms or have computers at home
Research demonstrates that small-group and 1:1 tutoring can have a drastic impact on student outcomes. LEVI teams from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Colorado Boulder are helping to deliver hybrid human-AI tutoring at scale, and have demonstrated the ability to do so in remote areas.
Increasing Engagement for Impactful Tutoring
Research demonstrates that small-group and 1:1 tutoring can have a drastic impact on student outcomes. LEVI teams from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Colorado Boulder are helping to deliver hybrid human-AI tutoring at scale, and have demonstrated the ability to do so in remote areas. Carnegie Mellon University’s PLUS intervention delivers tutor training and AI-powered tools for tutors to increase their efficiency. The University of Colorado Boulder’s hybrid human-AI tutoring (HAT) platform promotes collaborative learning by facilitating rich discussions and providing AI-driven feedback and guidance to students and tutors – and the team is also working with Saga Education to bring HAT to more students in remote areas.
Incorporating Locally-Relevant Content
Blending examples from rural life, like agriculture, with high-demand skills and knowledge, like computer science, is a good way to ensure students see relevancy in their coursework. For example, Agricoding by Katabasis, Inc. uses game-based learning developed for rural, low-income students to learn computer science by tending to crops – enhancing students’ computational thinking and programming skills along the way.
Conclusion
Serving students in a wide range of environments – including those in rural or remote areas – is a critical component of enhancing educational equity. Prize challenges and competitive innovation programs play an important role in spurring innovation to serve rural students, and developers are responding by creating edtech solutions for this student population to ensure they aren’t left behind.
The 2025 Tools Competition launched on Sept. 12, 2024, and accepted abstracts through Oct.25, 2024. Sign up for updates on the next cycle here.
