HiClass

HiClass is an online peer-to-peer workplace where teachers and educators collaborate to teach learners in real-time.

Problem

In Nigeria:

• 72% of students find it hard to solve their assignments.

• 80% of students admits that class lectures are insufficient to ensure deep understanding of a subject matter.

• 60% of classes have an average of 50 students present thereby making personalised lessons impossible.

The educational progression of young persons in Nigeria, and Africa is largely hindered by the unsuitable teaching technique employed. This, coupled with expensive access to standard education has curtailed students from attending good schools and excelling. Consequently, over 65% failure rate has been recorded in regional examinations. To evade the repercussions of failure, students have resorted to examination malpractice, a practice that facilitates corruption. This unfortunate situation has also increased the amount of unemployable graduates churned out each year and the unemployment rates as well.

According to the "Learning Pyramid", the present learning methodologies (Reading & Lectures) have just 10% retention rates. The future of work is at stake if students do not understand what they are being taught in the classrooms. The traditional teaching methods do not enhance 'teamwork, creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking'.

Solution

We are solving the problem of unsuitable teaching techniques being employed in our traditional classrooms.

We built a mobile app that uses Connectivism Learning Theory [CLT] to drive the learning processes. This ensures that learning is carried out as an interactive group discussions. Hence, making learning a social activity.

HiClass uses "Discussion Group" [DG] as a means to drive the CLT. This ensures that the distributed knowledge of all students involved in the DG is shared across everyone involved. This method helps students to engage with their courses analytically and creatively; they remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create what they are taught.

With HiClass, educators and teachers around the World collaborate and teach learners. The platform enable learners to share their questions and it intelligently (based on its knowledge base) peer them with teachers and educators within and outside of their geographical locations. These educators then collaborate to teach them in real-time.

Depending on the students accessibility to internet, they could receive text, images and videos as responses to their question. The solution is also optimized to work with little internet connection, hence, makes it quite useable for students in the disadvantaged community. To increase its accessibility for disabled students, they could use a speech-to-text functionality to share their academic challenges.

How our solution will change the world

• Reduce inequality between the privileged and less privileged. Teenagers who are not enrolled in secondary school can leverage on technology to learn from those who have access to standard education. More so, those who have access to classroom that lack the 21st century learning system can learn from those who have access to it.

• Reduce student failure rate and examination misconducts by 35%.

• Improve teacher-student relationship by 56%

• Provide more than 10,000 jobs and revenue to freelance tutors by 2019.

• Provide analytical data to making informed decision on the state of education for different geographical regions, countries and continents.

Our solution is a process for solving the challenges. The traditional ways of teaching have about 10% understanding rate. Our solution facilitate teaching/learning as an interactive group discussions-making learning a Social Activity.
Through feedback and inferences from our platform' knowledge-base, our platform has about 60% comprehension rate. This is seen in the rate at which our existing learners eagerly co-teach the new students - what their educators earlier taught them.

70.5% of our secondary school students obtained credits and above in at least 5 subjects in their College-Entrance Examination. This also infers the reduction in the rate of examination malpractices.

HiClass is built on mobile technologies using the Connectivitism Learning Theory (CLT) - it powers learning as a social process.

Learners share their questions and the app intelligently peer the them with teachers and educators with the right expertise. These teachers are notified in real-time and they collaborate to teach the students online.

Students receive texts, images and videos responses from their peered tutors and educators.

Based on learners-teachers learning processes, the platform aggregates more data to improve it's knowledge-base, make more intelligent peering and enhance an adaptive & personalized learning system.

The app also tracks the learners performance.

• Partner with local telcos to whitelist our platform so that learners (especially those in less developed regions) can access it without data charges. This would also ensure a wider reach of our solution.
• Sign-up 1,000 teachers & educators and use the platform to train about how to use technology to enhance the teaching/learning processes.
• Sign-up 45,000 learners from disadvantaged and suburban communities.
• Provide 10,000 jobs and revenue to freelance tutors.
• Improve teachers-students relationship by 30%.

We are backed by Facebook through her FbStart programme, an initiative to help mobile apps succeed. This gives us access to Facebook’s robust technologies, tools and audience.

We would leverage on her robust audience to reach our users in various locations (especially in Africa) by focusing on targeted Ads to reach and retain users.

More so, we would constantly improve our technology to align with the most recent technology so we can always power teaching through processes that are is in-line with international standard.

Based on the myriad number of users on Facebook, they have robust and well informed analytics about these users.

Based on our strategic partnership with Facebook (through her FbStart programme), we would leverage on her robust audience to reach our users in various locations (especially in Africa) by focusing on targeted Ads to reach and retain users.

Our solutions are being deployed with the aid of mobile apps and the communities we are targeting can easily access it on their mobile phones.

Through the use of our mobile app, we have peered over 5,000 registered students (who have no access to standard education) with over 100 teachers and educators (who are spread across Nigeria, The United States and Belarus).

This enables our students to learn beyond the geographical limitation of their conventional classrooms.

Our app has 9,000+ downloads on play store with 4.8 of 5.0 ratings.

In 12 months, we expect to be using our mobile and web apps to be serving over 55,000 students by peering them with their colleagues, teachers and educators around the continent who are dedicated to teaching them online.

We would also give these students access to personalized, interactive and adaptive educational contents (texts, images and videos) to learn, practice and prepare for their examinations.

In 3 years, we expect to be serving 320,000 students.

Abayomi (Team Lead & Developer): first-class graduate of Computer Science from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology. He has competence in "Strategic Implementation of ICT Integration in Education" and has over 4years experience building robust edTech products. He is currently taking a course on "Leading Change" from University of Cambridge.

Antonia Motoni (Marketing Manager) is a Digital Strategist. She is a trainer for Google's "Digital Skill for Africa".

Adebayo (Tutors' Lead): seasoned tutor of STEM and a first-class graduate of Chemical Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria.

Adebukola (Tutors-in-diaspora Lead): graduate of Nursing, Queensborough School of Nursing, New York.

Our solution is a hybrid of non-profit and for-profit.

At the for-profit arm, we make revenue via:

• Private chat with teachers and faster response to questions. 
• Sales of educational contents: Video lessons, textual and imageable contents.
• Connecting students with teachers offline.

A private chat with tutors cost (inclusive of faster response to questions being asked by the learner) cost $3/week and $10/month. We get a 10-20% revenue share from this.

More so, access to study with the educational contents cost $3/month, $1.5/week and $0.7/day.

Offline tutorial could cost $80/month depending on the subject, tutor's expertise and tutor proximity to where the student lives. We get a 15% revenue share from this.

Organizational & Technology Mentorship, Connections to the MIT campus and Grant Funding are the reasons for applying to Solve.

The mentorships and connections will empower and enlighten us on how to build a sustainable Pan-African edTech products.
We want to learn how to scale and expand. These would make standard and quality education accessible to more students and reduce the failure rate in West Africa by 20% by November 2019.

With the grant funding, we will develop 4,000 educational audio-visual contents and sign-up 500 additional educators on our platform.

• Access to internet connection.
• Educators' interest in Information Technology (IT)

We understand that many a learners/educators do not have access to good internet connection, hence, we optimize our solution to work with little internet connection. Despite this, we still have several students who could barely access the internet.

More so, there is a need to enlighten and orient educator about the importance of IT. Many educators still regard IT as their enemy - the one that wants to hijack jobs. They need to understand the role of technology in enhancing and optimizing their works.