1Room

An educational system designed at the end of the 19th century remains the default mode for learning today. In low-income countries the issues of a rigid system are compounded. Students face additional demands including supporting their families, travelling far distances to get to school and learning in crowded classrooms. All of which lead to a staggeringly low completion rate. 1Room supports students on their path of becoming who they want to be by making education more affordable, flexible and engaging by digitizing and delivering a country's high school curriculum through tablets in one room with one teacher. With success supporting both out-of-school children, including teen mothers, and students in the classroom, we believe with additional investment we can refine our model, reach more students, and help lift a large number of people out of poverty.

Worldwide, 138 million teens are out of school. In developing countries, ⅔ of youth do not complete secondary school. The top reasons cited for this alarming rate of completion are cost, quality, distance, and family obligations. Currently, 1Room is operating in East Africa, where the average fee for high school is a whopping $500.

Many students cannot afford these fees, and 13 million of the students that can must travel over an hour to get to school. 

Inflexible school schedules also contribute to student attrition. High-school aged mothers are forced to drop out of school entirely. It is clear that one-size-fits-all scheduling cannot accommodate part-time schedules.

Finally, the poor quality of public secondary education causes many students to lose hope of passing the national exam. In a crowded classroom, with counter-productive gender norms, it is difficult for students to learn. With a few exceptions for flagship schools, public high schools in East Africa are terrible. High student to teacher ratios (>45:1), and monotonous chalk-talks are the norm.

1Room makes education accessible to students that otherwise would have been left behind. Our team aggregates open source educational content, develops country-specific digital lessons with local teachers, and delivers this through tablets linked to an offline server. We offer a comprehensive and fully digitized secondary education program taught in one classroom with one generalist teacher. Our generalist coaches support students’ learning journeys, not only on the tablets, but also through reinforcing hands-on projects in a blended classroom model. We scaffold content so that students can easily track their progress, and receive positive affirmations throughout their time at 1Room. Through technology, we re-engage students with learning and create a path for students to sit for a country’s national examination.The value of 1Room’s approach lies in its ability to simultaneously solve problems of cost, quality, and access. 

- Families in areas who can't afford school fees, or are marginalized by the current school system. Some students, including teen mothers and those that need to support their family, require a flexible schedule and we have evidence we can support these students who cannot attend school full time.

-School administrators and teachers looking to enable one-on-one instruction and teaching at the right level. Through 1Room we can expand classroom capacity and improve the ability to retain students that drop out through one on one instruction.

-Governments that want us to administer community learning centers to educate drop outs and adult learners and prepare them to sit for the national exam.

Rigid school schedules, long commutes that put young women at risk, and one-size-fits all pedagogies prevent many young women from completing school in low-income countries. At 1Room we can locate learning centers closer to where people are because we can operate a learning center with as few as 24 students economically. We enable students to learn on a flexible schedule, and create a supportive environment where our generalist teacher provides one-on-one coaching to people previously marginalized by the education system. 

Most educational technologies act as supplements for traditional classrooms or for at-home learning, thereby representing an added marginal cost to end-users without addressing problems inherent to the school system. Our solution is innovative because it delivers a comprehensive high school education, aligned with each country’s national exams, without requiring a physical school, internet, grid electricity, or specialized subject teachers. We can therefore make high school education accessible to women and girls around the world who face physical or social barriers to continuing their education, including those in remote villages and refugee camps, or those whose family obligations limit their study time to a couple hours a day.

Pratham’s Second Chance Program in India has some resemblance to our approach, but without digital learning technology. Girls who dropped out of school between grades 6-9 received part-time instruction by a master teacher in a one-room-schoolhouse, and then completed individual study sessions in a flexible, self-paced manner, largely at home. The participants achieved a high pass rate on the grade 10 exams, but the program was not scalable in part due to the high cost of relying on a master teacher with expertise spanning all subjects.

In East Africa, e-tutoring apps such as Eneza and M-Shule have gained popularity, but are unable to offer comprehensive curriculum coverage because of their reliance on simple SMS. While smart-phone e-learning apps like Byju (India) have seen explosive growth, the internet costs are too high for most low-income families in developing countries.

Our offline server, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, is essentially a bare-bones fist-sized computer without peripheral devices. It can broadcast our digital learning content to up to 10 client devices at a time and uses a maximum of 7 watts of power. The Pi costs under $100, and is of little resale value to thieves. We install a Linux-based operating system (OS) on an SD card read by the Pi, along with server-based Learning Management System (LMS) software that allows client devices (i.e., tablets, smartphones) to access the LMS’s offline content through a web-browser.

We have deployed two free prototype LMSs in Kenya: Kolibri, released in 2018 by the Learning Equality Foundation, and Planet Learning, released in 2018 by OLE International. We have had the greatest success with Kolibri, and have partnership agreements in place with both organizations through which we provide field-based feedback to help them add new functionality. The LMSs allow us to organize digital learning content by grade, subject, and chapter, integrate proprietary and third-party content, centrally manage library updates, and collect data on individual user activities.

We plan to develop an adaptive assessment and content recommendation engine as a separate software layer that would interact with the two LMS through APIs developed with Learning Equality and OLE. We will also be using an SMS messaging system to send targeted encouragement, retention, and outreach messages to learners our models predict to be at risk of attrition.

We have successfully deployed this technology suite in Kenya for over 100 students to date. Our biggest successes to date include enabling drop outs to enroll in our program and sit for and pass the national exam. Our learning approach is rooted in J-PAL's study on teaching at the right level. We enable this type of instruction at scale through a low cost technology. Additionally, with our partner school we grew from 1 to 9 teachers using our product just through word of mouth, and they find the solution both useful and easy to implement. 

Our primary outcomes are (1) lower poverty, (2) higher quality education, (3) reduced inequality on the basis of class, gender, and geography. We lower poverty by (1) lowering the cost of education for families and governments, thereby freeing up resources other essential, (2) improving the labor productivity of individuals by providing more years (and quality) of education for those who’d otherwise drop out. There’s an estimated causal 8% increase in lifetime earnings per extra year of schooling. Source: Nobel Laureate Esther Duflo’s PhD thesis).

We raise the quality of education in several ways: (i) we use evidence-based TARL principle (teach at the right level: https://www.teachingattherightlevel.org/evidence/); (ii) we use expert-developed lessons and lectures of higher quality than the average teacher’s lesson; (iii) we used evidence-based pedagogy with higher levels of feedback and applied learning, and  (iv) our program builds IT and 21st century skills (i.e., group work, self-management) valued by the labor market.

We increase years of study, and reduce inequalities based on gender, class, and geography in several ways: (i) we provide flexible schedules so that teens with childcare responsibilities, disproportionately women, can continue their studies part-time; (ii) by requiring only a single room without grid electricity or internet, we can operate in poor or remote villages, giving educational access to families who cannot afford boarding schools, and to youth who cannot walk extremely long distances to the nearest large high school (be it disability or time constraints). By dramatically cutting the cost of secondary schooling, we can enable governments who wish to adopt our model to make secondary education free within existing public expenditure, or to make private secondary schools comparable in cost to low-cost primary schools already serving the poor, thereby reducing fee-driven attrition.

Our cost-reductions derive from the reality that traditional high schools require specialist teachers who are scarce and expensive in frontier markets. In Kenya, qualified government math and science teachers for upper secondary are paid 4-8 times the GDP per capita, vs 1-2 times GDP per capita for generalist teachers.

We currently operate a full-time standalone 1Room learning center for 20 high school dropouts in Vihiga County, Kenya, and two in-school resource programs in Kisumu, Kenya that served 100 students, prior to COVID-19. Our on-site operations are paused because of government-mandated school closures. In the meantime, our team in Kenya is focusing on building a home-based learning kit and expanding our local digital content. In 2021, we will be operating in Kenya and Andhra Pradesh, India. Within 1 year, we aim to serve 500 learners through our full-time program, an additional 500 learners through our resource room service for existing schools, and 5,000 learners through our home-based learning supplements. Within 5 years, we aim to serve over 250,000 full-time learners across low- and middle-income countries with English-medium school systems, an additional 250,000 through our resource room service, and 1 million through our home-based learning products, with >20% y-o-y growth across these three distribution channels, and early expansion into countries with other languages of instruction.

We have three main objectives over the next twelve months. First, we aim to complete a randomized controlled trial, with at least 500 learners in the treatment and control groups, to demonstrate the impact of our program on exam scores, well-being, unplanned pregnancy, among other metrics. We plan to use the impact evaluation results to raise significant funding for our expansion across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. 

Second, we aim to build basic data and analytics infrastructure so that, as we scale, we can use our internal datasets to build high quality adaptive learning algorithms, efficient assessment tools, and content recommendations.

Third, we aim to design operational processes and IT systems that have the capacity to support large-scale operations with low managerial complexity and high visibility/transparency at the local level. For example, by setting up student accounts through a cashless mobile money platform, and by creating a central ticketing system for procurement, maintenance, and repair requests.

Over the next five years, we have three main goals. First, we aim to systematize our approach to securing regulatory approvals by Kenya’s individual county governments to open non-traditional schools in new counties. Second, after gaining traction in Kenya, we will expand into adjacent markets (East Africa, South Asia, Latin America). Third, we want to raise $20 million in funding, which we believe will be sufficient for us to be able to serve 250,000 full-time students in low-income countries and also build a world-class learning analytics system. 

Covid-19-related school closures may delay the start of our randomized control trial by 6-12 months. We believe we will need stronger impact data in order to raise sufficient funding to scale our solution, so the course Covid-19 may delay our growth timeline.

Theft of electronics is a risk in our target markets.

In order for 1Room to offer full-time programs for students under the age of 19, special approval has to be given by the County Education Officer since our schools are non-conforming. This may be an unreliable, idiosyncratic process. Local politicians who have financial interests in competing private schools could block approvals.

The regulatory environment in each country differs and requires several months of legal/policy analysis to chart out the optimal, legal modes of solution delivery.

Many students in frontier markets do not speak the language of instruction as their mother tongue, so it is hard for them to understand basic lessons or textbooks, even after completing primary school. They also tend to be unfamiliar with IT and with having partial responsibility for managing their learning journey.

Covid-19 school closure: we are accelerating the timeline for shipping our at-home learning solution to show traction and market demand, and accelerating local content production.

Theft: we use low-cost IT (totaling under $600 per classroom), locked in a metal cabinet. The server has almost no secondary resale market. At scale, the tablets will be branded.

Local approvals: our approach gives careful consideration to the local political economy so as to not make enemies. First, we offer solutions and services to existing public and private schools. Second, our full-time standalone program focuses on areas where there is no competition: high school dropouts, teen mothers, and remote areas without local high schools. Third, we have a comprehensive pitch and Q&A handout for local officials, including legal and regulatory analysis supporting our program.

National regulations: our solution has multiple possible channels of delivery (standalone, within-school, at-home learning, or tutoring centers), and is therefore sufficiently flexible to adapt to regulations across a wide range of countries.

Language and IT barriers: our content can be played at slower speeds; we are working on indigenous language translations of our basic/remedial material as a ramp; we have two-weeks worth of introductory modules focused on learning to use the IT and how to succeed with self-directed learning.

Full-time staff - 6 people

Part-time staff - 4 people

Contractors - 2 people

Our team members all cherish our years of school, and became aware of the stark differences to our own experience through different means. One of our team members, Jeremy, confronted the educational reality of some students in East Africa, while working in Uganda where he was supporting an NGO building solar powered internet kiosks. During this experience and others in the Global South, he concluded that technology was a potential solution but the delivery was paramount. Michael Beeler, while working on his PhD spent ample time in East Africa and India. After working to support local health projects in rural Kenya with his analytical abilities, Michael met and learned about the problems families faced during their education. He eventually developed a new model for education that he thought could tackle many of the problems these families faced, including cost, access and quality. Saket grew up in Andhra Pradesh, India where he eventually helped open a business school that was acquired. He is passionate about education and has worked in the field for the past 8 years. Our team is composed of three members with a broad range of skills, and some of our relevant experience is listed below: 

• Lead blended learning classroom in Vijaywada, India

• Helped launch and grow a network of private schools

• Developed teacher training modules 

• Researched assessment methods

• Machine learning expertise

• Led public health projects in Kenya

• Designer of interactive text books. 

• Built and sold a business school in Andhra Pradesh, India

The Vihiga County Government (Kenya) has granted us 3-years of use of their largest adult education center to run full-time high school programming for dropouts.

Lions High School (Kisumu, Kenya) is a public day school for which we are operating a remedial education program and resource room serving up to 25 students at a time. 

Partners for International Development is a Canadian charity that has partnered with us to manage field operations in Kenya and has processed donations and grants.

Open Learning Exchange International is a 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor for this project and has provided us with training in the use of their learning management system, Planet Learning, and support by their Kenya field team.

Learning Equality Foundation provided us seed-funding to pilot the use of their Learning Management System, Kolibri. Our ongoing partnership focuses on making technical improvements to Kolibri from both administrator and user perspectives, drawing on our field experience.

FUNDING MODELS

1. Traditional low-cost school model (fees paid by parents/sponsors)

2. Government/NGO contracts to serve remote areas, refugee camps, etc.

3. Subscription fee to our online content

4. Operate program as fee-for-service within existing schools.

Currently we operate our solution with partner schools for free, but plan to operate our solution for a fee to cover costs of operations in the future. Additionally, we envision a network of low cost schools, 1 Room learning centers, where students and families pay fees to attend. Since we will have a host of content created for these two channels we plan to make it available online for a subscription so that students can review materials at home. 

Our current biggest barrier is strategic guidance and central government partnerships. We hope to connect with people with experience growing solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa and can connect with peers, and mentors that can help us overcome this barrier. 

We also seek advice from people with large scale business operations to ensure we are making the right design and investment decisions in our systems and technology to support large-scale operations.

We are looking for support and guidance to overcome some of the barriers we mentioned in the previous section. A partner that has experience working with governments and an existing system of schools or education projects would enable us to reach more students that could benefit from our services. 

We are interested in partnering with international NGOs that provide services in refugee camps in East Africa. We believe our content, tech stack, and delivery expertise could allow us to partner with them to deliver high school education in refugee camps, despite infrastructure limitations and the difficulty in sourcing qualified teachers.

We are interested in partnering with prominent research NGOs, such as Innovations for Poverty Action, Evidence Action, or university labs that fund development field experiments, such as J-PAL, to undertake a rigorous impact evaluation of our program once the risk of school closures from Covid-19 is lifted.

Our solution can be deployed in hard to reach areas that currently have limited educational resources. By using a low cost tech stack it can be operated offline and off-grid. Therefore, an isolated community can gain access to a quality education that is locally relevant and valuable. 

We can provide a full high school education in one room with one teacher with as few as 24 students. As a result, this enables us to build and operate schools that are safe for marginalized populations, and are flexible so that part-time learners can re-engage with the school system. For example, in a rural community in Kenya we operate a learning center that mostly serves teen mothers who want to sit for and pass the national exam. As a result, they can receive a qualification that prepares them to enroll in further education or sets them up for higher paying jobs.

The data our digital learning platform will collect will be unique for the education sector. Unlike other ed-tech services, our platform provides comprehensive curriculum coverage, and the vast majority of a learner’s journey will be tracked through the platform. In educational data mining, it is very difficult to evaluate the impact of discrete educational activities on long-term learning because so many unobserved, unmeasured learning activities occur between the treatment and time of assessment. The information theoretic content of the data we will gather per student will therefore be higher than any precedent, and will therefore allow systematic, automated evaluation of content quality. Moreover, because we will be launching in frontier markets, where the per-student cost of expansion is low, we are more likely to be able to collect such detailed data on the efficacy of learning activities from tens or hundreds of thousands of learners. We therefore believe we will be uniquely positioned to build and evaluate adaptive assessments, learning models, and recommendation engines of a higher quality and granularity than all industry precedents.

The team’s co-founder holds a PhD in operations research from MIT, with thesis chapters focusing on psychometrics, educational data mining, and applications of deep learning to these fields.

The Prize would enable us to build a platform that could be scaled across countries to transform learning around the world. We could move from a rigid education system to one that is adaptive, flexible, and highly personalized. Our goal is to educate enough students where we have the data to provide recommendations and personalized learning in the future. By localizing the content, and universalizing the approach we can optimize learning outcomes for anyone, anywhere. In order to reach this point we need to develop a platform that can track information in a blended learning environment, and then be deployed across schools, and for access at home.