Juan Learning

Juan Learning is a quality K-12 video content library platform designed as a supplementary resource for Filipino students

The Philippine education system is not at par with Global standards and came in last for literacy and second last for Math and Science in the 2019 PISA. That gap can be attributed to the quality of the public education system, which comprises almost 90% of the total annual student population. Its very likely that this gap continues to widen as the country enters its second school year of distance and online learning with limited infrastructure.

Teachers have struggled to adapt to the online learning setup, a considerable factor is due to a lack of national curriculum aligned digital learning resources, particularly video content, needed to facilitate asynchronous learning effectively.

There is currently no local video content for K-9 other than that which the Department of Education has began to produce and distribute recently, however the quality of these resources is questionable and arguably low and very fragmented, with limited viewership. Our public school students and teachers struggle with access to the limited and low quality resources being provided because of the lack of infrastructure.

Juan Learning is our solution that provides accessible, affordable, and quality supplementary video learning content to our students in need - enabling them to have a better grasp of the subject fundamentals and improve learning outcomes. Our videos are fun, engaging, locally contextualized, Philippine National curriculum-aligned and available offline in our portal. The platform aims to soon be AI driven, enabling the personalization of the learning and the fixing of learning gaps.

The 2019 OECD PISA report classified Filipino students as "low performers". The Philippines' overall academic performance is heavily skewed by its public education system which comprises of almost 90% of the total students enrolled. This is an indicator of the struggle of public school students to be competitive in the global landscape.

A number of factors are attributed to the poor education quality in the country, one of which is the lack of access to quality digital learning content that would complement the existing K-12 curriculum and teacher instruction, and lack of Edtech solutions to make it accessible.

Public school teachers are overloaded with administration and teaching functions so in most cases they are unable to create lessons and digital content from scratch, particularly video content, that is needed to facilitate asynchronous learning effectively.

Students on the other hand are very much reliant on the live online teaching and if this is missed or inaccessible, they have no alternative or back up.

There are a handful of available content platforms that are relatively expensive for the common Filipino family to afford, yet they do not provide video content for grades K-12 that is Philippine curriculum aligned. These solutions are merely positioned for the private school market. The Department of Education has began to produce and distribute video lessons recently, however the quality of these resources are low, very fragmented, and not available offline and therefore inaccessible to the 4 in 5 households that don't have internet connectivity.

Juan Learning aims to expand its impact by serving the needs of more than 20 million public school students in the Philippines - staring with primary school students who comprise roughly 70% of the total public school population. An overwhelming majority of these children belong to low income households who do not have the proper distance learning infrastructure. Their parents do not recognize the priority of providing their children access to additional learning tools given the struggle of sustaining their household on a day-to-day basis (moreso in the middle of a pandemic).

Certain members of the team have had the chance to understand the lives of these students and their parents in former engagements. The team believes that a customer centric approach is necessary in designing the solution. We will continously perform empathy exercises to gain genuine and direct insights from the students so that we could craft the solution around their motivations, pain points, fears, challenges, and aspirations.

Juan Learning's end goal is to elevate the competitiveness of our public school children by enabling them access to quality learning tools.

The pain point that Juan Learning wishes to address is completely aligned with the objectives of the challenge.

Juan Learning is a K-12 video content learning platform that helps strengthen a student's appreciation and absorption of most essential learning competencies (prescribed by the Philippines' Department of Education). We do this by creating fun, engaging, and academically sound videos and make them accessible to everyone, including public school students that need them the most.

Filipino public school students remain to be an underserved learning population in the Philippines given the results of the country's public education system's competencies and the lack of support with the current distance learning setup.

Juan Learning's intention to pivot to serving Filipino public primary school students with its learning platform should help elevate the quality education they are getting.

Cham Luna, is the team leader of Juan Learning's pivot. He is currently the Operations and Development Director of Thynker Tech.

Juan Learning's video production quality together with the integration of the Filipino context in its content design enables a maximized engagement with its target end users compared to existing alternatives. Students foster a love for learning and become deeply engaged. The streamlined production processes and skilled team, using the latest in video production and editing technology has allowed us to produce videos at cost that makes it feasible to serve the affordable market while not compromising on quality. The additional ability to make the content available offline throught the app is a first for the affordable market. By far, it is the only solution of its kind that is available in the Philippine market.

We also aim to make the palform AI driven which would allow for supplemental adpative learning when combined with our content and further gamification. This would allow public school students the opportunity for personalised learning and fixing of learning gaps they would otherwise never have access too.

Juan Learning's success is expected to strengthen the reach of EdTech towards the larger mass of the Philippine student population. It should encourage other potential non-government/private players towards supporting distance and supplemental learning and take further steps to improve its quality.

Yes, in just over 6 months, Juan Learning has more than 600 subscribers from its initial target market of homeschooling parents. More than half of these subcribers pre-registered before we can release the product. As such, the product is validated by our intial business model.

Validating the existing solution's impact to the intended pivot to expand to service the public school market has yet to be accomplished. Nevertheless, the team is approaching this new model jumping off a similar experience with a different social impact venture. The parents' desire for better education (albeit not a strong and intentional priority), the willingness of the public schools to partner, and the existence of organizations willing to engage related to their CSR initiatives are validated.

The streamlined production processes and skilled team, using the latest in video production and editing technology has allowed us to produce videos at a cost that makes it feasbible to serve the affordable market while not compromising on the quality.

Juan Learning strives to emulate a similar format to Netflix, wherein the lessons are downloadable for offline access.

As of now, Juan Learning is accessible online where subscribers can log in to the webportal to access their content. Progress tracking through the content, announcements, profile and membership management are all availble with a seamless user experience. Creating a smartphone application is part of our roadmap to improve ease of access.

As we shift to enable the content to be AI-driven, we are working on a partnership with other platforms like Century Tech, but are currently more included to build our own AI-driven LMS platform.

With our problem statement, our team's hypothesis is that supplementary digital content will help strengthen the core learning fundamentals and improve the quality of the education that these underserved students need. This has been a proven case in different countries where EdTech and digital learning content are trending such as China and Indonesa (p. 11 USAID Philippines ICT Education Report).

We also believe that the quality engaging content created will complement the needs and learning preferences of these Gen Z and Gen A learners who are digital natives. There are found to be heavily attracted and glued to digital solutions than older generations. They find themselves YouTube a lot as a favorite method of learning anything that interests them. (p. 4 Preferred Learning Methods of Generation Z by A. Nicholas).

Although a lot of these theories have been proven in preceding cases and applications, the team still understands the need for a dynamic customer-centric design which is why we strive to constantly understand the pains and gains of our target users.

For our impact goals, we are looking at the following metrics for success:
1. Number of subsidized public school students
2. Number of public school partnerships
3. Amount of CSR investment from potential partner organizations
4. English, Math, and Science literacy improvement for subsidized users
4. Elementary and High school graduation rate for subsidized users

We definitely want to grow #1 and #2 to measure the reach of our platform across the target population. Metric #3 is critical to help grow our reach.

Juan Learning's end goal is to help improve the quality learning of our public school children - that is why we need to make sure that there is a recognizable improvement on core academic competencies which would help ensure they move on to the next stage.

Here are our YoY impact goals for the next 5 years.
2022: 6,000 primary school students
2023: 20,000 public school students (primary and secondary)
2024: 50,000 public school students (primary and secondary)
2025: 100,000 public school students (primary and secondary)
2026: 500,000 public school students (primary and secondary)

Apart from the reach, our goal is to improve the graduation rate of our primary and secondary school beneficiaries to 95% (from 87% and 75% respectively).

This can be achieved through an aggressive with various partner organizations (tapping into their CSR programs) and close collaboration with the Department of Education.

One of Juan Learning's challenges has been maintaining the right people that will help continue the development and production of our quality content for the current subscribers. Currently, the team has been operating on a contractual basis given initial financial constraints. The lack of employment stability is the major reason for attrition. Juan Learning is currently negotiating with an additional partner that can provide financial sustainability - enabling us to hire full time members.

The heavy dependence of the public education system on the Department of Education is another barrier. The current lack of centralized guidance and direction from the ministry with respect to EdTech could potentially limit the reach and impact of relevant solutions. Juan Learning's leadership will need to intentionally work with the bureau to help influence policies for better adoption.

Juan Learning's core solution is digital content. As of now, it is heavily reliant on third party platforms to host its content and manage the interface with the users. The team is planning on setting up its own technology development team that would make for a more controlled and customer-centric platform. This will also enable us to evolve the solution further.

Finally, given that access remains to be a relevant concern for a lot of public school students, Juan Learning will have to work with Technology partners that can supply the gadgets and data infrastructure needed for the partner schools and their students.

Juan Learning is the brainchild of a digital marketing professional and mother who decided to do homeschooling because of the pandemic. She found herself frustrated with her initial experience as she weaved through the curriculum options available for her child. Existing solutions then were expensive, outdated, and non-controlled. Given her experience creating training videos for her clients, she brought together a team of professionals in video production together with content creators from the academe with the objective of developing a K-12 video content platform that is affordable and engaging.

By the start of 2021, Juan Learning was established and the team immediately started producing video content that quickly captured the attention of a lot of homeschooling parents who identified with the same constraints. However, production costs started to pile up and exceeded the capital provided by the initial shareholders. Thynker Tech came onboard in July 2021, and acquired Juan Learning as it believed in the innovative product and missions were aligned. They supported the team with its financial resources and leadership expertise to ensure momentum is sustained. The team agreed that the piling production costs are not sustainable for its current positioning, and that economies of scale would be needed to sustain the product.

This is one of the reasons why Juan Learning is pivoting towards a larger audience. By extending its reach, Juan Learning will be able to continue its momentum of creating quality video content while achieving its vision of a better education system for every Filipino child.

6 full time on operations and administration
5 full time on content development
46 part-time/contractors working on production
6 free-lance actors
2 free-lance artists
6 free-lance scriptwriters

Juan Learning's current production team is experienced in creating video training content for various corporate clients. We also have Content managers from the academe, theater production, and former leaders from a competitor solution. Our current customers have validated the team's competencies in producing quality content.

It is recently acquired by Thynker Tech (an EdTech startup) whose sister company has been in the education space for decades. The founders of Thynker Tech also have extensive experience in the tech and online learning industry. This partnership provides the solution with people who have more experience in the academe and technology coupled with leadership and resources to sustain the team's momentum. Thynker Tech's thrust is on developing EdTech platforms which will enable Juan Learning to grow its design towards a more favorable interface and smart learning solutions for our target users.

The Team Leader is an MBA graduate who specializes in social impact ventures. He is a founder of an organization that works with private corporations to promote financial literacy to public school children through game-based learning tools. He also used to be a founding member of a technology startup company that specializes in fiber optic infrastructure and has been a development and operations director for the leading online learning provider in the Philippines.

He is passionate about empathy-based design and promoting the need to consistently understand and engage the customer in evolving solutions. This has made him a resource for startup competitions and incubator programs.

He is also an experienced operations, sales, and business development leader in his previous full-time stints.

Juan Learning is currently partnered with homeschooling providers and private schools to help broaden its reach with its current target market.

We are also in talks with Century Tech regarding our AI needs.

The grant will definitely help Juan Learning in its efforts to cover production costs, scale awareness and develop partnerships with private organizations and related government institutions.

A partnership with Octava and MIT can help open the team towards a larger network of support that would help us refine our strategy and implementation as we scale our impact in the Philippine Education system.

Beyond the fund, Thynker Tech and Juan Learning is looking forward to the support that we can get from Octava and MIT in scaling our current solution through guidance on technology development, market approach, and stakeholder network growth.