Capability Capers: early intervention soft skills app

With game based learning, ‘Capability Capers’ supports disadvantaged children to develop the necessary soft skills to thrive in school and beyond, setting the child up for a positive future of social and economic inclusion. Capability Capers can be tailored with culturally appropriate lessons and integration with local school curriculum.

Social communication skills are centrally important to workforce success with growing evidence that these “soft skills”, or “capabilities”, rival academic and technical skills in ability to predict employment and earnings. With limited modeling of these essential skills, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to progress onto a pathway of workplace and economic exclusion. While teachers of children at risk of struggling through school or dropping-out may be able to spot a number of red flags and recommend intervention, there is little in the way of accessible app based content to support skill development at this crucial time.

Capabilities such as social skills are universally important. They predict all four types of workforce outcomes (employment, performance, income, entrepreneurial success). Across the world there are initiatives which demonstrate that capabilities can be both developed and assessed, including Building Learning Power, Partnership for 21st Century Learning, AC21S, and New Pedagogies for Deeper Learning which is being tried in 70 schools. Using apps to work on social communication skills has been effective for children with communication disabilities, and we’ll leverage our understanding of this to develop Capability Capers for children from disadvantaged backgrounds at risk of dropout and future economic exclusion.

Capability Capers will support children to develop non-verbal soft skills such as understanding body language and maintaining eye contact to give them the foundations to develop the necessary competencies to thrive in the workplace and avoid the economic exclusion that they may otherwise face.Teachers will be equipped with Capability Capers as a tool to engage students who are demonstrating at-risk tendencies. The game-based app will assist teachers to demonstrate appropriate communication soft skills in a fun and engaging way that also allows for parent/family participation.Post pilot, we shall seek to adapt the culturally specific content for a wider pacific audience.

track downloads in the app store - 3,333 schools using Capability Capers post pilot

track number of accounts activated in app

- 10,000 students using Capability Capers

pre and post programme self confidence rating scale within the app

- 75% reported improved confidence in using soft skills targeted in app

While several solutions help children with disabilities work on these skills, there is yet to be an app which focusses on these skills in a game based framework for young people at risk of exclusion from school or the workforce.  The Foundation for Young Australians this week published their report which identified that there is a real need for teaching of these skills and interventions to date are typically face to face classroom or employment service based.

We will ensure that young people will be at the centre of the process.  We sought input from teachers in Australia working with this user group. This has helped us to shape our user experience maps and our prototype. We will now take the prototype out to share with the people who would hopefully benefit from it; gather their feedback and take this into our development phase. We will then pilot the app with this group, and continue to implement their feedback into improving the app. Our awards to date have been for our innovative accessible human centred design

Capability Capers will be adopted by schools as a tool to support at-risk students with teachers using it to engage these children in the classroom and at home with parent support. We know that children who are struggling with soft-skills are identified early in their first year of school. Capability Capers will be available as part of the school’s suite of tools to support these students.

Schools will pay a licence fee to cover the number of downloads that they require. This model means that the student’s family will not be required to pay for the app.

Therapy Box has reserve to sustain the project costs during research and pilot stage. The commercial model for the app would be to market the app to schools with a license fee which would allow for sustainability to be achieved in the 6 months post the completion of the pilot. If licences were $45 per school our target of 3,333 downloads in our first year post pilot would result in revenue of $150,000 thereby recouping our year 1 costs and with a conservative 20% growth in year 2, our sales of $180,000 would result in a profit of $30,000 assuming our cost base remains static.

Children from low socio-economic circumstances may not have stable home environments with parents or caregivers able to support their learnings - this may be due to parents/caregivers not being familiar with the soft-skills being taught in the app (eg cultural and language differences) or poor parent-child relationship. In these situations, the school would be encouraged to provide the extra support required to assist the child to engage with the app in an ongoing way.

https://therapy-box.co.uk/about

We are applying to solve for two reasons - 1. we believe we have an innovative and exciting solution to this particular challenge and we are well positioned to execute it, and 2. we are motivated by the opportunity to join the Solve community and learn from other Solvers in an energetic and resource-rich marketplace. We want to, and can, make a difference and we believe Solve is the place for us to do it.

We have identified primary schools to work with in our pilot phase. We sought advice and feedback from Melbourne based primary school teachers and will look to formalise these partnerships as we progress.

There are several apps general space but with a focus on autism such as Kloog and Sosh