Doyobi

Doyobi helps kids learn the skills to make their way in the world.

We come up with highly interactive, challenge-based learning experiences in the metaverse that nurture curiosity, creativity and a growth mindset. The virtual, collaborative and task-oriented nature of the Doyobi metaverse allows children to learn without them even realizing it, taking classroom engagement to the next level. Our ultimate goal is to equip every child with transferable foundational skills to thrive in a world where change happens exponentially.

Our value proposition:

• Fun and engaging storylines to encourage active participation in our young learners
• Live online classes facilitated by an instructor to bring out the best in every child
• Curriculum is designed such that the child develops decision making skills and the ability to connect the dots across tangential problems
• Elements of hardship for the kids to overcome, allowing them to face real life-like challenges in the safe learning environment of the metaverse
• Exposure to dealing with complexity and cultivating the ability to consider perspectives holistically
• Giving kids the space to reflect and be introspective, where they learn about themselves and uncover personal strengths and weaknesses

We believe in iterative learning and this applies to how we've approached our solution as well.

As our solution is experiential in nature, we've designed a prototype of the experience by putting together a curriculum centered on the principles of allowing children to tinker, a metaverse platform, and trained facilitators to bring out the learning objectives of the sessions.

We then sought input from the children we're looking to impact, by rolling out free sessions to understand how they perceive the product and also to determine if we can identify observable growth in the skills that we aim to equip the kids with.

After having more than 140 kids experience our solution and several rounds of iteration, we believe that we're on to something of value.

Here are some snippets from kids:

• "Today was fun exploring different areas and learning about cholera, discussing how to stop it and keep our citizens safe."
• "I’ve never done these challenges before and it was so much fun talking together."
• "I like doing mysteries, games and working with other people and this is all of it combined."

And this is what parents had to say:

• "My daughter was feeling like she’s really taking ownership of the decisions she’s making along the way. She finds it interesting and is engaged throughout."
• "Sessions are very engaging and would be great for any kid that wants to learn about collaborating with others remotely."

Doyobi's theory of change is that solving the complex global problems that our world is facing starts with equipping kids with transferable foundational skills. These are skills like critical thinking and creativity, so kids learn to become collaborative problem-solvers.

By running fun and engaging activities in the metaverse that are designed to enhance critical thinking and decision making while also exposing them to real-world issues guided by the SDG goals, we nurture a generation of collaborative problem-solvers who go on to become civic-minded inventors, entrepreneurs and changemakers. Collectively, they are able to tackle complex global problems and start to develop an understanding of the world's most pressing concerns.

In our session design, as part of formative assessment, we have created a reflection ritual wherein all students end the class in the "video room", where they answer preset questions that seek evidence of learning. The video room is a playful documentation step for all kids where they can describe what they have learnt and experienced. There is also an opportunity for kids to participate in informing us on how to bridge the learning gap if the student has not achieved the learning objectives. A student can type text or record an audio or video answer. In our experience, we have found that offering expression options allows the students to focus on the reflection task over spelling and speed.

The video room activity is our first step in building our evidence system as it prompts student reflection by asking questions that require reasons and evidence. Through this activity, students are able to become aware and articulate their observations and learnings, thereby building their capability of monitoring and regulating their learning.

The reflection also allows us to learn more about how engaged the class is with our solution and how the learning experience can be improved and extended.

Based on Nesta's Standards of Evidence, we see ourselves at the Level 2 stage where we're able to gather qualitative data from parents and kids that show a certain level of change, but we're as of yet unable to determine direct causality. 

We believe that running our sessions in the metaverse presents an opportunity to be more data-driven in our approach, as we could potentially capture and codify behaviors exhibited by the kids in our sessions and create a language around measurable growth of soft skills.

Our main indicators are student NPS per session, student feedback and parent feedback.

We are tracking and measuring the following:

• Students reflection videos at the end of each session to gauge engagement and student learning

  • We have currently asked about:

    • What they have done in the session

    • How they felt about the session

    • The artefacts they created during the session

    • Their role as a group members in the session

• Screen recordings of the online sessions

• Facilitators’ observations of students based on our rubric

• End of course student and parent survey, which gives us the following data 

  • NPS scores 

  • PMF scores 

  • Parent testimonial 

  • Child testimonial 

Skill-building through collaborative problem-solving in the metaverse.

We need help answering how learning happens in the metaverse:

• In what form and shape does it look like?

• How do we measure whether kids are learning in the metaverse?

• What creative ways can we use to show learning?

• In what ways can we enhance learning in the metaverse?

Deliverables that will be useful to us include:

• A framework to assess how students are learning (or indicators of learning); or

• A collection of other forms of learning that is most suitable for the metaverse

A successful outcome would be showing parents evidence that learning happens in the metaverse, perhaps just not in the form that parents or teachers are used to seeing. 

For over a hundred years, the school transcript detailing a student’s academic performance has been the main tool college administrators and employers use to screen candidates and decide who is deserving of a place and who isn’t. The school transcript is a blunt tool that does not do the job well. College administrators and employers need to know more than a young person’s academic performance in order to make informed decisions about admissions and hiring. 

What would a skill-focused transcript look like? How do we measure a young person’s ability to think critically, work collaboratively and communicate effectively? How can Doyobi provide evidence that a young adult is indeed making progress in the development of these activities? How can Doyobi measure the magnitude and rate of progress?

These are the questions we hope LEAP Fellows can help us answer. The moonshot goal of this project is to develop a transcript every child grows up with. A transcript that measures and showcases a young person’s ability across a range of different transferable skills. A transcript that becomes an essential part of any college admission and hiring process. If we are able to design this transcript and give people a high degree of confidence that learning in the Doyobi metaverse translates into improved transcripts, this will set us up to become the de facto standard for the screening of a young person’s ability.