AlgoLegends

IT sector in Mongolia

Technology has become a driving force of our society, and understanding computing is now an essential skill of any educated person in the 21st century. Despite this common knowledge, out of 31161 graduates in Mongolia, only 973 (3%) had majored in math and computer science. The shortage of workforce is also demonstrated as the IT sector has the 2nd least amount of labor force following water sewage management, and only 1.5% of government expenditure was directed at growing the sector. 

Influences in economy and beyond

The minute presence of the IT sector is a part of a bigger problem: Mongolia’s volatile and non-diverse economy, highly dependent on the mining sector, with a limited entrepreneurial opportunities in a more diverse range of sectors. This is also the cause of Mongolia’s stunted economic growth which plays a major role in poverty and in turn, unequal access to education.

Social immobility and exclusion from education

20'500 MNT /7.2 USD/ is spent on average every month for education for each family in poverty in Mongolia. And that population is 27.8% of Mongolians. For some perspective, the minimum price for education services per month is 100'000 MNT. Not only is the one third of the population excluded from such services, majority of them can't even receive public education as only 80% of children of school age are associated with educational institutions nationwide.

Non-traditional education

Although a surge of online schools (EdX, Coursera, Udemy, etc) surfaced as an alternative solution, they are inaccessible to the youth in Mongolia due to lack of awareness and language barrier.

References

Mongolian Economic Prospects by Asian Development Bank, 2020

National Statistics Office of Mongolia

https://www.adb.org/sites/defa...

http://www.1212.mn/

Our solution, AlgoLegends, provides an accessible and free alternative path for education in technology as a mobile platform where Mongolian youth can learn via active engagement, competition, and community in their native language.

Due to language barrier, Mongolian youth have close to no means to self study computation. This lack of opportunity is more present in those who can't afford education.

Our product mainly targets those who are interested in programming, problem solving, but have no access to educational services, and computers.

How our solution helps the individual:

1. Integration of block diagrams makes learning more beginner friendly while its limitation to basic logic improves critical and computational thinking, and further understanding of programming for the advanced users. 

2. While it is an educational application, it is gamified, using elements of a video game such as immersion, mental image, goal, evaluation, competition and award system that make it more appealing to induce motivation to learn.

3. Elimination of language barrier via access to algorithm and computing theories in Mongolian.
   

4. Competitive programming feature that helps one build networks and community, while also encouraging them to build resilience, tenacity and mental strength, expand their comfort zone, and develop a growth mindset.

5. Education provides more professional growth and flexibility which grants them social mobility.

Trying to set foot in the technology world as a programmer or coder requires the individual to have a vision which many lack due to time and financial conflicts. Our goal is to target underprivileged working-class students who do not have a solid English background to learn algorithms in general online. Due to the language barrier, countless youth of the Mongolian community loses interest in Information Technology. From spending an exceptional amount of years in logical high schools throughout Mongolia, we experienced that Information Technology isn’t valued as much as other subjects the academic system teaches us. Fortunately, our team had the chance to pursue a path in Information Technology. In contrast to our experience, we would like to give a helping hand to the younger generations to learn the beauty of Information Technology by creating an app in English and our native tongue. 

    Although there are numerous English-based platforms online, there are not many available in the Mongolian community because our youth don’t have the English proficiency to fully interact with the various platforms online. Thus, knowing the various struggles in the path to Information Technology and our experience of studying alongside bright minds with the language barrier in the field, we are one of the well-positioned teams to deliver this solution. Alongside creating a competitive platform, our app will be team-based. In other words, individuals who use our app will also learn how to work in teams, and in future projects when teamwork is required, they will be ready to take on the challenge.
    All things considered, our app will be mainly focusing on the youth who would like to learn Information Technology in their native tongue while having fun playing a competitive match, since there is not a single app designed for this issue. We believe that with the help of our design the youth of  Mongolian Information Technology will develop even more efficiently and powerfully.

Our team is currently looking for an algorithm problem database, which we believe we could get support from Open edX, non-profit led by MIT.
As we establish our presence in the market with the support of marketing and strategic advice from Solve, we also plan to scale our application to provide access to our clients without any language barrier.
We are also hoping to join the community to shed light on the education system in Mongolia, and inspire more Solvers to help our cause.

Differentiation as a solution for improving education in youth:

1. Government focuses funding on equipping teachers with better tools and improving school curriculum, leaving out the children unable to attend school. Use of technology can reach those children while making the learning experience tailored for each student’s learning speed and skills.

2. The interactive element and game-esque design of the application increases engagement and focuses more on building lasting skills as opposed to distributing knowledge, such as computational thinking, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving and abstraction.

Differentiation as a product in the mobile programming app market:

1. Implementation of block scheme programming

2. Competitive programming on mobile 

3. Mongolian language support

Based on our determination to take the youth of Information Technology in Mongolia to the next level, our app will consist of core technology. Namely, Mobile app development and Blockchain. 

First of all, Mobile app development is one of the key technology in our solution since we are building an app. After our launch, we will collect user feedback to take note of future updates. To start building our app AlgoLegends, we will use react-native to code and android studio to simulate. 
In addition, the implementation of Blockchain is vital to protect our user data and make our app more secure. Thus, creating NFTs of our characters will help us grow because we plan to hand out a certain amount to our supporters at the start.

Our enterprise adopts Low-Income Client as our market model. While keeping the distribution of education free, revenue from in-app purchases would help us maintain and scale the application.