The Marking App

Problem

A lot of teachers spend a lot of teaching time grading formal assessments. This means that a lot of learners miss out on an important opportunity to receive quality education. The scarcity of mobile apps that learners, especially from remote and rural communities, saw learners miss out on education across Africa due to the coronavirus lockdown. This all resulted in poor education outcomes across schools. 

Solution and Value Proposition

Our data free app uses a hand-writing scanning feature to automatically grade schools assessments. It keeps a long-term memory of learners' results and suggests intervention strategies to teachers.

The app gives learners immediate and continuous feedback on their academic progress, multiple assessment opportunities and study resources, meaning that learner can independently and remotely study and assess themselves or their peers without needing the teacher. The app allows learners to have virtual study groups using chat, call or video call features. 

Our end goal is to help improve education outcomes across schools in African and the world, starting with South Africa. 

The introduction of technological intervention in education is a global need. South Africa is still very behind. There is no app like ours that is currently being uses in the country's basic education sector. So all learners (over 12 million) in basic education are affected. South Africa has over 400 000 teachers in public schools who will be primary users of the app and they will be using it with over 12 million learners across basic education/K-12.

Our solution is The Marking App - a data free web a mobile app that automatically grades schools assessments while giving learners access to immediate feedback, online support and study resources. 

In a case where learners do not have smartphones to take assessments on the app, the learners will still write their tests manually on a paper, the teacher would then collect the test papers and scan them into the app. The app will then grade them automatically using a memorandum that was imported by the teacher and then provide immediate feedback and suggestions for improvement to struggling learners. 

The app will give learners multiple study resources available for free download as well as multiple self and peer practice assessment opportunities. 

The app will keep a memory of each learners academic record (profile) up until they finish grade 12. This is to help the next teacher in the next grade to understand the learners they are dealing with. 

The app will reduce the administration load for teachers so teachers could focus on quality teaching and preparation with the end goal of improving education outcomes in South Africa.

Teachers in South Africa are currently overloaded with administration work which impacts the quality of lessons and support that they provide to learners. During our research we have identified marking as a biggest contributor to this burden. So The Marking App will do all of this automatically for them, giving them up 90% more time for them to focus on teaching. 

When interacting and interviewing learners about the app and how we can involve them, a lot of learners mentioned that they  struggle with getting immediate feedback from their teachers as grading their test scripts can take teachers weeks, meaning that there is no time for feedback. Teachers in South Africa teach an average of 300 learner a day or 60 learners per classroom. So giving feedback to all those learners can be a challenge. The Marking App will give automated like feedback to learners so that they are able to see if they are not in the right track and they will know what to do to improve. With The Marking App learners will not only see their examination marks only 3 times a year as it is the case now but they will see them as they go throughout the year. 

The app will also give learners access to form virtual study groups with their peers so they can study with and support each other. 

Our solution relates to more than one Challenge dimension in the following manner: 

Increase the engagement of learners teachers and parents:

- Live virtual study groups: chat, call or video

- Live updates of academic progress and immediate feedback: auto-grading

Enable access to quality learning experiences in low-connectivity settings—

- Dara Free: we use  the reverse data billing system

- Free online study resources

- Multiple assessments (formal and informal)

Support teachers to adapt their pedagogy, 

- Auto grading of assessments

- Automated analysis of results and suggestion for intervention

- Online notifications

- Long term memory of saved test-examinations

We have managed to raise grand funding from the Trevor Noah Foundation and the SAB Foundation which has helped us secure the services of a graphic designer who helped us to design our user interface and to develop an interactive prototype of the app (front end). 

We are now trying to raise more money to develop the back end of our app which will then allow us to start with the pilot stage. We already have schools who have endorsed our app and have agreed to allow us to pilot our app at their schools once we are ready. 

For many years, teachers have struggled with excessive marking and administration loads without a solution. Our app removes this load from teachers with up to 90%. We set a timer and asked 3 teachers to mark the same test paper. It took them an average of 10 minutes each. Then we used other apps to trace the 3 basic steps that our app uses and managed to do all in under 60 seconds. 

For as long as history can guide us, learners in South Africa have always received their academic progress reports only 3 times a year, that did not give them enough feedback and time to catch up with their academics. Our app will update their academic progress as and when the teacher uses the app to grade tests or updates grades on the app. In that way learners keep up to date with their grades and know when and where to improve. 

Many learners in South Africa do not have access to smart phones and internet, they therefore cannot benefit from the currently available technological advancements. Our app uses a scanning feature to grade manually written test papers. Only the teacher needs a smart phone for this, they can also share one smartphone to do this. Our app is data free which provides more access and is economically friendly. 

Our solution currently serves no people as it is still under development, we though aim to serve 300 people in the next year, 2000 in the next three years and over 4000 in the next 5 years.

We conduct regular interviews with teachers and learners to gather feedback. We also participate in academic and community conferences where conversations about Education 4.0 are taking place.

We have a team of 3 that is working on our solution currently and we have outsourced other services. 

Kabelo Mahlobogwane is an industry leader in education and activist who's work is internationally recognised. Professionally he is a teacher. He has a lot of experience leading different teams in different projects. He is the Executive Director of the company who is also responsible for strategy and business development. 

Bonang Motsapi is a teacher professionally who is involved in a lot of activism in education. He is responsible to be a liaison between educators, learners and our company. He is also responsible for research. 

Zinhle Maseko is an exceptional professional in the field of security and risk management specifically in the IT field. Her role in the company is Chief Risk and Project Manager.

The vast expertise and experience places our team at the top of the task we are faced with.

We are a team that has a level 1 BBBEE status on the empowerment policies of South Africa. Our larger team that includes our outsourced services is made up of people from different community, social and religious backgrounds. Our company policy is based on none discriminative policies that seek to empower those we work with.