Carousel: Mobile SEL Education for Youth

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) is a process wherein students acquire skills like gratitude and emotional self-regulation, which are seen as equally important as core academics. Existing SEL curricula are static, expensive, time-consuming to deliver, and disconnected from how youth engage in daily practice. 

Carousel transforms SEL education by providing daily, mobile, interactive lessons and exercises to students. Carousel is compatible with any mobile device, gamified for maximum engagement, and positive habit-forming. Carousel doesn't feel like homework--it feels like a mix between a game and social media, all while learning valuable SEL skills. After engaging with SEL content, students apply lessons to themselves and others through real-world activities. 

Children with stronger social and emotional competencies are more likely to graduate from college, exhibit less criminal behavior, and have better mental and physical health. We focused on software-based educational technology because of its ability to rapidly scale at a low cost per student.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills are critical to healthy youth development. Decades of research demonstrate that SEL increases prosocial behavior (kindness, sharing, empathy), improves attitudes towards school, reduces depression and stress, and improves academic achievement by an average of 11 percentile points (Durlak et al., 2011). Long-term, quality SEL education increases high school graduation rates, readiness for postsecondary education, career success, positive family and work relationships, better mental health, reduced criminal behavior, and engaged citizenship (Jones, Greenberg, & Crowley, 2015). 

Despite the known importance of SEL, youth are not getting an adequate SEL education. Nearly 2/3 of teachers surveyed said they need more time to teach SEL skills and the majority are dissatisfied with current SEL offerings. Existing SEL curricula are static, expensive, time-consuming to deliver, and disconnected from how youth engage in daily practice. Low-income communities and schools often do not have access to, or means to prioritize, these expensive tools. And COVID-19 is exacerbating the problem. We are in a learning crisis and need new methods of content delivery. Educators from US to India to Australia have reached out to pilot Carousel.

Carousel is an easy-to-use, turnkey SEL solution that removes the need for lesson planning and quickly deploys SEL content directly to students' mobile phones. 

Our youth app is compatible with any mobile device, and is gamified for maximum engagement and positive habit-forming. You can think of Carousel as the Duolingo of SEL. Students complete daily exercises in the app and in the real world, and participate in lessons that integrate videos, memes, and other content.

Our mobile app is complimented by an advocate dashboard that acts like a command center for educators and administrators' SEL delivery, management, and reporting needs, providing a real-time data analytics dashboard that captures measurable impact and outcomes. SEL education lacks strong data that can link learning interventions to specific outcomes (e.g. regular displays of gratitude leading to improved mental health). 

Our free anonymized open-source data platform will track SEL engagement and outcomes at scale and utilize the data to not only improve product offerings but also influence change in the field of SEL. We believe we can bring SEL to schools at 90% lower cost per student, increase student engagement by 60%, and generate real-time data to measure efficacy and long-term impact of SEL content.

Carousel is initially targeting high schools, middle schools and youth organizations due to market demand and opportunity for wide-scale social impact with youth. Most schools see the largest decline in student engagement in SEL when students are entering middle school (age 13+). Schools often have a budget for SEL-related products but most products on the market ignore student engagement as a key performance metric and are often aged-up versions of elementary content.

We are currently in our pilot stage and have engaged nearly 200 high school students and educators in Colorado in our iterative testing. Youth participants have primarily been engaged through Denver Kids and Regis High School. Just through our Denver Kids partnership, we will serve, at a minimum, 1,300 of youth/year. 98% of Denver Kids participants qualify for free or reduced lunch and 96% are students of color. We have 45 interested early adopter locations. Part of our impact mission includes covering the cost of Carousel for qualifying schools to ensure that all young people, regardless of district or income level, have access to quality SEL education. Our pilot participants have had high engagement in our platform. Destynee, the top student participant in one of our pilots reported that "[Carousel is] teaching the importance of self-value and developing the good in everyone." 

Carousel has chosen an iterative path to market by releasing versions of the platform, testing with educators & students, soliciting feedback, & adapting the product. We have already received invaluable feedback to ensure Carousel is truly game-like and that our tiered curriculum properly graduates in depth and difficulty. Our tiered curriculum now includes 36+ levels of dynamic, out of the box SEL content. Every student starts at level one and progresses through the SEL skill-building activities. Each level requires about 2 hours of work over 2 weeks, users are incentivized with points to go through the levels at their own pace, and activities include short lessons and exercises focusing on SEL competency areas. Leaderboards and streaks inspire healthy competition and incentivize independent learning. 

Our sales strategy also takes a bottom-up approach by starting with teachers rather than districts. We want to make sure teachers can afford the product, that they love it enough to share it, & that students find the product engaging. As a platform, we also have the ability to measure user engagement & adapt quickly to things that aren’t working. 

With Carousel’s fixed curriculum and dashboard, educators, administrators and researchers can also better understand and more easily compare “apples to apples” and track SEL mastery through level progression across individuals, classrooms, grade levels, schools and districts. We have strong relationships in the SEL & academic community to ensure that the standardized, open-source SEL data produced by Carousel can then be utilized for improved SEL outcomes & understanding. 

In the future, we expect to see outcomes in the following two areas: 1) user outcomes and 2) SEL curriculum innovation. 

User Outcomes: the Aspen Institute reports that children with stronger social and emotional competencies are more likely to:

1. Enter and graduate from college 

2. Succeed in their careers

3. Have positive work and family relationships

4. Have better mental and physical health

5. Exhibit less criminal behavior

6. Become engaged citizens.

SEL Content Innovation: Through our efforts to provide SEL education to all students, we expect to broaden understanding of how economic, racial, cultural, social and other influences impact SEL efficacy and outcomes. Carousel’s free standard package includes 36 levels of Carousel content, with the ability to upgrade and incorporate preferred SEL content as additional levels or as separate bonus challenges. Because our platform is compatible with any SEL-type content, we can also provide current SEL content developers with better understanding of content efficacy. We are working with a strategic partner to embed online assessments directly into our mobile product that go beyond self-reporting and surveys. All of this data will continue to inform and improve our product and content development. We are also utilizing academic partnerships to develop, analyze, and disseminate SEL data from our platform.

The benefit of smart mobile delivery is that Carousel has the advantage of measuring engagement and outcomes in real-time as reported by users and data collected by actual use in our mobile and web-platform. Data is rooted in the CASEL framework for SEL competency. Four different types of data collection are aiding in building the most impactful platform possible: 1) Formative- this helps us build an engaging and relevant product, 2) Implementation- helps us identify issues that may impact scale, cost, or usage, 3) Summative- student-reported data regarding wellbeing, relationships, and self-efficacy, and 4) Impact - long term outcomes such as civic engagement, employability, and educational attainment. Educators will be able to see data in real-time and Carousel will use short term and longitudinal data to influence the SEL education field. For the first time, this kind of data collection will be possible through our platform.

An additional, more fundamental challenge is the lack of access, affordability, and equity in SEL. We want to change that. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) reports that several barriers result in inequitable access to high-quality SEL education, including systemic level barriers (such as poverty), implicit bias among school staff, and educator stress and burnout. We focused on software-based educational technology because of its ability to rapidly scale at a low cost per student, which enables us to address three of the RWJF institutional barriers to quality social-emotional development: poverty by reducing/eliminating cost barrier, implicit bias by providing standardized, competency-based and DE&I reviewed curriculum, and teacher burnout by providing quality turnkey educational software.  Additionally, we envision a new kind of professional development for educators, counselors, and administrators. Through our Advocate Tournaments, Carousel can reinforce SEL in adults, eliminate unconscious bias, and encourage alternative discipline solutions.

As a counselor at one of Colorado’s largest youth nonprofits, our founder Joe Ewing saw that young people were not being engaged by existing SEL providers, even though the need for SEL development among youth was of paramount importance. Teachers and counselors need content that speaks to young people, data to understand engagement and outcomes, and content that can be delivered anywhere (in-person, online, or mobile). This is the foundation of why Carousel was developed: educational content that is engaging, measurable, and scalable. Carousel's applied learning curriculum ensures that SEL growth happens personally, with peers, and with the community. 

As mentioned above, We are currently in our pilot stage and have engaged nearly 200 high school students and educators in our iterative testing. We are also running a private beta with educators & counselors this summer. In preparation for the upcoming school year, we are running teacher tournaments where teachers can try out Carousel as a user (as their students will see it). We have been testing as we build, soliciting feedback and learning from real-time data and adapting the product as we learn.

We are taking an important field of education that has largely remained untouched by edtech and transforming it for maximum engagement and scale. We use positive-habit forming gamification principles in our curriculum and mobile platform, transforming static content into relevant and applied learning. 

With Carousel’s fixed curriculum and dashboard, educators and administrators can easily compare “apples to apples” and track SEL mastery through level progression across individuals, classrooms, grade levels, schools and districts.

Educators will be able to see data in real-time & Carousel will use short term & longitudinal data to influence the SEL education field. The data generated by our platform is and will always be anonymized and made free and universally accessible. We believe this data can influence and improve the outcomes of SEL for researchers, practitioners, and anyone in the SEL community. 

Carousel is catalytic because of its ability to scale education at a low price point and reach any student with a mobile device. We are producing low-cost scalable technology. We are also not bound by one set of content and can adapt to different geographies and, eventually, countries. 

Current: 200 educators & youth. Within the next year, we expect to be: 

• Aggregating & anonymizing user engagement data for public research
• Sharing real-time data visualization, advanced reporting & social trends
• Leveraging data for product iteration & widespread user engagement
• Setting up the structure to publish free, open-sourced data repositories & SEL research publications.

Growth Projections:

• Y1 students engaged annually: 76,000

• Y3 students engaged annually: 825,000

• Y5 students engaged annually: 3.5 million

Long term impact and data points are listed above. Yr 1-3 (User Outcomes) metrics are below: 

Amount of time engaged in SEL skills practice by competency area 

• How: Product analytics
• Goal: 70% of all students completing at least 1 activity per day
• Why? Make SEL a part of kid’s everyday lives.

Amount of social engagement 

• How: Product analytics
• Goal: 70% of all students engage with others at least once per day (e.g. newsfeed comment)
• Why: Practicing SEL with others builds deeper relationships and meaning.

Time spent on admin tasks

• How: Product analytics
• Goal: Teachers spend <1 hour per week on SEL admin tasks.
• Why: Teacher and district adoption will be more likely if time investment is minimal and impact is high.

Amount of accounts from under-represented groups

• How: Database
• Goal: At least 20% of accounts are from schools deemed mid-high poverty (50%+ of the students are FRPL eligible)
• Why: Increased access to under- represented populations will increase impact to areas in most need and diversify engagement data.

Improved Emotional State

• How: Periodic emotional check-ins (e.g. how are you feeling today)?
• Goal: On average 70% or more users report improved emotional state after completing a lesson or activity in the Carousel app.
• Why: User-reported higher levels mental wellbeing

Increased Number of students enrolling in post-secondary options (College, university, vocational programs, etc.)

• How: Survey users post-secondary plans after completion of high school as flagged in our system by their advocate or self.
• Why: Higher earning potential, value of self, & employability.

Carousel has 4 full time staff and 6 contractors, which includes a development team, a designer, and an curriculum advisor. 

Joe Ewing, MBA, CSPO (CEO): Three-time social entrepreneur. Experienced in SaaS sales & product marketing. SEL and youth program content expert, SEL educator & youth mentor. Joe launched Carousel after working as a SEL Counselor at one of Colorado's largest youth non-profits. 

Jess Sherlock (Co-Founder, Product): Digital product expert, coach and educator. Helped grow a digital product team from less than $1m ARR to over $10m ARR in 3 years.

Susanna Maffeo (Customer Success & Impact): Nonprofit & digital fundraising expert. Managed teams to raise a combined $94M for NYC non-profits over 10 years.

Grace Wright, MBA, PMP (Operations & Marketing): Social enterprise professor, 3x entrepreneur. Experience in product development, enterprise funding, and small business operations.

As mentioned before, the voice and perspectives of the population we intend to serve have been built into our company and product development from day 1. We engage in ongoing product feedback, a teacher-driven sales strategy, and data-driven decision-making at the core of our operations. 

• Carousel is a majority female-led startup. Kauffman Foundation reported in 2019 that only 14.3% of tech startups have at least 1 female founder.
• Carousel is a Public Benefit Corporation, which means that everyone involved with Carousel (from the investors to the founders) considers the economic, environmental, & social implications of everything we do. We set goals around DEI as a core part of our business.
• Carousel engages with DE&I professionals to review and make recommendations on curriculum and content.
• Carousel's DE&I principles are embedded in our core values, such as: Love the Communities We’re In - We’re eager to help anyone who asks for it; life doesn’t have to be a competition. We listen to all of our stakeholders, we recognize humanity in everyone, we give back to improve the overall SEL community, and prioritize the needs of educators, mentors and students. We seek to build a company reflective of the beloved communities in which we serve, work and live --- one where people can come as they are, where everyone is welcomed, and whose contributions are recognized.

While many Edtech investors exist, few invest in primary and secondary education, seeing it as a risky investment area. We believe the financial bridge we need to be able to be financially self-sufficient through sales will come from the social enterprise funding sector, including MIT Solve and its funding partners. We believe this differentiates us from many other applicants; we need a funding bridge, but beyond that, will be able to scale to the masses primarily through revenue. 

We also seek mentorship on scaling SAAS models in education and believe this network will connect us to the strategic advisors that will help us bring quality mobile SEL education to all students.

We are interested in working with experienced EdTech investors or EdTech founders who can provide ongoing mentorship, who are mission-aligned, and who have experience scaling early-stage B2B SaaS and/or EdTech products for the K-12 post-secondary education markets.

Carousel seeks partnerships to:

• Help us better harness impact investing networks. An advisor/mentor such as Narges Baniasadi and Ryan Macpherson would be invaluable.
• Further develop our data/academic strategy for our open data project. 
• Enable us to expand our network of business model partners in US education. For example, our partner Edcuration has been very helpful in understanding how to get in front of large networks of educators. MIT Solve'sCara Scarnati would be integral to helping us devise a strategy. 
• Gain insights from peer networks with experience in EdTech. We would love to learn from CENTURY Tech's experience scaling in the education sector. Similar to them, Carousel's user experience is individualized and data-driven. A mentorship role from this Solver would be extremely beneficial. Additionally, we are interested in learning from TeachMobile by Eneza about their use of AI in their platform (what has worked, what they have learned). We also aim to offer Carousel in multiple languages as we grow and would love to learn from TalkingPoints about the underlying technology that powers their translation between teachers and families.

Yes. Carousel is using data science to benefit humanity. While there is a general acceptance that SEL is important and can make a difference, a range of issues make it difficult to deliver, standardize, and measure. These include: differing frameworks that affect research, interventions, and evaluations; wide range of skills in domain; lack of programs, access, and data for adolescents and older youth; lack of precision to capture and measure SEL competencies; adult impact on learning environments. 

With Carousel’s fixed curriculum and dashboard, educators and researchers can better understand and more easily compare “apples to apples” and track SEL mastery through level progression across individuals, classrooms, grade levels, schools and districts. Through our efforts to provide SEL education to all students, build a data-driven SEL platform, and open-source data for researchers, we expect to broaden understanding of how economic, racial, cultural, social, & other influences impact Social Emotional Learning efficacy & outcomes. Because our platform is curriculum-agnostic, we can also provide current SEL content developers with a better understanding of content efficacy. We are utilizing academic partnerships to develop, analyze, & disseminate SEL data from our platform.

Funding from The AI for Humanity Prize will be used to develop the back-end infrastructure for Carousel Open Data Project. The data generated by our platform is and will always be anonymized and made free and universally accessible. We believe this data can enable teachers, administrators, researchers and anyone else in the SEL community to learn more about how SEL practice drives outcomes.