MARKODING: Let's learn coding!

Our target outcomes:

Our target participants are underprivileged youth in urban areas. Currently, we are planning to pilot our program in 10 communities in Jakarta. These youth will learn basic programming using e-learning through their smartphones and internet shops. We randomize half of the communities to receive weekly training from mentors to test which mentoring procedure will work best for scale-up purposes. We hope to equip youth with basic coding skills and self-study habit to continue their learning process independently. We also want to build an online community for these early-stage coders to seek help and support from their peers and mentors.

How we will measure our progress:

• Outcome: Development of participant's basic coding skills
  Measurement Plan: badges earned and completion of the program
• Outcome: Development of participants' transferable skills
  Measurement Plan: psychological aptitude test pre- and post- 8-weeks training program
• Outcome: Development of community support system network
  Measurement Plan: response activities ( number of questions & answered questions) in the online community forum

The populations we will benefit initially:

• Adolescent
• Lower middle income economies (between $1006 and $3975 GNI)
• Secondary
• Non-binary
• Urban

The technologies we employ:

• Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
• Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)

Why our solution is unique:

• Markoding gives incentive to disadvantaged youth to learn how to code actively using its gamification feature. This feature rewards students who completed weekly e-learning modules with badges that can be posted in social medias and redeemed as cellphone credits.

• We make the learning process fun, simple, and engaging, by tailoring the curriculum content to be localized and easily understood.

• Our solution is affordable and accessible for the users, since we use their available resources they already have (smartphones and internet shops).

• We provide network for help and support through our mentors and online community.

Why our solution is human-centered:

To inspire our target participants, we introduce Markoding by inviting successful programmers who came from socio-economic background similar to theirs. From our pilot, we will incorporate direct feedback from disadvantaged youth to construct our curriculum. After the completion of the program, we will use stories from graduates’ learning experience to motivate new students to join Markoding. We will also give the opportunity for Markoding's alumni to assist the mentors. To sustain their learning process, we will provide an online community forum that will be run and maintained by the students and alumni.

How people will access our solution:

Accessibility: 
Youth from disadvantaged communities can access the learning materials from the website/ app using their own smartphones or through internet shops. Interesting fact: Despite their poverty level, youth in marginalized areas in Indonesia’s big cities are tech savvy. They spend 2-3 hours/day surfing the internet through their smartphones and internet shops. 

Affordability:
The Markoding e-learning materials can be accessed for free. After completing a module, they will earn badges that can be redeemed as cellphone credits. The value of the cellphone credits are equivalent to cost paid for time required completing the module.

Technology-Readiness Level:

http://www.markoding.com

Our organization:

How we will sustain our team financially:

We will use the combination of funding from financial aid, grants, corporate donors, personal and crowd funding. In addition to these main sources, we will commercialize our program by implementing 'one for one' system. This system allows a purchase of one course to fund one disadvantaged youth's program. We will also offer a commercial website development service that is run and maintained by Markoding's graduates. In the next phase, we are planning to generate revenue from our talent recruitment service.

The factors limiting our success:

• To get disadvantaged youth to be interested to join the program
  To tackle this issue, we will hold an event to socialize the program. The event will include sharing sessions from inspiring IT figures and opportunities to register on-the-spot.
  
  

• To keep the students motivated
  To motivate them, we implement gamification feature in their learning process.  
  
  

• Funding
  To develop the curriculum and learning materials (videos, animations, etc) to be simple, fun, and appealing to youth age group, we need to hire qualified resources. Moreover, we need the funding to build the technology infrastructures.

How long we have been working on our solution:

How long it will take to develop a pilot:

How long it will take to scale beyond our pilot:

Our expected annual budget:

$250000

How much of our budget we've secured to date:

$5000

We're looking for partners in these fields:

• Human+Machine
• Future of Work
• 21st Century Skills
• Online Learning
• STEM Education

Why we're applying to Solve:

Observing how disadvantaged youth are tech savvy, we saw an opportunity to transform them from technology consumers to a generation of workforce with IT skills. In order to deliver this transformation, we need the feedback and network from the SOLVE community. We believe experts in SOLVE will help us innovate and evolve to meet our goal.

In terms of technology, we hope to get partnerships from SOLVE, in particular MITx online learning platform, that can strengthen our curriculum and gamification feature to optimize youth’s learning retention rate. Finally, we need funding to pilot and roll out the program.

Our current partners:

We are currently working with communities in Cilincing, Indonesia to develop our pilot.