INTED's Design Technology Programme

INTED will train teachers to teach Design Thinking, apps-building and coding, and micro:bit programming skills to low-income youth throughout Ghana.

• The secondary level, where leavers either go on to further education or the world of work, is a pivotal point in any education system, with significant potential for the productivity and livelihoods of the citizenry of every country.  But, Ghanaian high school students are falling behind, with only a little over a third of high school seniors with qualifying grades to apply for university.  The already low grades are at-risk of getting worse with the implementation of the Free Senior High School by the Government of Ghana, which will stretch existing school resources. 
• With a growing need to support youth with quality education and productive skills, INTED proposes our Design Technology programme as a solution to build design and digital skills.  Our Design Technology programme comprises of Creative Coding for Change or "Project C" which involves computer programming and “Apps-building” course that seeks to build an inclusive platform for bringing together disadvantaged youth (in and out of school), Design Thinking skills which uses the iterative cycle of empathic problem definition, ideation, design, creation, testing, and feedback loop, using the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with technologically feasible solutions, and Micro:bits Maker, which involves interface coding with micro:bits electronics to enable youth understand that everyday gadgets can be boiled down to a basic function of input->process->output.  Beneficiaries will build a design and solver mindset, and  create their own software and robotics to boot.
• Students’ innovative designs and products will be oriented to serve their communities and stimulate other youth to engage in similar activities. The global nature of our solution can help benefit youth around the world.  Our solution can be economic boosters if students’ innovative products are supported into entrepreneurship or patronized by international companies.

• Through our Design Thinking module, we will tailor this a pre-existing concept to teach low-income youth the creativity to carefully define problems in their communities and be able to design and prototype innovative solutions, broadly.  This background will be helpful in teach them coding skills, apps-development, and robotics programming thus equipping them with the skills not only to build digital solutions to community problems, but also have commercial relevance as well.  This approach to building up the skills of teachers to upskill those left-behind by schools in the digital age is currently not being done anywhere in Africa.

• The curricula for Creative Coding for Change is a self-learning platform for basic computational skills catering to youth with no programming background or experience; key technology will be laptops, testing mobile devices, reasonable and stable internet.  With the Micro:bits Maker, users will create keychains in robotics environments, use various sensors and actuators to make intro-level gadgets like a danger sensing box, and learn through fun micro-projects such as creating a tea brewer using micro:bit and external components.  Design Thinking and the delivery of these training will use traditional teaching and presentation technology tools such as laptops, projectors, etc.

• We plan to build the capacity of 30 teacher-trainers from INTED’s alumni senior high schools to be “Master Fellows” who will lead training of their peers and low-income youth in our Design Technology programme.  These teacher trainers will support the training of others teachers and the general pilot implementation with 2 schools in the Asikuma-Odoben Brakwa district, one of the poorest districts of Ghana.  Up to 120 teachers are expected to benefit from this, impacting over 1,000+ students and out of school youth in the community.

• We envisage over the next three to five years to train 750 teachers from our alumni senior high schools in the Greater Accra and Eastern regions. During the first three years we will train 450 teachers from 6 schools and train another 300 from 4 schools during the fourth and fifth years.  This is estimated to impact about 15,000+ students and out of school youths within 5 years after the pilot.  These beneficiaries will be expected to develop their own Apps and also build robotics with the knowledge and experience acquired to improve their communities.

• We will select senior high schools from our 45+ alumni base before progressing to other schools.  We plan to expand to 10 schools in the Greater Accra and Central Regions within the next 5 years and deepen the engagements to more students, before moving to other regions.  We will reach and retain our beneficiaries by working with the ICT departments of schools.  We will be working with heads of schools, PTAs and community leaders such as chiefs to reach youth.  We are already  in discussions with the Ministry of Education on a plan for broader scale. 

Although we have piloted our rendition to only about 100 teachers, Design Thinking as a course has been taught by Stanford University through SEED Institute and d.school for many years.  The beneficiaries of our Design Thinking pilot this year are using their experience to improve teaching and classroom experience (student as a customer).  While we are yet to introduce the Project C and Micro:bit Maker in Ghana as solutions, our partners from ScienceScope and Global Youth Network have impacted over 1 million youth in Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and UK. 

• We expect to serve at least 2,000 low-income students and youth through the 100+ teachers that our 30 Master Fellows will train in the first 12 months.  In 3 years, we will target at least 6,000 low-income students and youth through the 500+ teachers trained by our Master Fellows.  Our population comprises of high school teachers and students working together with out of school youth to improve their community with skills gained. They are expected to work together in unusual collaborations to design and build solutions to problems in their classrooms and communities.

• Our Board Chairman is the Principal of a private school with significant international reputation and he has 20+ years of experience in education and supports with fundraising.  Our CEO has over 15 years of training and fundraising experience, with a history of raising millions of dollars in both grants and equity capital. As Senior Programmes Manager, I have ten years of administration and project management experience and have supported quite a number of workshops/conferences at the secondary and tertiary levels.  Our Master Fellows (teacher trainers) are teachers with 10-25 years of experience and can helps us reach their peers.

• We are a non-profit organisation. We earn revenue from our Professional Development programmes organised for teachers and heads of high schools.  We charge close to fair market prices to private schools, which also allows us to earn additional revenue.  The public schools receive the training at a discounted cost on account of the corporate sponsorship and grants we received. This is our sustainable cross-subsidization revenue model, hence our quest for fundraising from SOLVE. INTED believes this model should allow us to expand the solution to all the regions of Ghana, then to our West African countries.

• We believe that SOLVE can support our initiative through funding, but also connecting us with other stakeholders and partners who are interested in funding and partnering with us respectively on our various Design Technology modules.
• Through SOLVE’s support INTED can complete its Technology programme at the Pilot level and progress to making the programme more broadly aware and accessible to others.

• The key barriers to our solution are sustainable financial support, availability of logistics, and accessibility to low-income and at-risk youth who may not be in schools.  Another barrier is commitment of the Ministry of Education to support scaling. 
• SOLVE highlighting the problem we are trying to solve can give us support to go national and regional with our solution and get global technology companies to partner with us in supporting our beneficiaries through their tech innovations. SOLVE’s platform can provide networking value to meet other social entrepreneurs and mentors, and give us the opportunities to access other grants.