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Context matters in the design and development of educational opportunities. Despite extensive global efforts to make education accessible for all, one out of every five children are outof-school. The situation demands re-thinking of learning strategies, particularly in underprivileged contexts. Continued advancements in learning technologies may offer novel solutions. The one-room schoolhouse is a centuries-old proven educational system, which has yielded promising results for rural areas. Using a multigrade teaching method, the one-room schoolhouse provides a resilient model for educating children where school administration faces typical issues of remote and rural areas such as lack of quality teachers, fewer children in each level, low socio-economic status of parents, lack of rooms in a school building, etc. This paper reports a case study of an integrated approach to teaching out-of-school children in rural Pakistan using education technology in a one-room schoolhouse environment using a multigrade teaching method. The paper (1) synthesizes the knowledge of practice and research on one-room schoolhouses, multigrade teaching, and education technology developments; (2) reports the on-ground practices of multigrade one-room schoolhouses in a real-life scenario in rural Pakistan and integrating digital capabilities into these schoolhouses; and (3) proposes the ways to implement and scale this method to educate out-of-school children in other underprivileged communities. Cite as Badar, F., Mason, J. (2020) Towards Digital Multigrade One-room Schoolhouses for Underprivileged Communities in Rural Pakistan. Computer-Based Learning in Context, 2(1), 21-39. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4057844

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Openness has underpinned much of the evolution of the Internet and digital technologies that support learning. Worldwide, openness in education has provided access to high-quality learning opportunities for school-age learners during the last two decades. During this same era, several global initiatives have made it their mission to educate all children of the world. However, despite major technological advancements in education and new innovative learning solutions, efforts to reduce large numbers of out-of-school children do not show promising outcomes in many parts of the world, let alone quality outcomes. This paper analyses the importance of context for educational outcomes and examines the need to understand socio-cultural and economic limiting factors of out-of-school children in underprivileged contexts in Pakistan. In such contexts, development demands sustainable and adaptable solutions. In identifying possible ‘solutions’, innovative strategies to educate out-of-school children is explored through combining traditional one-room schoolhouse methods with innovative digital technology and Open

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