CivWiz

Conventional civic learning mediums at the university level come with inherent barriers to broad student participation. Not only are they offered increasingly rarely, but they are also often forced to compete against existing academic and social commitments that make it difficult for students to meaningfully engage with them. Moreover, the rising cost of education, scarcity of time and opportunity, and continued lack of equitable inclusion initiatives in higher education constitute just a few of the barriers that individuals outside of the university system face when trying to engage in traditional civic learning mediums. 

The consequences of inadequate civics education opportunities. The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found, in a 2016 study, that nearly a third of Americans are unable to name any of the United States’ three branches of government. Only 26% of Americans can name all three. Just five years earlier, in 2011, this figure was 38%. In 2015, it was 31%. Such low civic understanding has proven detrimental to the very functioning of political society in the United States and elsewhere in the world. The University of Gothenburg’s V-DEM institute identified polarization and misinformation—both products of the low levels of civic competencies described above—as two of the largest contributors to democratic backsliding in the 21st century. American adults are, by and large, civically illiterate, and could face dire consequences as a result.

Worrying indicators of democratic backsliding—the erosion of civil rights, consolidation of power on local election boards, rising anti-democratic sentiment, and the resurgence of violent ethnonationalist movements—are already becoming apparent. Scalable, accessible, and fact-based civics education is necessary to remedy the misinformation and polarization fueling this trajectory. This is where CivWiz comes in. 

CivWiz is a free, dynamic mobile gaming app, available on iOS and Android, that evaluates and cultivates civic and cultural competence across academic disciplines. By making civics learning accessible, we can begin to knock down the barriers one faces when engaging with civics education and reverse the trends of declining civic competency nationwide. CivWiz has three primary components: 

1. Multimodal Trivia: Each CivWiz module employs a variety of question styles (multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and word scramble) covering a wide variety of civics-related topics including Constitutional literacy, sustainability, digital privacy, and educational inequity. 

2. Gamified Progression and Community Competition: CivWiz users can earn in-game points and compete with their friends and the CivWiz community to climb the leaderboards by completing quizzes and other learning games. 

3. Social Innovation Resources: CivWiz will include a resource hub that supplies users with information regarding voter registration, contacting elected officials, and volunteer opportunities to apply civic competency in their own lives.

The educators and civic activists behind CivWiz believe that everyone can and should be an active participant in their society. Thus, the app was designed with a focus on accessibility and usability such that anyone, regardless of their background, can benefit from it. 94% of people aged 18-29 have smartphones and that the average university student spends more than 50% of their waking hours on their phone; CivWiz leverages this new medium to enhance accessibility and engagement, fostering an environment in which civic learning is comprehensive and pervasive.

Students at the University of Pittsburgh and other institutions are currently underserved by the diminished position of civics learning in traditional academic settings. Civics classes are being taught less often, civics-related departments have shrinking access to resources, and university curricula are placing less and less emphasis on the importance of civics learning. 

These problems are also occurring at the level of primary and secondary education across the country. Everyone is being underserved by the systems of civic learning with which they engage. 

More than anything, CivWiz will address the needs of these target populations by filling in the gaps left by traditional modes of civics education. This means picking up where these traditional modes leave off and supplementing them such that anyone can have access to a holistic, comprehensive, and complete civics education. 

As a dynamic learning platform, CivWiz has the capability to partner with local civics-oriented organizations to more directly address the communities it serves.

The CivWiz development team is uniquely well-equipped to design and deliver the solution outlined above to the target population precisely because we are the target population: students. That the CivWiz Student R&D Assistants constitute the backbone of the project has many advantages. Here are just a few: 

1. Connectedness to other students

2. Connectedness to student organizations

3. Connectedness to well-qualified civic activists, educators, and researchers

Input from these three communities (students, student organizations, and civic activists/educators/researchers) has and will continue to guide CivWiz’s development and implementation every step of the way. So far, the primary means by which we have been engaging with our target population and working to better understand their needs is by conducting playtests and collecting feedback. A playtest we conducted last year yielded overwhelmingly positive feedback, but we did learn a few things that we needed to improve on from it. For example, some users reported back that they did not have enough time to answer certain questions while progressing through modules. Other users reported that the beta version of the app was too clunky to play on a mobile device. We have since rebuilt the application from the ground up and implemented improvements corresponding to these concerns. 

Ron Idoko, the founder of CivWiz and Team Lead, is well-connected to the communities that CivWiz aims to serve. As the associate director of Pitt’s Center on Race and Social Problems, founder/director of the Racial Equity Consciousness Institute, and director of the Office of Social Innovation, much of Ron’s time is focused on directly supporting/guiding teachers and learners in analyzing the complexity and pervasiveness of racism and other contemporary social issues. Ron’s direct, hands-on, praxis-centric approach to combating issues such as racism makes him the perfect person to lead CivWiz’s development. 

Connor Diaz, the Outreach Coordinator at CivWiz , is well-connected to the University of Pittsburgh’s student community. Beyond his work at CivWiz, he is involved in the University’s Frederick Honors College and the various scholar communities therein, a student researcher in the University’s Law, Criminal Justice, and Society department, an Outreach and Engagement assistant for the University’s Social Innovation Center and the University’s Center on Race and Social Problems, and conducting research alongside other students participating as a Summer Undergraduate Research Assistant (SURA) recipient. He is a student, a member of student organizations, and a researcher in the field of civics. 

Moving forward, the CivWiz team aims to cultivate meaningful partnerships with student-led organizations and activist groups at the University of Pittsburgh. We think that inviting these groups to contribute content (quiz questions, resources, video lectures, etc.,) to the CivWiz app will be incredibly valuable. Some organizations that we’ve identified so far as potential partners include the Pitt Policy & Political Review, The Pitt Political Science Student Association, and Pitt’s Women in Politics club. 

Phase 1 of CivWiz's development concluded in February of 2024 with our inaugural public-facing playtest event. Currently, the app's multimodal trivia games, leaderboards, and head-to-head multiplayer features are all fully functional. 

More than 40 members of the University of Pittsburgh community attended the playtest and provided us with a plethora of feedback that will be used to guide the app's development moving forward. 

Here are a few barriers that support from MIT Solve could help us overcome: 

Financial barriers:

1. Limited size of CivWiz Student R&D Assistants Team: The R&D Assistants have been, and continue to be, central to the program’s success. Monetary support from MIT would allow us to expand the team, increasing the quantity and quality of content delivered through the app.

2. Development Costs: Monetary support would also allow us to fund the continued development of new features like group play for real-time competition among multiple users and engagement data analysis.

Technical barriers: 

1. Scaling/integration: Eventually, CivWiz will be available to anyone who wants to download it, regardless of their affiliation with a university system. As such, the CivWiz team will need help ensuring that the application and its relevant databases/software systems scale effectively. CivWiz’s mission entails wide scale adoption. The MIT community can provide us with the technical expertise and resources we need to design, implement, and maintain scalable solutions. 

2. User Experience (UX) design and accessibility: Central to CivWiz’s mission is the app’s accessibility. As such, the application must be intuitive, user-friendly, and easy to pick up for anyone—regardless of their familiarity with technology or civics. Support from the MIT community would help the CivWiz team improve our UX design by offering input from design experts and providing us with a wide range of users on which we could conduct usability testing and from which we could collect feedback.

3. Data analysis/reporting: Also central to CivWiz’s mission is measuring its own impact on the civic literacy and engagement of its users. The MIT community can provide us with the technical know-how we need to effectively collect and parse the data necessary to gauge CivWiz’s effectiveness. This would not only help us secure more monetary support down the line but will also help us make sound, data-driven design decisions. 

4. Security: CivWiz aims to leverage user engagement data to inform future education initiatives and its own development. Information security experts from the MIT community will be very valuable in ensuring that such data is effectively and ethically protected against cybersecurity threats.

Market barriers: 

1. User Adoption/Market Awareness: CivWiz, like any other new platform, may face challenges when it comes to building awareness around or driving engagement with the app. Monetary support from MIT  will expand our capacity to promote the app through advertisements, organize roll-out events and conferences, launch social media campaigns, etc. Non-monetary support in the form of marketing expertise from the MIT  community will help us to organize and execute these campaigns effectively. 

2. Partnership Development: The MIT community will provide CivWiz with a rich bank of organizations, student-led or otherwise, that can provide valuable content for the app. These organizations might also aid CivWiz’s mission by making us aware of volunteer and civic engagement opportunities that can be added to the app’s resource page.

We firmly believe that CivWiz is innovative enough to revolutionize civic learning and foster a culture of active civic engagement among students across the United States. Here are a few things that differentiate CivWiz from traditional modes of civics education: 

1. Cost: The CivWiz app is free, which is central to its ability to achieve the broad impact to which it aspires. There are no monetary barriers that stand between potential users and the CivWiz platform. This alone sets it above traditional civics education mediums which have a hefty costs associated with them such as tuition for a university education, and the time investment required by already overworked high school history and government teachers to adequately prepare students for real-world civics. 

2. Accessibility: CivWiz aims to build civic competency from the ground up. Thus, users do not need any prior knowledge of or familiarity with civics to benefit from the app. Moreover, given that smartphones are now ubiquitous, the vast majority of  CivWiz’s target audience—young people—already have the means to download and play CivWiz any time. College students spend between 40% and 50% of their waking hours on their smartphone—what better vehicle for education is there? 

3. Emphasis on data-driven decisions: Unlike traditional approaches to civics education, CivWiz is dynamic and ready to adapt to feedback from its users. The ultimate goal of CivWiz is to improve rates of civic engagement and competency among young people. Collecting anonymized data on how well we are achieving this goal has and will continue to allow us to make informed design decisions for CivWiz to make it as good and effective as it can possibly be. 

4. Gamified Progression: A large part of CivWiz’s appeal is that it uses gamified progression to make civics learning fun and engaging. By making learning seem like a game, CivWiz has an advantage over traditional methods of civics education which tend to be perceived as more “boring.” 

5. Emphasis on student involvement: CivWiz is an app made by students for students. This means that the CivWiz development team is uniquely well-equipped to understand and respond to the needs and wishes of the app’s target audience. 

6. Expert Backing: Behind the student-led CivWiz development team is a strong network of educational experts and civic activists who work hard to ensure that the app’s content is effective, appropriate, and accurate. 

7. Multi-faceted nature: CivWiz’s approach to improving rates of civics engagement doesn’t end with education. CivWiz’s approach is unique in that it also equips its users with real-world resources that empower them to affect real change in their communities. Examples of these resources include voter registration information, information about contacting elected officials, and information regarding volunteer opportunities. 

8. Emphasis on partnerships: Finally, CivWiz’s approach to civics education is innovative because it emphasizes community involvement in the curriculum creation process.

Social healing begins with education. 

A number of studies have identified misinformation and polarization as two of the largest threats to democracy in the 21st century. We believe that the first step toward addressing both of these social ills is providing all Americans, regardless of their affiliation with educational institutions, the means by which to establish a baseline level of civic knowledge. We believe that through this establishment and the learned vocabulary that comes along with it, Americans might begin to bridge the gaps of polarization and undo the damages of misinformation. 

Given that 90% of American adults have smartphones and further that most young American adults spend between 40% and 50% of their waking hours on their phones, we think that a mobile app is the ideal vector for delivering this kind of remedy. 

Further, given that studies have demonstrated the efficacy of gamified learning and the benefits of community-based learning, both of these principles are central to CivWiz's design and mission. 

The current landscape of traditional civic learning mediums is not doing enough to turn the tides of democratic backsliding. CivWiz will. 

Our primary impact goals are: 

1. To empower people to have informed discussions about a wide range of civics-related issues: This goal involves providing people with the civic vocabulary they need to tackle complex issues ranging from racism to Constitutional law and everything in between. 

2. To empower people to affect real change and become more engaged in their communities: This goal involves providing people with the resources they need to become involved in civic and community life. Specifically, the CivWiz app will achieve this goal through its resource hub which will be home to voter registration information, information about contacting one’s elected officials, information regarding volunteer opportunities, etc.

3. To enrich the lives of our own Student R&D Assistants: This goal involves providing our Student R&D Assistants with real-world research and content creation experience that is transferable to whatever field they wish to pursue a career in. The continuance and expansion of the CivWiz Student R&D Assistants program are central to the pursuit of this impact goal. 

4. To develop quality relationships with our partner organizations:  This goal involves integrating with communities such as that which this program provides. We also aim to reach out to student-led organizations and activist groups here at the University of Pittsburgh and eventually at other universities as we open up the app to more users.

We plan to measure our progress toward our impact goals through engagement data analysis and end-user surveying. Some specific indicators essential to measuring our progress toward these goals include the quality of content created by the CivWiz Student R&D Assistants, trends in the adoption of and engagement with the application, rates of civic competence and engagement among our users, and the number/quality of partnerships formed with other organizations that share our goals and values. 

Moreover, we will continue to conduct public-facing playtests. Our most recent playtest, held in February 2024, was incredibly successful and yielded a bounty of detailed feedback that will be used to guide the project forward. As our ultimate goal is accessibility and broad adoption, playtests like these that incorporate participation from individuals from all over the Pitt community are absolutely essential.

The CivWiz app is built on JavaScript (JS). Our Development team uses React JS to develop the framework of the app simultaneously on Android and iOS operating system, Node JS for backend development, and REST API and other JS tools for general front-end development. 

One huge advantage that CivWiz has over traditional civic learning mediums is its robust database of stored user-data. With this database, we can (and do) analyze how different groups of people conceptualize and act on civics-related issues. The data is collected through user interaction with the app, managed on the administrator panel, and stored on a cloud-based database. Once stored, the technical team uses analytics tools like Python and R to parse the data. 

CivWiz is also currently exploring the possibility of integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) programs like ChatGPT 4.0 and Midjourney with the app. Our team is already using Midjourney to develop visual stimuli for the app and we hope that language models like ChatGPT 4.0 might eventually have a home in the project as well. One potential application of language models like ChatGPT 4.0 that we are exploring is implementing a communication portal within the app that users can employ to ask ChatGPT 4.0 clarifying questions about questions they got wrong or did not understand. We believe firmly that artificial intelligence can and should be leveraged for the benefit of all learners.

Full-Time Staff (1): Ron Idoko 

Part-Time Staff (3): Connor Diaz, Kumar Chinmay, Advait Cherian

Part-Time R&D Assistants (5): Owen May, Andrew Klepeis, Cole Belling, Vivian Greenwood, Caroline Guo 

CivWiz began in late 2021 but has since undergone personnel and leadership changes. The current team has been working on the project since February 2023. 

Before joining Pitt’s School of Social Work, Ron Idoko–CivWiz’s founder and Team Lead—worked in the University’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (OEDI), where he dedicated his time to crafting and executing programming to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion as institutional components of social and academic engagement at the university. Connor Diaz, CivWiz’s Outreach Coordinator, has also worked in the OEDI. As such, diversity, equity, and inclusion, are principles that guide CivWiz’s mission at every level. 

Moreover, the content behind CivWiz is formed around the Social Equity Consciousness framework developed by the University’s Center on Race and Social Problems. Grounded in research, education, and praxis, this framework fosters the personal and collective development of social equity consciousness, which is defined as “the dispositions, understanding, awareness, and skills that empower us to contemplate and cultivate social equity.” The ultimate goal of this framework is to catalyze community-wide opportunities for the development of programs and resources that encourage embracing our social differences and equitable social change in our communities. 

The questions and question categories found in the CivWiz app were and will continue to be created with this framework in mind. For example, the “educational inequality” category and its corresponding questions were created with the Framework’s “Gauging Social Inequities” node in mind. The Framework can be viewed in full here: https://www.diversity.pitt.edu...

CivWiz’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion does not end here, however. The selection process for the CivWiz Student R&D Assistants prioritizes diversity in all its forms: identity, academic field, research interests, etc.

 CivWiz’s status as a free application that will eventually be open to anyone who wishes to download it is further demonstrative of the project’s commitment to equity; by making the app free we are removing the financial systemic barriers that typically stand between people and civics education. Finally, the diversity of the questions found in the CivWiz application concern themselves with educating the app’s users about various cultures–ethnic, religious, or otherwise–demonstrates CivWiz’s foundational commitment to inclusion. 

 We have developed a comprehensive plan to monetize CivWiz through B2B, B2G, and B2C models.  Each of these models would be well served by MIT Solve’s business and entrepreneurial connections:

1. B2B: CivWiz will serve as an engaging digital learning tool that educational institutions (i.e., schools and universities) can use to enrich their curriculum. Researchers and curriculum developers at educational institutions could leverage CivWiz’s engagement data insights to analyze, and address trends in civic education effectiveness and student engagement outside of CivWiz. CivWiz will ensure privacy and consent are paramount in this process and aims to use the data responsibly to improve educational content and foster civic participation. Academic researchers and EdTech companies are other parties that might also be parties interested in purchasing this data. Another potential B2B revenue stream is non-intrusive in-app advertisements sold to civics-oriented businesses and organizations. 

2. B2G: Engagement data could also be sold to government agencies, such as the Department of Education, who may be interested in the statistical breakdown of how American students engage with civics education in order to better develop new reports and curriculum guidance. CivWiz could also serve as a platform on which governmental bodies run public engagement and awareness campaigns on important civic issues, policies, and upcoming elections. 

B2C: While the CivWiz app will always be free to download and play, we noted during our initial playtest launch event at the University of Pittsburgh that many students who tried the game showed interest in customizing their profile picture and the general cosmetic look of their game.  To that end, we are developing low-cost and low-stake cosmetic items for the game that would have no effect on gameplay but would offer the user an opportunity to express themselves while playing with friends or strangers in our head-to-head competitive mode. This “freemium” model would ensure that CivWiz remains accessible while also being commercially viable. Other potential examples of in-app purchases that CivWiz will offer in the future include “do-over” tokens that will allow users to re-do incorrectly answered quiz questions, items that increase the amount of leaderboard points earned per successful quiz completed for a short amount of time, or “streak-freezes.”

The CivWiz team is actively engaged in seeking out and applying for relevant funding opportunities. Support from these opportunities and others provide vital funding to CivWiz throughout the course of its development, which we anticipate to be the most cost-intensive phase of its existence. 

Once adopted by users and institutional partners, CivWiz will become financially self-sustaining. CivWiz will operate on a “freemium” model. We anticipate ad revenue, revenue collected from data analytics partners, and in-app purchases to be CivWiz’s three primary revenue streams once the app has been launched. These revenue models allow us to ensure that CivWiz will always be free to access in its entirety.