XENIUSnet

XENIUSnet is a novel collaboration platform aiming to provide personalized educational support to young refugees attending schools in Greece. It enables them to learn from their local peers and promotes mastery of topics critical for academic and career opportunities. XENIUSnet’s framework supports the creation of relevant communities of students worldwide.

Currently, the world is witnessing the highest levels of displacement ever recorded. According to the International Rescue Committee more than 62,000 refugees are stranded in Greece while more than half of them are under the age of 18. Although proper education is crucial for the social integration and adjustment of refugee children and youth into the new living conditions, adequate provision of education is constrained since resources in the countries that shelter refugees are stretched even thinner. Moreover, even if enrolling at school, refugee children and youth are in need of increased support to help them stay and succeed.

XENIUSnet platform aspires to accelerate refugees’ integration into the host country educational system and society by promoting learning interactions across boundaries of language, gender, faith, and nationality. Provision of personalized support along with access to rich and expanding educational content enhances the learning skills of refugee children and augments the mentoring capacity of their peer tutors, within topics critical for academic and career opportunities. Thus, XENIUSnet enables the creation of student communities through peer matching and builds capacity for knowledge access within global knowledge communities and across local refugee communities.

XENIUSnet aspires to support enhanced integration of refugees into the host country educational system and society with the ultimate goal to create student communities through peer matching worldwide, facilitating knowledge access and development of crucial skills for academic and career opportunities. It provides a solution of mutual and direct benefit for both the refugees and their local peers, along with important indirect societal effects such as limiting offending behaviors from both sides, tackling racism and preparing refugees to take an active role in society. Access to XENIUSnet is supported through PCs and mobile devices while cross-platform compatibility is ensured.

track registrations from XENIUSnet administration center - number of registered users

track number of communication sessions and number of exchanged messages - evolution of users' interest

number of mentors' responses to mentees' requests and rating of the provided responses by mentees and moderators through the platform's tools - evolution of users' skills

The uniqueness of the solution relies on the complementary application of contemporary information technologies and human peer-to-peer interaction principles. XENIUSnet’s architecture integrates several special purpose modules (e.g. Messaging, Personal Library, General library, Communication status, Contacts, Timeline, Rating, Report abuse, and Translate) facilitating access to educational material and creation of personal library by removing/including items, while enabling enhanced message exchange, reuse, and review. An innovative routing engine system is also included in order to determine the best fitting mentor to send a specific mentee’s request and to ensure quick and high quality responsiveness.

XENIUSnet framework is designed to meet refugees’ needs, values and requirements by enriching their educational background on a personalized and on demand basis. Access to XENIUSnet is supported through PCs and mobile devices while cross-platform compatibility is ensured avoiding technology related restrictions of usage. Furthermore, it incorporates user friendly interfaces ensuring user acceptance. XENIUSnet is expected to not only build the local capacity of refugee communities by matching peers based on the knowledge they can give and receive, but also scale this ecosystem by augmenting mentoring capacity from global populations of mentors through peer matching.

The solution will be deployed as a web application, publicly available on the internet through any web browser. XENIUSnet supports three different ways of registration (e.g. email, google account, facebook account). The UX design of the application involves a responsive framework that enables proper rendering of the viewport contents within any device screen size. Also, to ensure unobstructed and equal opportunity access, the usage of the application’s core functionalities requires very light consumption of data. Finally, the involvement in any of the application’s user roles is totally free.

The XENIUSnet’s idea was conceived by a high school student and implemented in collaboration with volunteer researchers/software developers. Since a pilot version of XENIUSnet has already been developed, the required financial resources are related to its grow and scale and refer mainly to personnel costs (1 developer and 4 researchers to redefine the platform based on the users’ feedback) and to dissemination and marketing costs. In case of successful application, these costs will be covered by the MIT-Solve program. We also consider applying for crowdfunding. We have already started building a collaboration network with NGOs operating on refugee supporting endeavors, public and private high schools, Universities and independent volunteers, aiming to identify and attract volunteer users to perform the pilots: Greek students at high schools (mentors), young refugees (attending a Greek school or not) (mentees), teachers (moderators).

Challenges that will possibly affect XENIUSnet’s success are associated  with limitations both on the refugees' and their peers' side. Difficulties in the dissemination and adoption of the platform may arise since most of the camps are rather isolated between each other and against the local populations while the inhomogeneity of communities due to the multi-ethnicity of populations may also inhibit the dissemination process. Moreover, harsh living conditions in camps could limit refugees' capacity to engage in educational efforts. In the case of volunteer tutors, ensuring responsiveness and dedication to their role as mentors might also constitute a possible challenge.

By joining the Solve community, we expect to promote our idea, make connections and forge partnerships with individuals and teams who have identified the importance of education for refugees. Within Solve’s framework, XENIUSnet will grow and drive the creation of student communities through peer matching worldwide. Content, technology, and other education providers to refugees can join as collaborators and use XENIUSnet to supplement their ongoing education efforts. Fostering partnerships with local implementing partners that have deep understanding of the refugee communities they serve will help us materialize this vision and position our solution competitively to other relevant refugees’ educational tools.

XENIUS team includes students, researchers, teachers and developers. Moreover, we have already established collaborations with NGOs operating on refugee supporting endeavors, public and private high schools, and Universities.