One-line solution summary:
An AI-driven digital platform that provides personalized learning to improve learning outcomes for all, with rich data analytics to empower educators.
Which Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Scalable Innovations for Blended Learning: How can evidence-based blended learning solutions be scaled in low-resource contexts?Pitch your solution.
Throughout the education sector in the entire world, there are two key problems that cut Firstly, many students do not meet required standards and Secondly, educators spend the majority of their time (up to 70%) on administrative tasks such as marking and data tracking. This is time that is not spent improving the quality of instruction.
EduLight is building a transformative future of education where educators are appropriately supported to provide effective education and learners have access to a 24/7 curriculum, created for their specific and precise learning needs in every moment.
EduLight provides genuine adaptivity and personalization to overcome the traditional one-size-fits-all model of education that leaves so many students disengaged. As students learn on EduLight, every click, every score, every interaction is recorded. This data feeds into artificially intelligent algorithms that learn how each individual student learns and plot the most effective route through learning material for each individual. Gaps in foundational knowledge are quickly identified and remedied, weaknesses are scaffolded and strengths built upon, with automated, constructive feedback provided at the point of need. Differentiated material is provided, based on a student’s focus, difficulty levels and their pace of learning etc, to ensure that every learning experience is maximally effective.
By automating routine administrative tasks, such as marking, monitoring progress and generating progress reports, EduLight relieves the administrative burden on educators. The most effective feedback provides cues and reinforcement for learners and takes place at the point of learning, so not only does EduLight’s automarked assessments remove the pressure of marking from the teacher, it also improves the quality of learning for students. With EduLight’s real time analysis of student performance, educators have thorough and accurate insight into their students’ learning. Easy-to-use dashboards provide instant access to detailed learning data at an individual and class level without the usual manual data input that teachers are all too familiar with.
EduLight can save educators up to six hours per week, allowing more time to be spent planning flexible and effective interventions. Using EduLight, educators can quickly identify which students need further assistance and which need more challenging work, understand the trends and patterns at a class level and update their lesson plans to ensure all students are making the required progress.
The combination of providing personalized resources to every student and enabling educators to focus their energy where it is most effective can reduce achievement gaps, particularly for learners who are typically let down by the education system: those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who have specific learning needs. It is a travesty that any child is left behind, but the blow is hardened when so many of these children are those who are already so vulnerable. When using EduLight, all students regardless of their background, prior attainment or specific needs, achieve similar levels of understanding. Using EduLight, we can help to pave the way to a world in which every child achieves their full potential.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Mukono, UgandaOur solution's stage of development:
ConceptIs this a new solution, an existing solution, or an adaptation of an existing solution?
New solutionHow does your solution incorporate research?
EduLight is the first educational platform to combine artificial intelligence, pedagogical insights and cognitive neuroscience research in East Africa. Throughout our design thinking and prototyping, we incorporate up-to-date research into our platform and are constantly evolving in order to improve education for all.
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Koliwo Umar, Agnes Apio, Andrew and Joseph
What makes your solution innovative?
EduLight is the first educational platform to combine artificial intelligence, pedagogical insights and cognitive neuroscience research. Rather than simply digitizing the practices that already exist, we have created a platform to reinvent how we implement education, by creating new content tailored to our platform. We have crafted different solutions for different problems: for example, long-form answers cannot be auto-marked, so we ensured that EduLight would still reduce teacher workload by allowing teachers to record their feedback and instantly send it to students. We incorporate up-to-date research into our platform and are constantly evolving in order to improve education for all.
EduLight also slashes teacher workload by automating admin tasks like marking and planning. Using the platform saves them on average six hours a week – freeing them to focus on teaching. They can also spend more time teaching the softer skills required by modern employers or take children on more field trips. We believe that our solution empowers teachers, parents and students to improve education by providing them all with extensive data insights. Teachers are provided data on performance in real-time, allowing them to monitor progress and perform timely interventions to help students. Parents can view data on their child’s performance, encouraging home learning and becoming more involved in their child’s education.
Our project technology is the vehicle through which we transform education. We can only provide a personalized education through the use of technology which can tailor a course syllabus to the learning of each child - for a teacher to do this manually would be incredibly time-consuming and unfeasible. EduLight’s artificially intelligent algorithm generates the recommended learner pathway for every student and then automarks work for the teacher. Technology also allows us to monitor and evaluate the effects of EduLight by collecting learning data and then using it to improve the platform.
What is your theory of change?
Our theory of change lies in our artificially intelligent learning platform for teachers and students, to adequately and effectively continue providing a personalized learning journey and real-time analytics through a combination of artificial intelligence, data science & cognitive neuroscience to deliver revolutionary education. Automating tasks like marking and homework tracking, frees up valuable time for teachers to focus on what matters most: teaching! We can then consider this our true impact.
More than half a billion children across the world lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, while a quarter of a million English children are learning in failing schools. 80% of teachers are considering leaving the profession due to unbearable workloads and almost half are working the equivalent of an extra three days a week in the evenings and on weekends – an unsustainable situation.
For decades technologies like artificial intelligence have been disrupting and improving sectors across the world, while education, the second-biggest sector globally, has remained largely untouched.
Now schools can embrace the power of AI through Edulight, which is set to transforming the way students learn – and the way teachers teach – across the world.
AI has the power to transform education from an outdated ‘one-size-fits-all’ to ‘one-size-fits-one’ by providing each student with a personalized path to mastery.
While the student is the most important person in the room, the teacher is the most powerful. EduLight empowers teachers by automating admin tasks like marking and planning, saving them on average six hours a week - freeing them to focus on actually teaching. Teachers are provided extensive data on pupils’ performance in real-time, allowing them to better monitor progress and perform timely, targeted interventions to help their students.
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries do you plan to be operating within the next year?
What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?
For the next 12months;
- Prototype, Develop, Refine, Launch and market.
- Expand our AI insights to provide reliable forecasts of challenges and difficulties in a student’s learning.
- Develop a mobile app.
- Expand into more subjects across the primary curriculum, including geography, history, languages and early years reading.
- Roll out our 1:1 subscription model. For every school that subscribes within Uganda, we will provide free access to Edulight for a school (or other educational institution) in a developing country.
- Raise the first half of a Series A investment
- Increase learning outcomes in schools using EduLight by 20 percent or more
For the next 5 years;
- Develop an assessment-for-learning adaptive questioning feature, providing desirable difficulty for each student as they answer questions, optimizing their learning.
- Based on our predictive analytics engine and adaptive question feature, provide auto-generated content to learners, more specifically tailored to individual needs.
- Expand operations to the US, additional countries in the Middle East and West Africa, and Southeast Asia regions.
- Reach profitability.
We have aggressive expansion plans over the coming years. We expect to be in over 500 schools by the end of 2023 and over 100 by the end of 2025. These will be educational institutions around the world, spanning the full range of education, from early years through to continuing and adult learning. We expect learners to be benefiting from ever more personalized recommendations and adaptations; our data insights will be bolstered by AI analysis, providing educators with more at-a-glance insights, predictions and support.
To achieve the goals mentioned above, EduLight seeks partnerships to:
- Effectively share EduLight’s story via social and global media, as it designs and implements a new branding and marketing strategy
- Find the right distribution partners and investors for EduLight in the Africa and beyond
- Measure impact by conducting impact studies with research and academic institution.
What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year and in the next five years?
The biggest barrier we are faced with is Finance: This makes our work hard since we lack the finance to secure necessary man power, software as well as meet the product design and development.
Secondly, we are faced with the challenge of access to potential investors, partners and peer collaborators who would help us in the finance and advise even as we refine our product concept.
Technically we are also short of assistance since most of it requires financial input which we current don't have.
How do you plan to overcome these barriers?
We believe in the power of open innovation and being part of the Solve movement will help us to collaborate with other passionate organizations and grow our international exposure. We are particularly excited about the chance to connect with cross-sector leaders through the Jacobs Foundation and partners network in order to learn how to launch our platform in East Africa. Having already spoken at numerous Uganda education conferences, we are keen to attend events in East Africa and abroad.
By leveraging this competition, we hope to get access to mentors, potential investors and funders, as well as partners and peer networks that will help us secure equity-free funding for our product as well as offer us mentorship, exposure to help us in the design, pilot and implementation stages of product. It is also through the same platform that we would leverage to scale and expand our product to other countries.
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Solution name:
Edulight