Koloso

Our vision is of a world where children across sub-Saharan Africa achieve their full learning potential thanks to high quality, tech-enabled education. 

Our mission is to deploy an affordable and commercially viable product that empowers students, teachers and parents with the digital, personalised assessment of learning (AOL) and assessment for learning (AFL) data analytics that they need to focus valuable time, effort and resources to best effect.

We serve our target population of primary and secondary school students - and their teachers and parents - across sub-Saharan Africa by providing a mobile app that uses a simple two minute and ten question quiz to generate real time numeracy performance and progress data. Students practice newly acquired knowledge and skills and are motivated to learn and improve, expending minimal time and effort.

We have built Koloso because we have each experienced the shortcomings of the Zambian education system in different ways, and we see demographic projections that mean that the pressure is only going to increase. At the same time, we see an enormous innovation potential as digital infrastructure across sub-Saharan Africa grows, and both data and devices become more affordable. 

In the end, we are driven by a determination to take advantage of the emerging opportunity to use tech to help to change the way that education is delivered in Zambia and the region. 

Not only does Koloso help the individual student, it helps schools to monitor performance and parents to engage with their children's education, and ultimately it can provide accurate aggregated assessment data to researchers and policy makers to improve decision making and resource allocation.

James - the proposed Team Lead - is one of the three co-founders of Koloso. 

Each of the co-founders has a designated area of responsibility, Petra works on market research and product positioning/sales, Sowi takes care of all operations and compliance issues, and James deals with product design and development, and with fundraising. 

This means that over the last 18 months, James has taken the lead on issues to do with:

1. Developing the original product concept, and working with the development team to create the prototype
2. Managing user testing and translating feedback into product development plans
3. Preparing and helping to deliver our pitch to angel investors and working with Sowi to close our first round of pre-seed investment (US$30,000) and grant funding from Catalytic Africa (US$66,000)
4. Starting to build our theory of change and researching evidence to support the impact logic (currently working with Edtech Hub to build our evidence base)
5. Absorbing lessons from MVP user testing to plan for future product development

Given his role in the founding team, James is best positioned to act as Team Lead on the proposed project, but the other co-founders will both also play an active role in hosting.

The Koloso founding team is full committed to using evidence in product development, and we will continue down this path whether or not we are fortunate enough to be selected for this programme. 

Because we are already working on this approach (and seeing the benefits from doing so) the proposed LEAP Project is not an "addition" to our work plan, rather it will be a value adding support to our existing work plan - additional, expert resources that we hope will dramatically increase the quality of our work in this area. It will allow us to take this work stream forward with more confidence and (we believe) more efficiently and more effectively than would otherwise be the case.

As a founding team, we have discussed the time implications if we were to be selected for this programme. We understand that participating will create demands on our time, we are full aligned that strengthening evidence is a business development priority for Koloso, we are all fully supportive of participation.

We have already demonstrated our sustained commitment to working on evidence for product development (and our ability to set aside time among competing demands) through our participation in the Edtech Hub course.

A gamified digital personalised assessment edtech mobile app that provides real-time individual and aggregated progress data and learning gap analysis

Evidence shows that personalised teaching has a positive effect on learning outcomes, and that personalised approaches that adapt or adjust to the learner have been shown to lead to significantly greater impact. However, "traditional" (non-digital) personalised assessment of learning (AOL) and assessment for learning (AFL) is time-consuming and the results it generates are:

• Complex to interpret and convert to action;
• Soon out of date; and 
• Open to human error or deliberate manipulation.

All of which means that many students, especially  those in low income environments, miss out on the benefits of personalised teaching.

This problem is felt by different groups in different ways at the micro (individual student), meso (class and school) and macro (national policy) levels:

• Micro (individual student): Many students do not fulfil their learning potential because they are not sufficiently motivated to learn, and do not have access to reliable, up to date performance and progress topic-by-topic data to guide and focus their study time and effort. Likewise, parents do not have the real time, independent data on their child(ren)'s performance and progress that they need to provide the most effective support to learning.
• Meso (class and school): Teachers do not have the time, and many do not have the experience, to successfully conduct, interpret and apply the results from formative assessments and consequently, teachers cannot provide adapted/adjusted teaching and school leaders do not have the data they need to effectively monitor learning throughout the school. Schools are are able to inflate their results when submitting results to district and central government.
• Macro (national policy): Decision makers do not have ready access to low-cost, reliable, real-time aggregated learning data (or research findings based on such data) to inform education policy and resource allocation. Parents and other stakeholders lack aggregated data that can be used to shift focus of accountability and interest from inputs (e.g. school buildings) to outcomes (e.g. learning).

Koloso is a gamified, digital personalised assessment edtech mobile app that helps teachers and parents to help every child to fulfil their learning potential by providing real-time individual and aggregated performance and progress data and learning gap analysis. 

The product is designed, content is tailored and the pricing is set for our target market of primary and secondary schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Koloso is currently focused on numeracy, but we are working to add other school subjects (starting with literacy) later this year.

Koloso is available as free to download iOS and Android versions for independent users aged 13 years or over. To access the full range of data analytics and to aggregate data by class, grade or whole school, schools take out a subscription to set up a school account, and then register students of any age as players within that account (content covers grade 1 to grade 12). 

Schools can link each student to parent(s) through the school account, so that the parent can also access the results data for their child(ren).

Koloso is structured in three components (see diagram above):

• Assessment parameters: These are the factors that determine the personalised selection of questions that make up each quiz - the objective is that each quiz comprises the right questions, at the right level of difficulty at the right time. The school selects which curriculum it follows (we currently cater for the Zambian national curriculum and the Cambridge curriculum), the student directory indicates which class (level) each student is at, and the class teaching plan tells Koloso when a particular topic is "live" for any given student.
• Assessment mechanism: Individual assessment is through a two minute, ten question "Koloso Challenge" quiz comprising a unique-to-user selection of questions from our database of 50,000 plus learning objective linked questions. The quiz tests the extent to which the player has acquired the skills and/or knowledge required by any given learning objective in the school curriculum. Students can play as often as they like, and they can play individually, or they can create and/or join teams and competitions - there is a strong peer-to-peer "social" feel to Koloso. We are in the process of developing customisable topic selection and create your own quiz functions (in grey in the diagram above).
• Assessment reporting: Every time that a student plays a Koloso challenge quiz, they generate data that reveals performance (the result on the day) and progress (related results over a period of time). Koloso reports the student's results data back to the student themselves (through the app), to their parents (through an account link) and to the teacher (through the school dashboard). Results data is reported to the teacher and to the school leader(s) individually and in aggregate for a class or the school as a whole. We are in the process of developing an anonymised, big data aggregation reporting capability for Koloso.

Foundational research

Earlier this year, Koloso was selected to participate in the Edtech Hub evidence-based learning journey designed to help us to apply EdTech evidence to our edtech product.

Within this programme, we have conducted an extensive literature review covering eight areas of science and evidence, grouped under two broader headings:

• Education:
  • The science of foundational literacy and numeracy
  • The science of teaching
  • The science of technology in education
• Product and scaling:
  • The science of evidence-based product development
  • The science of scaling
  • The science of developing financial models
  • The science of developing operational models
  • The science of fundraising

Based on our participation in this programme, we are developing our "manifesto" - "Defining Koloso as an evidence-driven organisation". This document captures and processes the key findings from the literature review relevant to Koloso at our current stage of product development.

The output from the programme is a Sprint Plan, which is a tool that helps us to prioritise and structure action based on what we have learned from participating in the Edtech Hub programme.

Formative research

We have conducted extensive user-interviews with schools at key points in the product development process - first, when we had our prototype product in April 2023, and secondly, when we had a demonstration version of our MVP in October/November 2023.

We have also used events to demonstrate Koloso to potential users and to give them a chance to try it out so that they can provide feedback. We have used three events to gather informal feedback from approximately 150 users - the pilot Koloso Festival of Numbers, a Zambian National STEM Foundation Women in Science event, and the 2024 Zambian Financial Literacy Week.

The Koloso story is one of continuous learning about the problem and the scope for a solution from research (very informal at first) and studies, and then applying that learning to product development. 

Over the last 18 months, we have become increasingly systematic about compiling evidence from research and studies, and (with the support of the Edtech Hub) we are now working towards becoming an "evidence-driven organisation".

Looking back, the single most important thing that we have learned from research is that there is a genuine, urgent and growing problem related rooted in personalised assessment - which is largely unaddressed in our region - with a potential commercially viable, tech-enabled solution.

We first conceived Koloso as a game - with the intention that it would be a fun way for adults and children to test and practice their mental arithmetic skills. We talked about it as "Wordle for arithmetic".

As we started to think more deeply (based on our own life experiences) about numeracy problems, and to talk with friends and family (many who are teachers) in Zambia and around the world about our concept for a numbers game, several people told us about assessment as a big and urgent problem, and explained that it is causing many students to fail to achieve their potential. 

We began to enquire more deeply and to try to work out how we could adapt our original idea to become a potential solution to this reported problem.

Simultaneously, we did some basic market research that showed sub-Saharan Africa is something of an edtech blind spot, but also has rapidly improving digital infrastructure. Combined with population and urbanisation projections, we concluded that a tech solution could be viable.

We were sufficiently encouraged by what we were hearing and reading to invest our time and money in developing a prototype.

Once we had a working prototype (April 2023), we showed it to some "friendly" schools in Lusaka, and tested it in a real classroom setting. From observation, survey and feedback we validated that we were onto something, but we also learned that we still had a long way to go. 

For example, we learned:

• How different ages of students interact differently with edtech products, and what we might have to do to make Koloso work better for younger learners; and
• How teachers feel about assessment and how significant the time and complexity problems associated with assessment were serious obstacles to understanding every child's strengths and needs. 

We then went back to the developers to incorporate everything that we had learned from research - coming up with a new demonstration version of Koloso in October 2023. We targeted 20 schools, did some cold-calling and took our porduct to show to teachers. Every single school wanted to sign up.

Then cholera struck, and all Zambian schools stayed closed after Christmas. We have used the unexpected time to make further refinements based on feedback from demonstrations, and now we are ready to take Koloso to our 20 schools.

The Koloso co-founders have always been convinced of the benefits of identifying and applying relevant evidence of what works 1) in education and 2) in technology to product development. We see this as an essential way to both move towards product market fit and de-risk our personal investments of time, effort and money.

We started by talking about our concept with practitioners, listening to podcasts, watching Y Combinator videos, reading articles - all in an attempt to better understand "the system(s)". We prioritised user testing, first of our concept and then our prototype, which we tested with schools in Lusaka. We took their feedback and worked on our MVP, which again we tested with users through demonstration and live events.

Our informal approach has gradually become more systematic, but we need to continue to strengthen the evidence base of our solution.

There are a number of areas where we need to gather and subsequently apply insights and results from research:

• Several points in our ToC impact pathways rest on "valiant/critical" assumptions, which need to be tested: Two such examples, based on research we believe that:
  • Increased "immediate" (short-term goal driven) motivation to learn will combine with learning gap analysis and lead to more efficient learning, and that introducing a competition and reward to Koloso will increase student's immediate motivation to learn;
  • Teachers and parents with relatively low tech literacy will be able to interpret our "traffic light" system and follow this through into teaching and learning support actions.

• There are important areas that we have not yet begun to explore: For example, we believe that Koloso will be able to safely produce aggregated real-time big data that will be extremely valuable to researchers and policy makers, and that by making this data freely available, not only will Koloso inform better decision making, but that it will add to accountability and help to shift political debate/attention from inputs to outcomes.

We are now ready to launch our product commercially, and the time has never been better to conduct a series of structured, rigorous experiments to see whether Koloso works, whether or not it works in the way we think it works, and what we might do to improve the product (increase commercially viable impact).

We are totally committed to becoming an evidence-driven organisation, but we are aware that as a founder team we lack technical and resource capacities - we would be delighted to host a LEAP Project and experience all of the benefits of participation. 

Based on all of the user feedback we have received to date, we believe that we have an interesting product and we are convinced that we can take it to scale. We have raised angel investment finance and we are currently planning a new round of investment to finance business growth - it would be amazing if we could invest that money supported by (and demonstrating the value of) solid evidence of a positive impact on learning outcomes.

1. To what extent using Koloso changes the following attitudes and behaviour(s) for early adopters:
   1. Student motivation
   2. Study efficiency
   3. Parental engagement
   4. Personalisation of teaching
2. How can we increase effectiveness of results analytics data visualisation, and are there any indications that these changes in behaviour (if they happen) lead to changes in numeracy performance?
3. How feasible is it to adapt Koloso for use in a marginal, lower tech, lower income and lower tech-literate environment. (We do not propose at this stage to take Koloso to remote rural communities where schools lack electricity/internet - such locations are currently beyond our market frontier.)

At this stage of Koloso's journey from MVP towards product market fit, we believe that the most useful outputs will be a combination of 

1. An expert review of the evidence gathering and processing that we have done to date and associated recommendations for strengthening (outputs 1 and 2);
2. Formative research plan addressing the two research questions identified in the preceding section (outputs 3 and 4); and
3. Monitoring and evaluation framework and plan for usage and impact among students attending varying profile schools that have subscribed to Koloso (output 5).

1. Review of current Theory of Change

Based on our own experiences and feedback from early user testing, we developed a theory of change for Koloso in December 2023. We are very aware that there are elements of the theory of change rests on a number of valiant/critical assumptions.

We would benefit enormously from an expert review of our existing theory of change. With challenges and questions about flows, assumptions and evidence, through a collaborative process, we could work with the LEAP team to strengthen the ToC.

2. Review of foundational research to date

As a part of the Edtech Hub Evidence for Early Stage Entrepreneurs course: 

1. We have completed a review of literature; and
2. Identified what we believe to be the most relevant findings from the literature; and 
3. We are currently working through how to prioritise and apply findings within our product roadmap for 2024. 

Again we are convinced of the benefit of an expert review of our research to date, identifying gaps and refining the conclusions that we have reached (in terms of understanding how our product development plans should be prioritised and designed).

3. Formative research

Recommendations covering the main strands of formative research that we would like to look at over the coming year:

• User survey among organic growth users: At this stage, we want to understand better how early adopters feel about using Koloso and whether or not they report any changed behaviours since they started to use Koloso.
• User survey among organic growth users: Do early adopters feel that Koloso helps to improve performance, and if so, how, and how could results analytics data visualisaton be made more understandable and motivating.
• Feasibility study covering use of Koloso by more marginal populations: Our original intention was that Koloso would help to reduce the attainment gap. However, commercial realities led to our decision to focus initially on private schools. We would like to look at how Koloso could be adapted for use in a more marginal environment, and whether or not the potential returns on investment would justify the required investment of time and resources at this stage of our business cycle.

4. Monitoring and evaluation plan

To support a continuing strengthening of evidence beyond the LEAP Project, we would benefit from support with an M&E framework and plan for Koloso as we become more established in schools and expand coverage - particularly addressing issues of differing social, demographic, geographic profiles of school.

Theory of Change and foundational research (outputs 1 and 2)

The outputs from this workstream will be used to improve our overall approach to evidence-driven product development by: 

1. Refining the ToC: Reshape and/or better understand impact pathways within the ToC, and strengthen the evidence that has provided a foundation and framework for product development to date; and
2. Increasing the value of foundational research: Identify and fill gaps in our foundational research, and improve our understanding of relevant literature and how we apply findings to our product development roadmap for 2024 and beyond.

Formative research (output 3)

The outputs from this workstream will be used to increase the effectiveness of Koloso and to find ways in which we can make the product more widely available:

1. Inform the redesign and improvement of our results analytics data visualisation within the app and the school dashboard with the intention to make results more easily understood (by students, teachers and parents), and more motivating (primarily for students, but also for teachers); and
2. Develop a costed proposal for funding to cover the costs and/or de-risk activities that are marginal/not-commercially viable so that we can increase coverage within the originally intended target population.

Monitoring and evaluation plan (output 4)

The outputs from this workstream will be used to plan beyond the LEAP Project and ensure that we have systems in place to continue to gather, learn from and share with others.

The long-term outcomes for our organisation and our product are deeply intertwined, not least because our commercial success and our ability to raise investment finance for growth depends entirely on the educational impact of our product.

We believe that applying the outputs in the ways described above (and most likely in other ways that we cannot envisage at this point) will improve the effectiveness of our product, allow us to reach more primary school students, and develop a product that will make a sustainable contribution to improved learning outcomes at scale.

The main long-term outcome for Koloso Limited will be commercial success based on sales of a product that "works". 

With evidence of what works, we will be able to:

• Define evidence based product development objectives
• Refine our product roadmap in response to evidence based priorities

With evidence that Koloso works, we will be able to:

• Define and describe the educational impact of using Koloso
• Strengthen our sales pitch to schools
• Present a convincing case to government