Visiola Virtual School Device (VSD)

13 million of the 30 million primary school age children in Nigeria are not enrolled (and will never enroll) in any school. Globally, 258 million children are out of school. Moreover, at least one-third of the world’s schoolchildren (463 million) were unable to access online learning when the COVID-19 pandemic led to school closures. In Nigeria, children from poor/low-income households lack electricity access at home, computers, and internet access to take advantage of online education and learning in poorly resourced public schools often does not provide them with strong literacy and numeracy, with many being functionally illiterate. In addition, frequent terrorist attacks and kidnappings are preventing many from going to school. The portable VSD will effectively bypass these challenges by hosting high quality educational materials offline to enable marginalized children to receive an education. It can be scaled globally to serve children in refugee camps and underserved communities worldwide.

The quality of basic education in public schools in Nigeria is extremely poor, leading to low demand and unacceptably low academic performance. 1 in 5 of the world’s out-of-school children is in Nigeria. Only 61% of 6-11 year-olds regularly attend primary school and only 36% of children aged 36-59 months receive early childhood education. In northern Nigeria, the picture is even bleaker, with a net attendance rate of 53% and female primary net attendance rates of 47%, meaning that more than half of the girls are not in school. The education deprivation in northern Nigeria is driven by various factors, including insurgency, economic barriers and socio-cultural norms and practices that discourage attendance in formal education, especially for girls. The public education system is fraught with numerous challenges, including dilapidated infrastructure, insufficient numbers of poorly trained teachers, as well as outdated and limited teaching aids. Also, teachers often lack the skills or motivation to be effective. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened things. The statistics are scary and the consequences are severe. The sturdy and portable VSD overcomes these barriers and increases access to high quality education for marginalized children. It can be used anywhere and can be shared by multiple children.

The Visiola Foundation’s Virtual School Device (VSD) is a sturdy and portable learning tool that consists of an inbuilt local server where course materials will be hosted, with an inbuilt operating system. This design architecture eliminates the need for internet connectivity. Content will be accessible through the use of an IP address and a port number on which the local server runs. Each VSD will be enabled to support WI-FI and hotspot sharing to ensure that content can be tethered over a wireless local area network (WLAN) and accessed by other users if they have an android phone or a computer. This will further ensure that the device can act as a portable router to enable students to study in large groups and could support schools that have some computers. The device will be lightweight with a USB type B charger. We will partner with local telcos to serve content over a dedicated IP address with the device constantly connected. This ensures that students can easily update the application with no internet connection over a dedicated IP address. It will be android based with adequate storage capacity and will be user friendly. The device will have low energy consumption.

“If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.” Kuan Chung (7th Century BC)

This device will be life-changing for students in underserved and marginalized communities who would have otherwise been deprived from learning due to their location, low socio-economic status, poor public funding, during conflicts, insurgencies, natural disasters or global pandemics such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The VSD solution is also especially targeted at girls in underserved communities, internally displaced girls and young women in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, and refugee camps. Kidnapping students, especially girls, is a national crisis that has been worsening in Nigeria over the past decade. The VSD overcomes all these barriers to enable all students, and especially girls, to learn safely at home or in secure communal households. Access and exposure to high quality education with a reliable learning tool will help to increase literacy and numeracy, especially for the millions of children who are currently excluded from formal learning.

The Visiola Foundation’s VSD is fully aligned with the MIT Solve Challenge as a sturdy and portable “technology-based solution that ensures that all primary and secondary school learners have access to quality, safe, and equitable learning environments.” It directly increases student access and engagement through a fully loaded device that does not rely in internet connectivity and with low energy density to overcome electricity access shortages. It supports learners individually, peer interaction, and has in-built support and guidance for parents and teachers.  

We have spent a long time studying and understanding the challenges facing the education sector in Nigeria and the issues faced by underserved and marginalized communities, especially girls. The VSD concept is one of many that we have explored. We have also researched other interventions, such as “one laptop, one child” and similar types of devices that have failed to learn valuable lessons to guide our solution. We examined the overall feasibility, technical specifications, design of the design, the necessary user interface, where/how to procure good quality and affordable devices, product placement, product-market fit, the total addressable market, financial sustainability, and the expected impact. We now feel confident to progress to the prototyping phase and would be delighted to partner with MIT Solve to advance to the next stage. 

There are currently several e-learning platforms available globally. One major drawback to these platforms is whilst they tackle the need to learn, they ignore the fact that centering the entire learning structure on the internet limit students from underprivileged regions access the learning platforms as a result of little or no access to the internet.

The device falls under the dedicated devices category (formerly called corporate-owned single-use, or COSU). It device will ensure students have access to educational materials at all times regardless of their geographical location and lack of internet connection.

The design structure is based on the client-server architecture where many clients (mobile devices) request and receive service from a centralized server (host computer). However, the device will only connect the server at intervals (when there are changes to the curriculum and contents). While away from the server, the device serves as its own server.

The device will partner with local telecommunication giants in every country to serve the contents over a dedicated IP address with the device constantly being connected to the IP address. This ensures that anytime there is an update to the content, students can easily update the application with no internet connection over a dedicated IP address.

Our solution will initially serve 10,000 children.

In an additional year, it will serve 100,000 children.

By year five, we will be serving 1,000,000 children. 

We collect baseline data on all students with whom we work, and we measure their academic progress in key subjects, changes in family and community expectations (e.g. parents who previously did not value education for girls now supporting them to participate in our programs), their performance in external competitions, their admission rates to further education, and the number and types of jobs they access. 

5.

The Visiola Foundation has directly impacted over 8,000 girls through its high quality STEM programs since 2014. In 2020, the Foundation directly trained 1,882 girls in math, physics, biology, computer programming, mobile app development, electronics, and robotics. We are a passionate and committed team of STEM professionals with a mission to empower marginalized students with quality STEM education. This is what motivated us to study and explore the VSD solution to deepen and broaden our impact.  

Our Board, leadership, and staff teams are all diverse with gender inclusion and diversity. We also have an inclusive team of volunteers, both female and male, and we draw in team members from broad socio-economic backgrounds, many of whom personally understand the educational limitations that we address, because they have lived through these challenges themselves. The mentors we select and who share their life stories and coach our students are also diverse and represent our values.