ABAKINO

School closures and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have adversely affected the learning experience of students. Video conferencing and recordings of instructional material reduce interaction with and participation by students. 

ABAKINO is developing an advanced digital whiteboard that 1) enables live online teaching as effective as teaching in the classroom, 2) reuses past online teaching - along with student feedback in response to that teaching - and 3) generates improved materials that respond to student need. 

Through proprietary technology, online teaching is converted to "Improvable Videos" that are imported back to the whiteboard and reused in follow-up lectures, review, reinforcement or future iterations of the course. They let educators provide high-quality, data-driven instruction informed by and designed to address individual student need. 

These videos incorporate AI and animation, require minimal resources to create and update, scale easily to reach a wide audience, and can serve poorer communities for free.

ABAKINO seeks to address the reduced quality of learning and the learning losses brought about by school closures and shifts in teaching modalities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The effect has been a reduction in the quality and effectiveness of classes due to a shift in delivery, limited student participation, reduced discussion quality, and limited interaction due to online delivery of classes. In some cases, students have missed out entirely on coursework for periods of weeks or longer. Schools have responded to the shift to digital learning by recording instruction or providing teleconferencing to students. Massive open online courses are also becoming the norm in online learning for many.

But the sudden and profound reliance on video technology comes with challenges: videos are generally fixed and unresponsive, or interactions are remote or limited when possible. Learning losses from lack of access to classes or poor quality of delivery have compounding effects that can affect a learner’s overall economic outcomes as they enter into adulthood.

A secondary problem that ABAKINO seeks to solve is barriers in teaching STEM using online modalities or traditional video recordings, and a decline in appreciation in STEM among students due to these barriers.

ABAKINO is an advanced digital whiteboard that seeks to address learning losses by enabling interactive online teaching that is as effective as teaching in the classroom. It allows for continuous learning by 1) reusing past online teaching and student feedback and 2) converting them into new online materials and videos that students can use at home.

Conventional online teaching with video conferencing does not integrate student feedback at the end of the lesson; instead, students are left to rely on what they understood on their own. Likewise, recorded instruction is fixed and unresponsive, leaving students unable to pinpoint their issues and asks questions to gain better understanding. Instead ABAKINO integrates student feedback and questions to update its learning materials. 

ABAKINO seeks to encourage a better learning experience for students by providing lessons that are responsive to their needs. Students can use the improvable learning materials and videos to complete homework, review for exams, or pursue self-guided learning. It is a form of reinforcement learning that further increases proficiency. Teachers also experience the benefits when reviewing feedback and questions from students and using newly-generated learning materials as a means to improving their own instruction.

The solution will focus on middle and upper school students in K-12 education, and eventually higher education students. As a pilot, it will target adolescents, as they are able to learn more effectively in remote settings than younger students, and will be centered around STEM subjects. Likewise, adolescence is a crucial stage in a learner’s personal, intellectual and professional development - assistance to this age group will set the stage for their success later on in life.

ABAKINO, when launched and implemented, will improve learning outcomes and reduce learning losses by providing learners with access to interactive classes and improved lessons generated through proprietary methods and technology. While precise learning losses due to school closures and shifts in teaching modalities are not yet known, research suggests that the students in grades 1-12 affected by closures might expect some 3 percent of lower income throughout their lifetimes (OECD, 2020). 

Our technology aims to bring students back to the classroom or bring the classrooms to the students. A focus on increasing proficiencies in STEM leads to skills and competencies necessary for individuals to thrive in higher education and society at large.  

The challenge directly addresses the need to engage learners in remote and hybrid environments through interactive digital whiteboard technology. The responsiveness of the platform and its ability to improve lessons and programs allow for guided and better-quality independent work. 

Our technology can also be used in physical environments once there is a transition back to classrooms, as variations on its software can be integrated into the physical classroom environment. The use of student feedback in an improvement loop to produce improved learning materials will remain useful in inspiring higher-quality instruction in and out of the classroom.

ABAKINO is currently in the early prototype stage as its founder is in the process of building a key feature of the proprietary whiteboard technology and testing it with an early adopter organization in the U.S. Currently, it has pre-identified at least four schools to partner with as well as an online tutoring company to be early adopters of the technology once the full platform is developed.

ABAKINO makes a highly innovative departure from the usual responses to online learning (i.e. using teleconferencing platforms and MOOCs, etc) by providing an interactive platform for teaching and learning that uses AI to record, import, change, and reuse data generated from existing lessons. The new lessons and turn them into improvable videos. Its impact, on an individual scale, is generally to improve the learning experience and learning process of these students, whether they are in or outside the classroom.

As the solution is still in the prototype stage, it is not yet serving an audience. In the next year, upon piloting, we are looking at serving XXX students across XXX schools. In the next five years, the whiteboard technology itself is expected to impact XXX, while the free and improvable series of videos generating from whiteboard lessons will impact XXX.

We measure the progress towards our impact through accomplishment of the following outputs, which should be accomplshed within a year’s time from the challenge has started:

• Completion of the platform and integration of the ABAKINO technology

• Signing on of partner schools or organizations to pilot the products 

Once ABAKINO is launched to the general public and to partner schools or organizations, they can now be used by teachers and students to improve learning processes and outcomes, and thereby touching on quality education on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  

Changes in learning outcomes can be measured through pre- and post- tests by users and in the assessments made by teachers during classes, as well as a change in learner engagement.

ABAKINO currently has one full time member of the team it’s founder and Chief Product Officer, Sohail Afiat. Negotiations are currently ongoing to onboard a Chief Executive Offier and Chieft Technical Officer. Working part-time with the team are four collaborators and advisors for design and video, AI, eudcation/ EdTech industry and finance. ABAKINO is also working with four partners higher education institutions.

The key persons behind ABAKINO have been providing online tutoring and consulting for the past five years. Its founder, Sohail Afiat has been a teacher for twenty years and has taught at Columbia University in New York, to special needs and underprivileged children in London, and across other cities globally. 

ABAKINO has two business advisors that will support the founding team in evaluating milestones and key risks as they arise. Kriss Baird is an Expert Advisor for UK EdTech and has worked for Innovate UK and UCL, helping fund over 150 startup projects. Bernd Ossward is a Financial Advisor for German education and heads his own investment bank and has provided strategic advice to sofatutor and Iversity.

Dan Stoian heads ABAKINO’s content production, and runs his own company (leastudios.ro) and helps build product visuals. ABAKINO is currently in negotiations to work with the UK software development DCDC.

ABAKINO’s team is international, including collaborators from the United States, Europe and the Middle East, and does not discriminate based on race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin. It is also committed to increasing the number of women to join its leadership and senior roles. ABAKINO is also committed to becoming an equal opportunity employer once it begins to expand its team, and making sure that policies are in place to guide the organization on diversity, equity and inclusion as it grows.

ABAKINO is applying to solve to primarily ensure that the product is fully developed and made available to as many young people as possible, to increase equitable learning inside and outside the classroom and address challenges brought about by learning in remote, hybrid and physical environments. Being a solver also provides ABAKINO with access to peers and like-minded individuals addressing similar development challenges that can be a source of insights, guidance and inspiration. We are firm believers of lifelong learning and are constantly adjusting and re-evaluating our solution, and believe that Solve can provide us with a venue to meet other like minded-leaders in industries, potential mentors, coaches and even early product adopters.  

All in all, we are applying to Solve because of its overall environment that will allows us to grow our solution and bring it’s best version to life.

ABAKINO currently needs support in financial - which is pitching to investors and connected to that, public relations in order to create better branding and marketing. Given that the solution is both B2B and B2C models, and that one component (the improvable videos generated from classes done on the whiteboards whiteboards) can also be scaled and implemented to reach underprivileged learners by making the videos no-cost, light-weight and accessible -- some guidance on tying together the narrative of all these solutions would be very beneficial and will help ABAKINO communicate to a wider audience and build better partnerships. This will also help Abakino market and expand its client base and distribute the service within and outside its’ education network.

ABAKINO is a technology powered solution that uses AI to improve the overall teaching and learning process of learners. By using the technology, teachers can hold classes and interact with students through a virtual whiteboard, which in turn collect, digitize and recycle past teaching, combined with recorded student feedback and performance - and turn this data into usable and improvable videos.

This process transforms the way learning occurs, making it a responsive process that increases learner engagement, participation and retention.

ABAKINO can also be used to support poor communities across the globe. Through the technology, creating the improvable videos is quick, simple, and largely automated - although still supervised by a team of ABAKINO editors. The videos themselves are used exclusively and free-of-charge by the schools that provide the teaching, but they can also be used as MOOCs and can also be used to provide supplemental learning videos for free in underprivileged communities.

ABAKINO is a technology powered solution that uses AI to improve the overall teaching and learning process of learners. By using the technology, teachers can hold classes and interact with students through a virtual whiteboard, which in turn collect, digitize and recycle past teaching, combined with recorded student feedback and performance - and turn this data into usable and improvable videos.

This process transforms the way learning occurs, making it a responsive process that increases learner engagement, participation and retention.

ABAKINO can also be used to support poor communities across the globe. Through the technology, creating the improvable videos is quick, simple, and largely automated - although still supervised by a team of ABAKINO editors. The videos themselves are used exclusively and free-of-charge by the schools that provide the teaching, but they can also be used as MOOCs and can also be used to provide supplemental learning videos for free in underprivileged communities.

ABAKINO also qualifies for the GSR awards as it pushes to develop and scale an innovative - technology powered solution to improve learning experiences and outcomes (and piloting this in STEM fields) among adolescents learners. It uses AI to improve the overall teaching and learning process of learners. By using the technology, teachers can hold classes and interact with students through a virtual whiteboard, which in turn collect, digitize and recycle past teaching, combined with recorded student feedback and performance - and turn this data into usable and improvable videos.

This process transforms the way learning occurs, making it a responsive process that increases learner engagement, participation, and retention.

 Likewise, ABAKINO also supports poverty alleviation by making sure that quality education materials reach poor communities across the globe through the improvable videos. Because the creation of the improvable videos is quick, simple, and largely automated - the videos can be offered for free and made available digitally and for free to provide supplemental learning videos for free in underprivileged communities.