IDEA Digital Education

Universal access to quality education is an admirable goal. But there is a problem. We are so focused on providing access that it often comes at the expense of educational outcomes. 

So at IDEA we have developed an outcome and data driven content solution that allows us to provide scalable access whilst supporting students and teachers to become globally competitive citizens. 

IDEA is a core-curriculum, interactive, data-driven digital education solution for primary and secondary school students and teachers. IDEA has developed a completely digital K12 STEM program and accredited professional learning courses. 

That means we are not just a platform, we are not just assessment, and we are not just content but all of the above. We developed it all. 

Over 1800 curriculum topics, 38,000 animations, videos and interactive activities as well as over 10,000 assessments.

We help students, schools and governments to turn hardware into learning environments. 

Low literacy, inequity and poor foundational content knowledge are the reasons that 40% of students dropping out by Grade 8, 58% of our students not able to reach functional literacy and a third of our teachers unable to pass the national grade-level assessment. We have a crisis in the emerging world where over 800million students are growing up without the basic education they need to survive. But how can that be when education accounts for up to 8% GDP of most countries, and there has been an 11% increase in government expenditure on e-learning solutions? If 60% of our populations have devices and access to internet- it isn’t the technology that is letting us down. It is the content.

The majority of students struggle to achieve in both global standardized and national systemic assessments. Student results are not improving and therefore significant investment in technology infrastructure has been made. This race towards digital has often solely focused on the delivery of hardware over content which has led to some average results. And this should not be a surprise if the content provided continues to replicate pre-digital methodology. Many of the e-resources that are available are repurposed and digitised notes, textbooks and presentations. 

Our students and teachers are all from English-second-language backgrounds; all schools are quintile 1 and 2 performing schools (poorest performing academically) and exist in the highest crime per capita, peri-urban and rural districts in their respective countries. We work with governments Departments, NGOs, private school groups and individuals - with 259,000 active users from all grades K12, and over 1.04mil subscribers across Africa, Middle East and South East Asia. 

IDEA works as a device agnostic, online and offline, mobile, desktop and web-app technology solution that provides a live, unique learner-login interactive content, assessment and reporting platform. 

With 8 key products in our stack, aligned to 6 national and international syllabuses, our content has increased numeracy and literacy results for Grade 1 students by 28% and improved secondary school science results by an average of 35%. 

We are completely interactive, and data driven (every piece of content drive student feedback and proficiency data). Using an HTML5 UID tracking file, we currently record pixel coordinates, right and wrong answers and click intervals. 

The IDEA platform is the global Gold IP CoSell Partner of Microsoft 95% of our public sector users (teachers and students) stated they would use IDEA over any other product they had used and 70% of private sector users preferred us to our competitors. 100% of our teachers surveyed in 2018 requested that IDEA continue in their classrooms.

The IDEA innovation USP is that we are completely interactive, and data driven (every piece of content drives feedback and proficiency data). Our UID tracking structure allows us to see what we could do better and inform a student or teacher of where they need to focus their remediation. We currently record all user content usage from pixel coordinates, right and wrong answers and click intervals in order to be able to inform truly individualized and adaptive learning through a ML framework. Our analytical digital services offering means that we work closely with provincial and national government, Departments of Education and Ministries of Education to drive digital transformation, deployment and implementation efficacies. This means we can intrinsically measure our impact through formative assessment and not just in summative assessment and monitor learning patterns, strengths and weaknesses. 

We have proven our product works in user engagement, average STEM proficiency increases of 35% and government satisfaction in Southern Africa. 

Through our government deployments, we have passed 3 specific audits: 1) Curriculum performance and alignment; 2) Technical and operational and; 3) School efficacy and engagement. We passed all of these and with a recommendation for the program to be scaled up from the two provincial deployments onto the national Department of Basic Education’s government portal.

Our 2018 baseline to summative results showed a 20-30% increase in numeracy and literacy at Grade 1-3 compared to students who either undertook another program or no digital program at all; an average of 35% increase in scientific literacy in Grade 8 students and our top performing schools moved up two quintile positions in their systemic results, with the top IDEA school having received a 99% pass rate in mathematics for their primary school students. Due to our results and innovation, we were selected as one of 40 organizations in the Stanford Seed Transformation program on a scholarship provided by Stanford University. We have also been selected by the Agence Française De Développement as one of their social impact businesses for 2019.

1. 1.04mil subscribers with 259,000 daily active users
2. 2.5mil subscribers with 500,000 daily active users
3. 20mil subscribers with 1.5mil daily active users

As a part of our scalable transformation strategy up until 2023, we will be opening operations teams alongside our existing Sydney, Johannesburg and Nairobi offices, in the Middle East and South East Asia. This plan is determined by three key things: 1) Global Product Alignment, 2) Student Success and Implementation, 3) Territorial Universal Funding. Our product plan is to take our existing, deployed content and transform the home language accessibility of it for multiple markets (“translanguage”) which we have completed research alongside the University of Cape Town. Also in 2020, we will personalise learning through an AI framework meaning every student’s learning journey is unique. From a student success point of view, we have already started globalising our delivery and success having run our team out of South Africa and servicing East Africa. In November 2019 our first 25 schools will be launching in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and UAE) and South East Asia (Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia). And finally in developing our funding pipeline, we work on a universal, unlimited content usage costing meaning that we align to Department of Education’s mandates to create and deliver successful digital content programs and at the same time reduce the prohibitive nature of monthly or annual subscription. We created our product for low-income government school students and our business model reflects this. 

Localisation:

Our key hurdle to overcome is regarding local curriculum and education teams. As we localise and sequence our digital solution for every market, our barrier is in funding the entrance and set up of our local education team to review, adapt and align our product. 

Funding:

Pre-sale, market incubation and trade institute funding allows us to fund the set up of our local team and operations ahead of market readiness. Seeking 6-10 months of financed runway in each local market.

In April 2019, we began negotiations with a local Bangladesh distribution partner in order to align and sell our universal site licenses to schools, with a specific focus on teachers in the initial 2020 sales phase.

Our opportunity exists in mobile sales to students, teacher presentation licenses and school group/Departmental deployments ensuring we compliment and supplement the existing national curriculum with our interactive and data-driven content. 

127 team members across 6 countries made up of: 

• 51 part time curriculum contract writers
• 59 full time developers, coders, animators and subject matter editors
• 12 project and implementation team
• 5 C-Suite team

Our team's USP is in its harmony between education and technology. The IDEA team consists of PhD-level educators, subject specialists and editors and coders, animators and illustrators so we create and develop all parts of our production supply chain in-house. It means that our design and production team have been skilled in curriculum subject areas while our education team have transformed into code and design specialists. We have a very experienced senior and middle leader team across competencies that works with young and creative production team. And we do this in multiple global markets to our core team values of: teamwork, performance, accountability, ownership and problem solving.  

• Microsoft - Gold Global IP CoSell Partner
• Google CS First
• Jane Goodall Institute
• University of New South Wales
• South African Council of Educators
• World Partnership for Educational Innovation in South Sudan
• Department of Basic Education, South Africa
• Western Cape Education Department

We run a Software as a Service model (SaaS) and a Content as a Service (CaaS) model on a monthly, 12, 24 and 36 month subscription basis. While historically subscriptions of educational solutions are often sold under a static 12 month license price, IDEA is launching a monthly, unlimited access fee. For as low as $6 per month students can use our platform and content. Making it an easy sell and an easy purchase. We have also spent a lot of time working on IDEA Transform, a full-suite, universal, unlimited project license to allow organisations and government Departments overcome prohibitive per-user costs. 

We have raised Seed and Seed Prime rounds which has enabled us to develop our full product stack and platform. In the B2G and B2B deployment space, this is either government funded or endorsed projects with foundation or development funding and includes the entire delivery of our products and implementation. As a global, gold IP CoSell partner of Microsoft, over the next 5 years, together we have targeted 20 million students and teachers across our three key markets. And to do this we have taken on a transformation of our organization and sales structure, launching a partner and distribution model that allows sales partners to sell IDEA in their local markets while we manage a centralized operations and content team.

Our B2C model is launching at the end of 2019 with a monthly access fee for students and teachers. 

Given IDEA is already working on a pipeline in Bangladesh for distribution and implementation, we are entering the Tiger Challenge to:

• Increase awareness of IDEA in Bangladesh
• Source grant funding for schools to purchase IDEA
• Seek local partners (both sales and implementation)
• Receive critical feedback on our product fit and required market adaptations. 

Distributors/Resellers, Ministry of Education, School groups and local curriculum organisations that would like to assist us with localising our global product to Bangladesh education requirements. This would include regulatory compliance as well as market, test and feedback to further drive localisation.