We Are Six (weR6)

Too many online students struggle to achieve their learning goals. The fact that MOOCs suffer from high rates of student attrition is well documented and is widely recognized as a major obstacle to social mobility. 

To tackle this problem we created We Are Six (weR6), an app that allows learners to match with fellow  students and create self-organized learning groups to conquer online courses together. Learning with others not only increases student engagement, it also creates a virtuous circle of motivation and discipline that ultimately boosts students chances of success.

weR6 has the potential to positively change lives globally because it tackles a universal need to improve online learning experiences; its underlying software architecture can easily be expanded to serve new geographical regions; and, as a social network, the value it provides to users actually increases with scale, making it easier for people to match with suitable pod pals.

The problem we address is that of low persistence in online educational programs (many students struggle to achieve their educational goals and drop out), which is widely recognized as the Achilles heel of online learning.

Estimates of course completion rates put the figure at around 15% or less, and can go up to 20% when considering only students who intended to complete the courses in the first place (MIT Study, Columbia Study, Reich). With 180 million people worldwide enrolled in MOOCs in 2020 (Class Central), a conservative estimate puts the number of students who disengaged this past year at 144 million.

We use a conceptual framework of online engagement to better understand the factors that might be contributing to the problem (Heffernan, 2018). This framework identifies five key elements of online engagement (social, cognitive, emotional, behavioral and collaborative) and helps visualize social interaction aspects that are typically lacking in current online learning experiences. 

Small-group learning can improve four of these dimensions by providing opportunities such as:

- social engagement: community, sense of belonging, developing relationships, establishing trust.

- behavioral engagement: Supporting and encouraging peers.

- collaborative engagement: Learning with peers, Developing professional networks.

- emotional engagement: Publicly committing to learning.

weR6 is an app that supports online learning of whatever LMS students are already using (e.g. Coursera), boosting student engagement and persistence. It helps users self-organize small (max 5 people) learning groups/pods, connecting students who share common learning interests, expectations of weekly effort/time, prior knowledge, and who have compatible schedules for synchronous meetings.

The app helps students remain engaged through the learning experience by giving them visibility over peers’ progress and sending notifications on events (e.g. deadlines). 

weR6 also provides tools to help users organize productive synchronous meetings, namely agenda items and a tool for users to distribute roles for such encounters (timekeeper, facilitator, etc). 

We Are Six is NOT a course provider and does not include a chat tool, but rather gives users the option to communicate using whatever software they prefer (e.g. whatsapp). 

The front end is built in Flutter, allowing for simultaneous development for IOs and android devices, and the backend is a serverless configuration using a host of AWS services, with an emphasis in Lambda functions and DynamoDB, making it highly scalable and virtually eliminating fixed costs. The app language is currently Spanish or English, depending on the OS language.

weR6 serves adults who engage in online courses such as MOOCs and courses offered by large employers. As described in the Problem Statement, adults who make use of online learning everywhere, including Latin America and the Caribbean, could be well served by a tool that increases their engagement and possibilities to meet their learning goals. weR6 is a content-agnostic tool, which means that it can be used to support learning of any subject and in whatever industry.

In order to better understand our users’ needs we use three main strategies: direct feedback from the institutions whose courses are posted in the platform; offering users ample possibilities to share their ideas and feedback (the app offers a form to send feedback/ideas to weR6 in three different places within the app, which is redundant but necessary in order for everyone to be aware of this option), and finally by tracking all users’ interactions within the app with Amplitude (https://amplitude.com/), which allows us to analyze the User Experience and assess the value of the different tools we offer.

weR6 aligns with the TPrize Challenge as it represents a tool to improve the effectiveness of online learning opportunities for all adults throughout the region, boosting persistence and course completion rates. At the same time, we support online education providers by providing a tool to strengthen their student communities and ultimately improve course completion rates. As such, the dimension of the Challenge we address is “Support teachers and **educational institutions** with teaching and learning methodologies, **tools**, and resources that help develop future skills for students”.

We have a working prototype and are currently working on the deployment to AppStore (IOs) and Playstore (Android) to initiate testing. There are already two communities excited to start trying out the app with their students/employees, namely a Miami-based public college with over 100.000 students, and a multinational latinamerican company with aprox. 10.000 employees.

weR6 is innovative in several respects:

1. A minimalist approach to study groups: while current LMS platforms foster social engagement among all course participants, weR6 limits learning pods to a maximum of 5 people each. When it comes to social engagement, fewer is often best. In order to commit, people need a handful of peers with whom they feel personally connected; partners that will notice and whatsapp you when you do not show up for a meeting. 

2. weR6 recognizes the complexities of bringing together cohesive and sustainable learning groups, giving participants visibility of key information to ensure a good fit before committing to learning together. It turns out that creating sustainable learning groups is a non-problem for higher education students who share common schedules, goals, courses and even prior knowledge; but it is hard for adults out in the workforce. Maybe because LMS were born out of universities they did not recognize this problem also had to be solved.

3. Users self organize: the dynamics of group learning are radically different when people self organize rather than being assigned into groups. When people are assigned into groups, they expect somebody else to tell them what to do and how. In weR6, people self-organize and know right from the start that they are responsible for their group to work. 

weR6 is a catalytic solution because rather than competing against current content or LMS providers, it gives them a way to augment the experience they can offer to their students.

Our app is built using a host of tools. The main are Flutter for the front-end (which allows us to make it available for both Android and IOs operating systems supported by a common codebase) and and a host of AWS services for the backend (Route 53, API Gateway, Lamda Functions, S3, multi-table DynamoDB, Cognito, and third-party services such as Firebase for notifications and amplitude for analytics). The backend is currently deployed in us-east-2 but all backend services have been configured using the serverless framework, reducing manual configurations and making it very easy to deploy in other regions.

Both flutter and AWS services are widely used technologies for mobile development. Moreover, the video pitch shows the app working. If you want to try the app yourself, you can download the latest version of the .apk file for Android devices here: https://bit.ly/weR6-tprize

As a social networking app, there are a number of risks involved, including cyberbullying, invasion of privacy and identity theft, among others. These problems will mostly arise when we have a big number of users so they are not currently a big concern. Still, in order to mitigate these risks, users can report members, pods or any malicious activity. Also, users are encouraged to use their real names, which is also a common strategy to limit such risks.

We Are Six serves no users at the moment. We estimate that in a year it will be serving 50 thousand users and in five years over 4 million globally, assuming a x3 growth rate per year. On the other hand, if we assume that in 5 years we could reach 5% of all online students, we could reach 9 million in five years (considering a constant 180 million of MOOC students, as in 2020).

Our impact goal for the next year is for users in the app to improve their course completion rates over non-users by 20%. Assuming 50 thousand users as stated above, that amounts to profoundly impacting the lives of 10 thousand people. In five years, assuming the same course completion rate and a total of 9 million users, our impact that year alone would amount to an additional 1.8 million certificate holders than would exist otherwise.

In order to achieve this goal we will focus both on growing the user base and improving the user experience. There are many tools we have thought about, which might better engage users. In order to test them we focus strongly on design thinking tools (user interviews, user journeys, iteration) and A/B testing.

We track user engagement with four different metrics: total active users (7 day average and 30 day average), total active pods (7 day average and 30 day average), share of active users (7 day average and 30 day average) and course completion rates.

We also track the usefulness of all the app features. To this end we track all interactions within the app with Amplitude (https://amplitude.com/), a third party service.

Part time: 4 (Head of product, head of engineering, head programmer/front-end programmer, backend programmer).

I’m Sebastian Marambio, Head of Product. I hold a BA from Harvard and I’m a licensed Maths teacher. Eight years ago, I founded an education nonprofit with the mission of inspiring students with a love of learning. Since then, I have gone on to work in government, where I’m currently serving as Chief of Innovation in the Ministry of Education.

I’ve created weR6 in close collaboration with my brother and lifelong learning pal, Pablo Marambio. Besides being a gifted teacher, Pablo (Universidad Católica) has 12+ years of experience working in Engineering as technical leader, program manager and product owner. Today, he works as VP of Engineering at AgendaPro (Y Combinator W21). 

We’re passionate about education as a way for people to explore and realize their full potential and believe everybody should have equal access to transformative learning experiences. Fortunately, technology has the power to make it possible. weR6 is a step towards the future of learning as we imagine it - engaging, social, personalized.

In dreaming up weR6, Pablo and I connected over our own experiences (and frustrations) as online learners. But our real inspiration came from the dozens of people of all backgrounds we interviewed in the process. We embraced a human-centered design approach, frequently touching base with all kinds of learners: MOOC enthusiasts and pessimists, students and teachers, men and women, engineers and philosophers. All these interviews shaped the choice of features present in the app today, and will certainly continue to inform its development as we move forth.

Right now, the leadership team consists of me and my brother Pablo. weR6 aims to serve a large and diverse group of users, providing a meaningful, engaging online learning experience for all -- a goal that requires a commitment to diversity and inclusion. So far, we have integrated these principles in our interviews and user testing sessions with a wide array of learners and stakeholders, reaching out to people from a diversity of backgrounds and educational experiences, and a roughly equal proportion of men and women. As we move forth, we will make sure this same diversity is reflected in the team’s leadership, as product design can only be enriched by incorporating a diversity of perspectives.  

 Goals by the end of 2021: 

1. Incorporate at least one female identifying person to the leadership team 
2. Incorporate recommendations from one or more inclusivity specialists, to make sure the app is both gender inclusive and inclusive of people with disabilities. 
3. Continue to hold frequent users testing sessions and design interviews with a wide diversity of stakeholders (in terms of socioeconomic status, gender, race, age and others). 

 Goals by the end of 2022: 

1. Ensure a 50% female team representation 
2. Ensure representation of ethnic minorities

We’re applying to the TPrize Challenge to join a global community of high impact innovators and take weR6 to the next level. Being selected would mean world-class support in overcoming some of the main barriers we have identified, such as securing VC funding and scaling rapidly over the course of the next five years, while retaining a team of highly qualified software developers.

We would benefit from support in:

• refining our business model.
• expert mentoring in monitoring & evaluation, to make sure we are measuring impact in the most effective way possible.
• advice on when and how to seek and secure VC funding. Even though Pablo works at a Y Combinator startup that has raised significant capital, he did not experience that chapter because he joined as VP of Engineering after the last funding round.
• connecting with industry leaders from large companies that are potential customers.

We would also like to partner with a major MOOC provider such as EdX or Coursera, which we believe would be interested in our solution because it can increase retention rates for the courses they offer. 

We would like to partner with all organizations that have a need to train or upskill large numbers of students/employees in Latinamerica, including large nonprofits such as Hogar de Cristo in Chile, which would allow us to learn more about how to tailor the app to the needs of underserved communities. All these organizations (both for profit and nonprofits) can help advance our solution by trying it out, allowing us to learn from user feedback, and potentially becoming our customers.