Verilearn

To drive internationally comparable quality of education for students regardless of the income level of parents

Most parents and school admins intuitively know the transformational power of good education on the lives of individuals and their families. We all know the advantage of learning a skill outside the four walls of school. There is now a host of evidence that shows that educating children early in logical reasoning, design thinking, coding, analytics skills, design, music and multimedia creation yields hugely valuable benefits for their future. It also has a massive spillover benefits for economic growth, communities and societies. The most important takeaway is that children grow to become better at problem solving and are able to make reasonable decisions at a fairly young age.

Nigeria operates an outdated curriculum, formal education alone has failed to address issues surrounding student’s future careers, most importantly, raising the quality of education to meet these needs is hard work and mostly cannot be done by traditional schools. It involves a huge budget, technical know-how, licenses, qualified professionals and more.

These problems led us to start Verilearn. Verilearn provides access to internationally comparable quality of education for students by integrating smoothly with their regular schools; using a suite of web and mobile solutions, we improve students’ learning and knowledge retention capability while charging under $3 (three) per year! By pushing a blended learning experience, Verilearn reduces the tension and pressure of learning in a formal school environment through organized street learning sessions where students teach one another without the need for instructors. Verilearn offers access to world-class educational content like the British and American curriculum, the Nigerian curriculum is also available. We use artificial intelligence to compress these long and complex lecture notes into bullet points so students can read, understand and retain knowledge easily.

Usually, in Nigeria and other African countries, the elite send their children abroad or to top schools where tuition is around $1,400 per term. Now for the first time, schools that run on low budget with poor to average facilities can equip their students with the same level of education high paying schools offer. Verilearn is shattering the narrative that parents and schools have to operate a very high budget before students or children can access quality world class education. This is now available at under $3 for every parent, our solution super changes regular low budget schools into innovation hubs using our STEM-FOCUS program that enhances STEM subjects, we also teach students bit sized programming and robotics knowledge.

At Verilearn,  we understood that one of the major challenges with education was inability to assimilate the knowledge being passed, so we use an in-house artificial intelligence algorithm to compress these long and complex notes into bit sizes and bullet points. Students can learn skill based courses, prepare for major national and international exams…most importantly, students can stand and deliver anywhere in the world now!

Education is important, it’s usefulness overwhelming! However, it is education you receive that is the most important. Knowing this, we set out not just to build another learning platform – we set out to build a knowledge retention tool that can help students excel in school and also build skills they will need to succeed outside school. Instead of building another website or app loaded with educational content, we team up with schools, integrate smoothly with their regular curriculum and create the much needed layer, tech support and resource to engage their students in inquiry-based study. 

We took a dive into artificial intelligence – our AI algorithm compresses complex lecture notes into bullet points and bit sizes. In future, it will be able to analyze past questions and determine the section of the note where exam questions will most likely be set from, then adjust it’s study pattern to allow the student study that section of the note. We deliver our solution to schools using our website which is mobile-responsive. Our app is under development. We also use geo-mapping to create hot zones for students to come together and brainstorm outside school. Easy, no-pressure efficient learning!

Over the next 12 months,

• We will reach 1 million students and 100 schools across Nigeria with world-class education at low cost.
• We are working tirelessly to complete our mobile app by August.

Verilearn equips young people with both formal educational knowledge and skill based courses like programming and robotics. We handpick students who have demonstrated advanced knowledge to host Street Learning Sessions – we use geo-mapping technology to pool students together in these Learning Sessions so they can brain storm and teach each other as well as engage in meaningful practice of programming and robotics. Basically, we keep getting top talents to spread knowledge without us investing in training spaces or paying facilitators. We will reach 20 million Nigerians with this strategy and underprivileged children will also gain formal education through this

Verilearn is integrated into schools at no upfront cost. Upon signup by a school, we have access to their entire students database and we offer an optional subscription fee of $3 per annum. Verilearn delivers locally relevant educational content through our mobile responsive website loaded with videos, audios, illustrations all powered by our AI-powered summarization algorithm. We then provide free street learning sessions for students. We organize boot camps with in depth trainings on robotics and programming, link up students to exciting and practical projects to keep them engaged with Verilearn. Our app is under development.

Verilearn is currently in 48 schools. We have over 1000 active subscribers. Much of our trainings still happen within the schools but we are actively migrating all our lectures online to happen through our website. More than 500 students now have basic knowledge of website and app development since they signed up on Verilearn and 80% of our subscribers prepare for major Nigerian exams like JAMB, WAEC and NECO using our materials. We are well positioned to allow more people with international schooling ambition study and prepare for IELTS, TOELF, GRE, SAT and Cambridge O Level exams

In 12 months, Verilearn would be in 200 schools with up to 10,000 students benefiting from our low cost quality education platform. In 3 years, we would have spread to Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Edo, Delta and Abuja all within Nigeria. By that time, we would be serving 4000 schools and over 200,000 students would be learning using Verilearn. Our street learning sessions would also have matured to reach rural areas and former beneficiaries of these sessions would be creating courses on the platform. More Nigerian students would be equipped with knowledge relevant for entrepreneurship or their future careers

For us, we have always looked out for people that have interest in education and lecturing, thats why we maintain a small team and outsource skill trainings to other firms like tuteria.com that have demonstrated they are able to attract passionate people also in tutoring. So passion is a major skill we need. We also need administrative skills; spreading to 4,000 schools in 3 years would require immense administrative person. We have done a lot to mostly work with volunteers, this majorly demonstrates how we are harnessing and using passion, skill and empathy to make impact.

Verilearn is free for schools, we charge students about $3 per annum for access to our learning platform and trainings; this aligns properly with our vision to provide access to students of all income levels. Charged at a very affordable annual fee, we intend reaching 40,000 students in Lagos this year. This will translate into revenues of $129,000 or N40,000,000 Naira. In three years, we would be reaching 200,000 students generating revenues of $600,000 or N200,000,000 Naira. Our vision is to spread into 5 West African countries in 5 years

I am applying to Solve because at the minimum, there is a one percent chance that Solve can contribute meaningfully to the work we are doing at Verilearn; either through learning, partnership, introductions or funding - we are excited about every opportunity to bring Verilearn to more people. We believe Solve can help us achieve more impact and reach immense levels through partnership and more

Data cost and access to the internet is a major challenge, Verilearn is an online learning platform so we are bothered about how students and schools will be able to access our platform. It would be very fulfilling to have a mobile digital library set up in schools and select areas where street learning sessions would hold. These libraries would have tablet devices loaded with offline content for learning purposes. Solve can help with funds to purchase these tablets and strategic partners that will generate unique and easy course content