Soma Link

Soma Link provides access to high-quality, relevant, world-class educational tools and resources to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Students will be able to access the resources in both offline and online forms

Soma Link will solve the problem of poor quality course content available for students in the various learning institutions by not only offering high-quality courses but also meaningful, well-researched, up to date and relevant resources to students. All these will be accessible both online and offline to tackle the problem of internet inaccessibility. The resources will include quality articles, educational content video tutorials, notes, practice tests, and online tutors.

We shall integrate multiple models such as website application, mobile application, USSD, email, and a mentorship model. In the USSD model, students will receive articles, notes, practice tests, webinar events updates to the phone through SMS.The mobile application will help students who have access the resources both offline and online.

The email method will be very efficient to send updates, webinar events, weekly tips, articles resources also video tutorial links so as to access when online. The web application will enable students to have full access to online resources, this includes online tutors, webinars, and other resources. In our mentorship model, professional mentors will mentor the students and physical events organized where students network, and to have QA sessions with professionals in the industry and also their peers. 

According to (Nyerere, 2021) the majority of Kenyan tertiary institutions have instructors who do not have the skills to teach, scarce electronic content, a lack of internet connectivity, and students with limited computer literacy. Even with computer literacy among Kenyans increasing, there are still major capacity challenges in using interactive online tools for teaching. For institutions to go digital, they need to have invested in both offline and online teaching and learning platforms, digital libraries, and internet access. The problem is, public universities have suffered from severe cash flow challenges attributed to inadequate public funding (Nyerere, 2021).

There is an urgent need for a fresh approach to the current teaching and learning models for Kenyan Universities. We can reduce digital disruptions through the delivery of interactive content and accessible courses through digital learning platforms. Currently, higher education institutions offer low-quality courses to students and also lack timely information on the labor market. The current system provides students with minimal practical skills to practice and lots of poor-quality theoretical resources. There are also massive learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic which brought about the transition to e-learning, where institutions were not prepared. According to the Ministry of Education, there was a complete disconnection where there was a broken link between the education system and the labor market. Graduates remain unemployed, lacking the skills and knowledge needed to traverse the labor market.

Kenya has over 70 universities, 38 of the public and 35 public. Over 500,000 students enrolled in the last academic year, students enrolled in public universities were over 400,000 (Nyerere,2021). Public universities are already challenged by overcrowding, inadequate numbers of lecturers, degraded facilities with private universities having experienced and highly trained teachers, good facilities where the teachers can use the syllabus as a guide and supplemented by textbooks and internet research to prepare digital resources for their learners. The schools prepare materials such as mock exams and exercises that usually include complex illustrations and diagrams to further aid the learner to succeed. 

Kenyan students in both universities and tertiary institutions, students graduate from these institutions and enter the job market with no skills to be competitive enough to start a business or even get employed. We want to change that by improving their learning journey and helping them acquire skills. As our solution scales up, we shall also include Kenyan students from both secondary primary schools, so as to nurture their skills at a very tender age. 

Soma Link aims to provide the delivery of interactive content and accessible courses through a learning platform. This will provide students with an effective digital platform to support online learning.

After engaging in several conversations with students, attending educational talks, and through research findings from the Ministry of Education and the  Kenya Bureau of National Statistics, we discovered that students in learning institutions from Kenya are not provided with the necessary information and education needed for the job market. 

Having the privilege to volunteer as a teacher assistant at a local primary school. I got the chance to interact with the young students and understand the challenges and problems they face each day in their learning journey. Not forgetting, interacting with the teachers in discussions and talks, they got to explain their challenges, struggles and problems they also face in their teaching journey and even suggested some great ideas on how technology can improve the teachers-learners experience.

We were able to interact and observe the day-to-day learning experience of Kenyan universities, especially from our respective universities. We engaged with our colleagues and discussed with them the challenges we face everyday and got to suggest a lot of great ideas which can implement on how to solve these problems

From these interactions, we got to evaluate different solutions and perspectives. We got to understand the users' stories and implemented research from those stories and analyzed the description of the solution, impact opportunities, impact measurement, theory of change, business model, and scaling up.

We consider our solution in the conceptual stage because we explored the feasibility to build a product and business model based on that idea. We researched, evaluated, and analyzed the description of the solution, impact opportunities, impact measurement, theory of change, business model, and scaling up of the solution.

Currently, we are researching the prototyping of the idea. We are evaluating different UI / UX designs for our product. So as to improve on the brand of our idea, we managed to design a logo for the idea.

After creating the design, we shall move to the product beta stage. We shall conduct our pilot program for students from our current universities, targeting 100 students each. We shall conduct our program with the website application and email model so as to integrate the offline and online modes of access for a duration of 6 months. This will help us get more feedback and understand whether our models are working efficiently or not.

So as to ensure both online and offline access to our resources, we shall integrate multiple models which are website application, mobile application, USSD, email, and a mentorship model. The USSD model is very efficient for accessing the resources offline and for students who lack access to smartphones. The resources will be hosted on our affordable, online content server, allowing students access to the platform at home and in schools without an internet connection. The model will make sure students receive articles, notes, practice tests, webinar events updates to the phone through SMS. The mobile application will be efficient for both offline and online mode, it will help students who have access to smartphones but with connectivity issues.

The email method will be very efficient to send updates, webinar events, weekly tips, articles resources also video tutorial links so as to access when online. The web application will enable students to have full access to both online and offline resources, this includes online tutors, webinars, and other resources. We shall integrate Blockchain technology so as to be able to store, verify and enhance the security of the user's documents, in a decentralized system. The user shall be able to store crucial documents such as their academic certificates hence they shall be verified before being added to the ledger this ensures trust and credibility. As the servers need more computational resources we shall migrate to the cloud, so as to utilize the power of cloud computing technology.

We are focused on a long-term goal hence in the next 5 years we aim to reach over 100 schools, both primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions and benefit over 500000 students . How shall we get the new users? We shall create awareness by offering free mentorship programs to new schools and host webinars, events, and free training of our product so as to help new users familiarize themselves with the product. As more and more resources shall be available on our platform, we shall integrate an E-commerce platform for publishers and authors to sell their well-researched and relevant articles and books to our users so as to supplement our resources.

1. We have reduced digital disruptions through the delivery of interactive content and accessible courses through digital learning platforms.
2. Reduced the number of unskilled students by 50%.
3. Increase the number of students who graduated successfully and landed their first jobs
4. Increased professionals partnering with us
5. Increased connections between students and the job market.
6. Increased the number of resources on our platform.
7. Application of acquired skills in innovations, entrepreneurship, and employment
8. Increased number of students becoming professional mentors and tutors and partnering with us.
9. Improvement of students' academic performance.
10. Increase in access to our quality and quantity resources.
11. Reduced unemployment in youths.
12. Equal access to educational resources.

We shall conduct our program with the website application and email model so as to integrate the offline and online modes of access for a duration of 6 months. This will help us get more feedback and understand whether our models are working efficiently or not.

During the mentorship sessions, we shall conduct our monitoring and evaluation assessment on the attendees through survey questions, focus groups, and case studies. This will help us to get both quantitative and qualitative data insights. Also through the practice tests given to the students will help us measure their understanding and skills. We shall be able to evaluate the number of students who graduated successfully and landed their first jobs. The number of students who applied their entrepreneurial skills to start and implement their business ideas. We aim to reduce the number of unskilled students by 50%, hence we want to reach over 500,000 students across all learning institutions in Kenya in the next 5 years.

The challenges which are facing us ranges from inadequate capital, unavailability of adequate time, internet connectivity issues.

We currently have insufficient capital to implement the prototyping stage. We are not able to acquire servers, the necessary resources such as mentors articles patenting the idea, and enrolling in a subscription model for the necessary software tools to implement our idea.

We have challenges with the legal and government policies, due to lack of funding we cannot acquire the required t and licences to enable the full scale of our operations, we cannot patent our idea to avoid intellectual theft.

We are facing technical challenges from poor internet connectivity to slow or ineffective technologies such as computers. The team is currently residing in different locations, we opt to interact remotely hence it is a challenge to due poor internet connection. Communication has been a challenge, ideas and tasks are not effectively put across or even understood. The technologies used by the team are not powerful and effective for handling heavy and computational capabilities. They often crash when handling software tools that require high computational power hence this slows down progress and discourages us.

Brian Muchiri Mugo is very conversant with graphic design which will help us design logos, posters that will aid in brand identity and creating awareness. He is experienced in digital marketing such as email marketing hence it will be of benefit in the marketing of our products and sending articles and updates through emails. He has skills in web design and development, hence designing and developing our products' website applications.

Vanessa Kamunya is a final-year computer science student who has skills in web and android development.  is very conversant in android development especially in the Kotlin language, thus designing and developing the products android application. . These skills are core in creating the system that will be in use. I am passionate about this since these are issues that have been affecting our country for some time without a semblance of a lasting solution or those who have the power to change this have been corrupted. We are after all the future of the world and I want to have a positive impact in the world.

Currently we don't have partnerships but we have been mentored by KamiLimu. Our idea was incubated by the KamiLimu Mentorship program where we got the chance to conceptualize our idea and analyze the description of the solution to the scaling of the idea.

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