Outdo Education

The pandemic has significantly accelerated the adoption of online education. However, for adult learners who often grapple with management, learning, and technology challenges, this surge in options has sometimes exacerbated the terrible online learning experience they face in navigating the online learning environment.

Adult learners are in a unique position. Many are balancing the demands of being parents or full-time workers while trying to further their education later in life. In the United States alone, over 40 million adults have some college education but have not earned a degree. Despite the growing necessity for post-secondary education or training for well-paying jobs, more than 60% of U.S. workers do not have a four-year college degree. Notably, almost 70 million workers are equipped with skills learned through non-traditional routes rather than a bachelor’s degree, with Black and Latinx individuals particularly likely to engage in alternative educational programs.

According to HolonIQ, financial investment in post-secondary education is rising globally, with expenditures reaching $2.2 trillion in 2019 and anticipated to increase to $2.4 trillion by 2025. The World Bank predicts significant growth in this sector, expecting an additional 380 million learners to seek higher education by 2030. This growth underscores the expanding role of adult learners in higher education, a trend that is expected to continue.

Several factors or challenges contribute to this problem and are directly related to our solution and addressed by it:

1. Irregular engagement and difficulties in time management are common, as many adult learners must juggle their educational pursuits with work and family responsibilities.

2. Technical challenges include difficulties with online communication, limited computing skills, and accessing reliable information.

3. Learning challenges stem from a lack of interest in the provided materials, difficulties understanding course content, and missing prerequisite knowledge.

   Last but not least:

4. The essential skill of "learning how to learn" often goes undeveloped, yet mastering this can profoundly enhance personal and professional growth and offer a competitive edge.

For adult learners, who often encounter low completion rates in higher education, there is a pressing need for an online learning experience tailored to their specific challenges and equipped with innovative tools to help them succeed.

As the demographic of adult learners in higher education expands, especially among historically under-resourced, underserved, and underrepresented groups, there is greater urgency for bold and ground-breaking online tools that make online education responsive to their unique needs and characteristics and push the frontier on how we use the gigantic library that we call the internet to learn and provide the skills that adults need to thrive in both their community and a complex world.

We make the browser smart about your online learning journey by extending its capabilities with our AI-agent extension to automatically manage, organize, and enhance what you learn online, wherever and whenever you go to learn online!

The mission is to empower adult learners to outdo education, outdo the limits, outdo the tests, and outdo their best!

All content platforms are becoming learning platforms (edutainment). For adult learners, the constant need to navigate multiple learning web apps, websites, and resources can be overwhelming, leading to disorganization, confusion, and disengagement from the learning process. Outdo Education addresses this pain point by seamlessly integrating and managing the entire online learning journey within the familiar and ubiquitous environment of the web browser.

What does it do?

Upon installation, Outdo Education infers the user's learning interests based on their browsing history. This enables Outdo Education to start up with the exact learning interests of the adult learner, providing value out of the box. The following are the three main killer/core features:

1- Unified Learning Hub:

A centralized dashboard within the web browser that aggregates and organizes the learner's educational resources, courses, learning materials, and progress across multiple platforms and websites provides a streamlined and cohesive learning experience.

2- AI-generated notebooks:

Automatically group your learning by domains and topics to generate personalized (editable) notes while accessing educational content from various sources you visited; it captures insights and concepts and generates questions to help you reflect and gain deeper comprehension.

3- Knowledge profile :

A dashboard that provides detailed learning analytics and insights into learners' progress, challenges, strengths, time spent learning, and areas for improvement. It provides essential data about online learning behavior to improve self-regulated learning and support learner agency. In the knowledge economy, where machines also learn, how you learn is as important as what / where you learn. We believe there is significant economic potential in measuring "learning" separately from "education." Adult learners can make their knowledge profile public to potential employers, showcasing their skills, effort, and learning habits. Employers gain insights into competencies, effort, and learning habit qualities. Adult learners control their data, balancing personalization and security to build a better value transfer.
Strong partnerships with learning engineering researchers are possible in this area because these insights can be invaluable for learning engineers. 
(--The Knowledge Profile is currently under development--)

These innovative features would not only address the challenges of disorganization and disengagement but also create immersive, personalized, and future-proof learning environments that empower adult learners to take control of their educational journey and unlock their full potential in the rapidly evolving job market.

What technology does it use?

Our technology stack comprises standard web app technologies (HTML, Javascript, and CSS) with a backend built with AWS, Python, and Postgres. We use the Plasmo framework, which is a battery-packed browser extension SDK. Currently, we are using GPT-4 and Cohere to power Outdo Education's smartness. 

Outdo Education's solution primarily serves adult learners from underserved and underrepresented communities in higher education in the USA first. This target population faces numerous challenges and barriers that hinder their ability to access quality educational opportunities and acquire the skills necessary for career advancement and economic mobility.

These learners often balance complex responsibilities that include full-time employment, caregiving, and socio-economic obligations, which are compounded by limited access to reliable technical or academic support.

Current Underservice:

These adult learners are underserved primarily because current educational services fail to accommodate their complex lives, align with on-demanded workforce skills, focus on their outcomes, ease the online learning framework, personalize the learning materials, and fail to share learning data. Additionally, many in our target community lack confidence in their learning abilities due to previous educational experiences or the daunting prospect of navigating multiple technology-centric educational resources.

How Outdo Education Addresses Their Needs:

By integrating Outdo Education into the browsers of these adult learners, we directly enhance their learning experience. We provide an intelligent tool that adapts to their lifestyle and learning habits, nudges them, and repackages educational content to fit their time.  

Turning the browser into an intelligent learning facilitator eliminates the cognitive load of managing and organizing their online learning journey. Outdo will customize the browser’s homepage and startup/new page, allowing adult learners to seamlessly resume or review study sessions. The browser's new page is the front door of your internet experience; setting it to something you navigate very often provides the opportunity to increase engagement. 

Outdo Education empowers our targeted community through learning data. The Knowledge Profile feature empowers learners by giving them control over their educational data, which can be shared with potential employers, showcasing not just their acquired skills but also their dedication to self-improvement.

Focusing on these core areas, Outdo Education significantly uplifts the online learning experience of underserved and underrepresented adult learners, directly impacting their ability to succeed in their learning journey and beyond. Our solution acknowledges their unique circumstances and proactively works to mitigate their specific challenges, ensuring they can acquire the skills they need to thrive in their community and a complex world.

Our team is deeply connected to the communities we aim to serve with Outdo Education. I lead our team, drawing from my own experiences of growing up in Haiti, where my educational journey was sculpted by the resourcefulness borne of necessity — with limited access to electricity, harnessing the scarce two hours of daily internet access to forge a path that led to my bachelor's degree, and subsequently, to graduate school in the USA. I carry with me not only my story but also the aspirations of my community, being the first in my family to graduate from college.

This experience isn't unique to me; two other Haitian team members share it.

Our journey with Outdo Education began with an edtech startup we built to empower Haiti's schools, students, and teachers to learn more efficiently. This hands-on experience taught us invaluable lessons about the unique challenges faced by underserved, underresourced learners, from limited access to technology and quality learning materials to the struggle to balance education with scarce socio-economic resources.

Today, as adult learners and knowledge workers actively engaged in online classes, we embody the continuous education journey. We do not just understand the theoretical pain points of online learning; we experience them, navigate them, and innovate upon them daily. We are infinite learners, driven by the relentless pursuit of knowledge and improving ways to acquire it.

Outdo Education's design reflects the voices and needs of our community. We've listened to and incorporated their insights into every part of our platform. It's designed not just by us but with us, for us —as members of the very communities we are determined to help.

Outdo Education is more than a tool; it's a testament to the transformative power of education. It is a commitment to the belief that with the right resources, every individual has the potential to outdo their circumstances and outdo the limitations placed upon them.

We are currently in closed beta, testing with a specific set of 154 adult learners.

We conducted extensive closed pilot programs and user testing with diverse groups of adult learners. These pilots allowed us to gather valuable feedback, iterate on our design, and validate the effectiveness of our learning experiences.

We are applying to Solve to learn! 
Solve provides a unique opportunity to be surrounded by people dedicated to solving critical challenges in their communities and working to scale the solutions. As we embark on our journey to transform the online learning experience for underserved, underrepresented adult learners, joining Solve is a unique chance to learn from doers, proximate leaders, and problem-solvers who share our belief in the power of innovation to drive positive change.

By recognizing the browser as the ultimate learning tool and transforming it into an intelligent, personalized facilitator, we are taking a bold and innovative approach that leverages a familiar, ubiquitous platform to address adult learners' unique needs and preferences in a groundbreaking way. Therefore, we want to have the opportunity to meet with diverse educational stakeholders who could help refine and strengthen our solution, challenge our assumptions, and outdo ourselves.

First, the most innovative aspect of our solution is the recognition that the ultimate learning tool should be embedded within the browser itself, transforming it into an intelligent facilitator that adapts to each adult learner's individual needs and preferences. Today, the browser, the only software used daily by billions of people, is still dumb! We want to make it a little bit smart!

1. Recognizing the browser as the ultimate learning tool is innovative: The web browser is already the gateway to a vast wealth of online learning resources and educational content. By embedding intelligent learning facilitation capabilities directly into the browser itself, Outdo Education is leveraging a universally accessible platform that adult learners are already using daily.
2. It transforms the browser into an intelligent user agent: Rather than being a passive portal, Outdo Education aims to transform it into an active, intelligent user agent that understands each individual learner's needs, preferences, goals, and learning styles. This personalized approach can significantly enhance engagement, efficiency, and outcomes.
3. Adapting to individual learner needs is crucial: Adult learners come from diverse backgrounds and have varying levels of prior knowledge, different learning preferences, and unique schedules/constraints. By making the browser itself adaptive and responsive to these individual needs, Outdo Education can provide a truly personalized, tailored learning experience.
4. The browser is ubiquitous and device-agnostic. This versatility is essential for reaching and supporting adult learners in various environments and situations. Outdo Education has the potential to reach hundreds of millions of adult learners worldwide. This scalability potential could allow Outdo Education to provide the skills adult learners (mainly the underserved) need to thrive in their community and a complex world.
5. It centralizes and streamlines the learning experience: Currently, adult learners often have to juggle multiple apps, websites, and resources for their online learning needs. By integrating learning facilitation into the browser, Outdo Education can serve as a centralized hub, streamlining the entire experience and reducing cognitive load.

Second, the concept of an employer utilizing a dashboard that showcases a prospective employee's learning behavior and commitment to learning is both innovative and potentially valuable in the hiring process. Here’s how this could work and the impact it could have:

Employer Perspective: Employers are increasingly looking for candidates who not only possess the necessary skills and knowledge for a job but also demonstrate a commitment to continuous learning and adaptability. A dashboard that provides insights into a candidate's learning habits could serve as a powerful indicator of these qualities.

John Allen Paulos said, "The Internet is the world's largest library. It's just that all the books are on the floor.” By harnessing the power of the internet and the vast corpus of online educational resources, using LLM-agent, Outdo Education has the potential to pick up the books and personalize the shelves.

Outdo Education's solution can potentially disrupt the adult learning market and landscape by departing from the walled garden and chatbot approach of current education providers and edtech platforms.

Our theory of change can be structured as follows:

Goal: To enhance the educational success and lifelong learning capacity of adult learners from underserved and underrepresented communities through an accessible, intelligent, browser-based learning management tool.

Assumptions:

• Adult learners have access to a web browser and basic internet connectivity.
• There is a demand for a tool that simplifies the management and organization of online learning resources.
• Automatically organized learning resources can significantly improve educational outcomes.
• Supporting self-regulated learning with tools that also share learning behavioral data benefits adult learners and potential employers.
• Personalizing the browser homepage/startup page to promote learning can improve engagement and completion rates of educational content for adult learners.

Activities:

• Develop and refine the Outdo Education AI-agent browser extension.
• Gather user data on learning patterns to personalize the centralized hub and resources.
• Providing AI-driven insights and recommendations to support adult learners’ educational goals.
• Conduct outreach to communities and institutions to facilitate adoption.
• Provide continuous support and updates based on user feedback and learning analytics.

Outputs:

• A centralized platform where learners can easily manage their online educational resources.
• A personalized interface that recommends relevant content and organizes learning materials.
• A Dashboard feature that allows learners to track, reflect on their educational progress, and share with potential employers.

Outcomes:

• Adult learners report increased efficiency in managing their learning resources and time.
• Users complete more online courses and programs due to the streamlined learning environment.
• There is an observable enhancement in the learners' self-efficacy and self-regulated learning strategies.

Impact:

• Underrepresented Adult learners develop lifelong learning skills, leading to continuous personal and professional development.
• Increased employability of Underrepresented Adult learners and advancement in the job market due to higher education levels and demonstrable skills and learning habits.
• Positive shifts in self-efficacy and empowerment among adult learners lead to broader societal benefits, such as higher rates of civic engagement and socioeconomic development.
• The upliftment of educational standards within underserved communities has a broader societal impact.

Impact Goals:

1. Increase in Adult Learner Success: We aim to significantly raise the course completion rates for adult learners from underserved and underrepresented communities by 25% within the first two years of implementing Outdo Education.

2. Enhancement of Self-Directed Learning: Our goal is to see a 60% improvement in self-regulated learning behaviors, as evidenced by increased usage of personalized learning hubs and resource management tools.

3. Improvement in Technical Literacy: We intend to elevate the technical proficiency of our users, aiming for a 70% increase in their ability to navigate and utilize online learning resources independently.

4. Empowerment and Economic Advancement: Ultimately, we aim to empower learners to achieve tangible improvements in their socioeconomic status, measured by a 20% increase in job placements or promotions after engaging with our platform.

Measuring Progress:

To track our progress towards these impact goals, we have established specific indicators that are regularly collected and analyzed:

1. Course Completion Rates: We monitor the percentage of courses completed before and after the introduction of Outdo Education. This data is collected through integration with learning platforms and direct feedback from educational institutions.

2. Engagement Metrics: Using in-built analytics, we measure the frequency and duration of learners’ interactions with the Outdo Education tools, with other online education resources and websites, including time spent on the platform and usage patterns.

3. User Proficiency Assessments: Periodic surveys and assessments are conducted to evaluate improvements in users’ technical skills and comfort levels with digital learning environments.

4. Employment Outcomes: We are seeking to collaborate with career services and potential employers to leverage the learning behavioral data to identify and hire adult learners dedicated to personal growth and professional development. (The sharing of the learning behavioral data is an opt-in feature)

Our solution, Outdo Education, is built with straightforward yet tried-and-true technology: HTML for the structure of our pages, JavaScript for interaction, and CSS for style. These are the same technologies that run much of the internet, making our platform reliable and easy to use.

For the behind-the-scenes work, we rely on Amazon's cloud services, AWS, which lets our platform grow and support more users without skipping a beat. We program with Python—a language known for getting things done efficiently—and use Postgres to keep all our data in order.

To get Outdo Education right into your browser as an extension, we use a toolkit called Plasmo. It's packed with features that help us build a strong and helpful tool without unnecessary complexity.

The real smarts of our platform come from using the latest AI technology, like GPT-4 and Cohere. These AIs help Outdo Education understand and interact with you almost like a human would, suggesting learning material that feels just right for your needs.

By blending these reliable web technologies with the newest AI, Outdo Education is like a smart study buddy—it's there to help make learning online simpler and more effective, for everyone, everywhere.

The Outdo Education team consists of four software engineers (working part-time) with diverse technical skills and experience in teaching and developing technology for learners in Haiti.

• Two members have machine learning and data engineering expertise, 
•  One has product management experience (current).
• The other two are skilled in developing Back-end, Front-end, Cloud Computing, and Browser Extensions.
• Two members are Fulbrighters.
  
  Currently, we have one-contractor (free-lancer) who is leading the branding and illustration work

We incorporated the company in November 2023 in USA. It's been seven months, during which we ideated and conducted desk and user research. Now, we are conducting our closed pilot and refining the product using the feedback of our closed beta testers.  

Currently, our team’s shared background as Black males who immigrated from Haiti to the USA has instilled a profound understanding of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within any organization. We recognize that our current composition is not as diverse as it could be, and we are actively working to broaden the spectrum of voices and experiences within our group.

The current contractor we hired is a woman, a Hispanic young adult.

We will continue to reach out to diverse hiring pools and networks, including professional organizations focused on different communities in tech, design, operations, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

As the founding team, we acknowledge that diversity is not just about our differences but about embracing these differences to create a richer, more creative, and empathetic workplace. Equity is about providing the support and opportunities needed for everyone to succeed. Inclusion is ensuring every team member feels seen, heard, and valued. Our team is on a continual journey to embody these principles fully and create solutions that reflect our diverse world as we grow as a company!!

We provide value to our targeted populations by increasing their productivity on their online learning journey!
The core of our value lies in our browser extension, which has a freemium model.
We are exploring implementing digital product (downloadable like notebooks, mindmaps, etc.) sales in the future.

Our business model at Outdo Education centers around enhancing productivity for the targeted community through our AI-powered browser extension, which we offer under a freemium model.

Value to Users: The core of our service is a free browser extension that helps users manage and optimize their online learning activities. This tool provides essential functions like organizing educational resources, managing tasks, and basic tracking of learning patterns, all aimed at making the online education experience as efficient as possible.

Premium Upgrade: We offer a premium version of the extension for users looking for deeper functionality. This paid upgrade includes advanced features such as AI-driven insights for personalized learning, comprehensive analytics, and enhanced integration with various online educational platforms. These features are designed to further boost users’ productivity and personalize their learning journey.

Future Revenue stream: In addition to our current offerings, we are exploring the introduction of digital products such as downloadable notebooks and mind maps, and personalized textbooks. These resources will be designed to complement the browser extension and support learners with tangible for organizing and enhancing their study and learning strategies.

Revenue Generation: Our primary revenue comes from subscriptions to the premium version of our browser extension. The introduction of digital products will open another revenue stream, allowing us to provide tangible value to our users while supporting the financial sustainability of our platform.

Future target Customers: Potential employers, and educational institutions that may benefit from our learning behavioral data at an organizational level. 

By providing a solution that addresses the unique challenges of online learning for adult learners, mainly the underserved communities, we cater to a growing market of learners who need practical, impactful support in their educational endeavors.

This model not only ensures the accessibility of intelligent and powerful learning tools for all learners but also allows us to sustain and grow our offerings by providing more sophisticated services and products.