Centre for Online and Digital Education (CODE)

I would use the funds to support Nomadic Children’s educational program for the organisation which I run. These children, scattered across six counties have no access to quality education. For many years, ASAL counties performance in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) has been the poorest in comparison the rest of the country. I would use these funds to:

• Increase education access for formal students and adult learners though the supply of free Online and offline Learning Apps, Platforms and Digital Libraries.
• Integrate Local and Emerging Technologies to provide Quality Education for boys and girls and their Communities.
• Re-enlist displaced teachers and re-assign them back to schools via safe and accessible online teaching platform via chat boxes, WhatsApp and email lines,
• Provide essential learning as schools close down due Covid-19 and to mitigate the additional disadvantage to the underprivileged learners who already have less educational opportunities,
• To increase access through investing in solar powered tablets to keep learning alive in areas with low or unreliable power connectivity.

Centre for Online and Digital Education (CODE) is an education- focused, non- profit organization registered and based in Kenya. We are a team of active and retired classroom teachers and ICT specialists who are continuously engaged in innovating, designing and testing digital teaching and learning products and services to address the challenges of; inadequate learning resources, shortage of teachers, poor academic performance, poor quality of assessments and tests, and low enrolment and retention rates among schools mostly in underserved and marginalized rural areas in Kenya and the East Africa region.

OUR VISION

An eLearning intervention that provides accessible, inspiring, engaging and fulfilling inclusive learning experiences for marginalised children using a blend of local and emerging technologies supported by caring teachers.

OUR MISSION

To develop, assemble, blend and integrate online/offline/print classroom tools, use locally available technologies, engage specialised human resources to provide supportive and inclusive access to quality basic education to all primary, secondary and adult learners of marginalized nomadic communities in ASAL regions.

The causes of this educational marginalization have been attributed to poverty, long distances to school, scarcity of learning resources, outdated cultural practices, effects of Covid-19, cattle rustling and insecurity. Terrorism on education in this area has had the most significant impact, leading to an acute shortage of teachers in all schools. This led to the mass transfers of non-local teachers by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).  The result is very high student to teacher ratio of 1to 75 compared to 1: 36 across other parts of the country. While the national average enrolment is 82.5% boys and 71.2% for girls, the average figures stand at 35.1% and 15.1% respectively in this region. Schools are under-resourced, and those available are spread too thin and often unsafe to access by boys and girls.

CODE’s project is designed to provide human and material resources needed to get education and schools back on track using a blend of online and offline interventions. The project entails the installation of online and offline Digital Learning Platforms inbuilt with integrated Teaching, Learning and Assessment resources, and supported by a team of highly qualified and experienced online teachers. The resources will cover all subjects.

CODE’s goal is to provide much needed resources to enable learning to keep going in places where teachers have been displaced due to insecurity and/or to support the learners at home following school closures due to the spread of Covid-19. This intervention mitigates the effects of high teacher to student ratios as most of the affected schools have turned to unqualified and inexperienced teachers to keep schools alive.

ICTs Supported learning: CODE utilizes locally available and emerging technologies (computers, tablets and hand held gadgets) to support students in their classroom and home learning. In collaboration with classroom teachers, our team of online tutors provide unlimited resources and experiences to learners.

Flipped classrooms. CODE and its team of teachers will normally record their own lessons from other locations across the country. These lessons are put together, loaded on the platform and streamed to schools in this target area. The teachers then share these lessons with the students who work at their own pace. In some cases, teachers may assign the same videos to all students, while in others, teachers may choose to allow students to watch new videos as they master topics (taking on a more “differentiated” approach).

Statistics/data indicate that this project is beginning to generate significant interest and is helping boys and girls in this remote area to access education, improving attainments and increasing transition between levels of schooling.

• Increased participation among learners- The enrolment by learners have increased from 70,000 users 1n 2019 to over 200,000 users in 2021.
• The download and usage of learning from Digital libraries, apps and platforms has increased to over 2million in the last 7 months of 2021.
• The communication, conversations and data sharing between CODE’s online teachers and arid learning communities (formal, mobile students) have increased, and online teachers have had to attend to more curriculum matters each day on the dashboard.

Free Online and offline Learning Apps, Platforms and Digital Libraries

This has witnessed more downloads and increased usage. This increasing access and is expected to increase learning outcomes.

NO-INTERNET apps provided to learners on their mobile gadgets

The downloaded content requires NO INTERNET afterwards. This is the explanation for increased downloads as learners are taking away material they need for revision.

Online Tutors

Remote teachers provided to mitigate the impact of the shortage of teachers in physical classrooms. They support learners via WhatsApp, text message, phone calls and emails. The number of messages and other emails point to increased acceptance and adoption of the intervention. The collaboration between them and classroom teachers is having a positive collaborative impact, enriching classroom experiences in physical classrooms.