DESIGN TOOL: LEARNING LAUNCH

Challenge

I work in the education sector in my country and recently we had been  experiencing challenges in the online learning programs. This challenges include  access to internet by students who come from a less than average family, for  example some parents do not have smart phones to access online platforms,  others have the smart phones but cannot afford to purchase bundles every day to  facilitate the students learning, some have more than one child hence online  learning becomes difficult when the students are many and the phone is only one  in the family. Another challenge was lack of textbooks. This is because textbooks  are very expensive to purchase especially if you have more than one child and  none of them is in the same grade. There also lacked a connection between  teachers and their students making it difficult for the teachers to follow up on the  progress of their students.

Selection

I selected a learning launch which is a carefully designed experiment or prototype  designed to test the key underlying value-generating assumptions of a potential  new-growth initiative. It is a learning experiment conducted quickly and  inexpensively to gather market-driven data to determine whether a growth idea  has enough merit to warrant detailed investigation with the commitment of  further time, people and resources. I came up with a solution of an application  and I needed a quick and cheap way of testing it against my assumptions that it  would work so as to qualify or disqualify my assumptions.

Application

I first came up with the idea of an application that would be accessible to all via  USSD, SMS, smartphones, tablets or laptops. I then incorporated online textbooks  for all grades, revision materials, story books and engaging learning games that  would make learning more fun. I then sold my idea to stakeholders like Safaricom  Limited who gave me access to the USSD and SMS services. After coming up with  the education application, I chose twenty people across all the standards of life,  that is the below average, average, and the above average. This in my opinion

would give me good quality feedback. It is also important to note that among  them were parents, students and teachers and they were all from the same  school. I then gave them access to the application via any means that was suitable  for them, i.e. SMS, USSD code, website and many others. The school was  supposed to pay a fee of Kshs. 3,000 only to facilitate the learning of each student  or if the student’s school was not enrolled into the program the student would  enroll as an individual at the same fee and would be able to learn just like the  others. This took place over a period of two weeks to allow enough time for the  students and teachers to interact.

Insight

From this learning launch we discovered that even the students who came from  below average families were able to log into the application and learn effectively  because the cost of SMS is much cheaper than internet bundles. Teachers were  also able to get good and effective feedback about the students’ progress. Most  of the students and teachers were able to enroll into the program because it was  cheaper than the overall school fees that is paid on a normal term. It was also  noted that learning had been made more effective by the availability of online  books at a small fee that was cheaper than buying them at the book store. This  challenged me to come up with a more improved way of studying that would  facilitate learning in even bigger platforms and how I would use design thinking to  innovate a feature or platform that would aid in learning at all levels.

Approach

From the above described procedure, learning launch would still be the best tool  for further assessment and modification of the application.

