Mæven
A mobile platform that enables students to identify one another and enhances their ability to retain information through peer tutoring.
Mæven is a mobile platform that enables students and faculty to identify one another and enhances their ability to retain information by means of peer tutoring.
It may come as a surprise that in a country that is home to some of the top universities in the globe, nearly 30 percent of those who matriculate drop out before they even become a sophomore.
What's even more daunting is that there are 3 recurring reasons in the lives of students across the country which compel them to make such a critical decision.
The first of these reasons is that finding the appropriate balance between school and work has been exhibited to prove difficult for young adults.
Another reason is that students, on average, tend to spend more time studying and less time socializing — good for grades, but bad for any student's mental health.
The third reason is that faculty regularly face the issue of getting students to come to office hours or to even simply reach out for help. Not to mention that other forms of tutoring are simply not a feasible alternative due to their high costs.
This is where Mæven comes in! Users can access our platform through their mobile devices or from any desktop accessible to them. Upon opening the app (or website) the user registers by inputting their personal information as well as their target subject.
We then take that information and pass it through our proprietary database, which automatically filters through other users of our platform, helping them find an array of school faculty members and other students who either specialize in or have an inherent aptitude for that subject.
The application then loads a map overlaid with those individuals who are guaranteed to complement the user's scholastic needs. The user then inputs a request for assistance, which pings nearby matches in order of proximity. This request enables our servers to allocate a meeting spot and time for the two individuals.
Following the encounter, both participants are able to review one another on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. Each star is worth 20 experience points. As these users begin to acquire more points, they are then able to redeem miscellaneous gifts, consisting of materials practical for their educational needs (i.e. study guides, pens, pencil boxes, complimentary tutoring sessions with specialists, etc).
So if you too would like to increase the student retention rates at our universities and high schools, in addition to inspiring America's youth to strive to become future educators, come and say "hello" to Mæven!
Thank you!
- Educators fostering 21st century skills
- Supportive ecosystems for educators
Mæven is a free and simple-to-use service that directly contrasts the typical experience of finding help in a subject.
- No more awkward phone calls to tutoring agencies.
- No more painful conversations trying to explain to a stressed out tutor what you are struggling with.
- No more deductions to your credit card balance.
Just a fast, efficient way to get help with what you need, when you need it. All of this while expanding your network and establishing new relationships with your peers and school faculty members! Consequently, solving the problem of the contemporary rarefied educational atmosphere.
Here at Mæven we are directly involved in the innovation of cutting edge technologies that advance our mission of bringing safe, affordable, and convenient tutoring sessions to students everywhere.
Our cutting edge technologies include, but are not limited to:
- Geo-fencing
- Augmented Reality
- Back-end/Front-end Development
- Data Analytics
- Big Data
- iOS and Android Native App Development
In addition, our team is comprised of scholars, student researchers, faculty members and software engineers who are consistently and diligently striving to improve our services to change the face of education across the country!
We are endeavoring to expand the locations in which our services are available, as well as forging new partnerships within the educational sector. In addition to this, we will consistently strive to launch the revamped versions of our mobile and desktop-operated platforms. Both of which are currently inaccessible due to undergoing improvements.
We are also doing our best to expand the range of educators to the outskirts of the educational system. This way adults will be able to connect and learn from one another. For instance, independent language learners could be enabled to find native speakers of their target language.
Our solution is not only going to revolutionize the modern educational system by making personalized tutoring accessible to all students regardless of their financial or ethnic backgrounds, but it will also perpetually seek to mobilize more and more young people to pursue a career in the educational sector (which is exponentially declining). This we will achieve by expanding each of our student users' academic network and providing them with rewards that will make them feel great and spare them a substantial sum of money, in the hopes that they will leverage these savings to further their education.
- Adolescent
- Adult
- Urban
- Lower
- Middle
- Latin America and the Caribbean
- US and Canada
- Canada
- Chile
- Germany
- Japan
- Mexico
- South Africa
- Thailand
- United States
- Canada
- Chile
- Germany
- Japan
- Mexico
- South Africa
- Thailand
- United States
We have been connecting with the presidents and principals of universities and high schools both inside and outside the United States as a way of marketing our landing page and expand our registry of aspiring users.
Upon the launch of our prototype, we were able to register a total of 150 thousand users within the first three months of its availability. Most of which are still registered in our system and as a result, can be notified about the release of our newer and improved versions of our platform.
Currently, we are not servicing anyone due too the revamping of our website and the launch of our mobile app. However, we serviced and registered a little over 150 thousand users within the first few months of our prototype's launch.
We have a registry with the names and contact information of said users through which we will notify them about the release of our optimized platform.
Within the next 12 months we are expecting to serve an estimated 700,000 users. This number takes into account the time it will take to finalize and launch the app on the App Store in addition to the exponentially growing number of students registering through our landing page.
In 3 years, however, we are hoping to service an estimated 4 million users due to our soon-to-begin social media campaign to gather notoriety and acquire pre-registered users, paired with our refer-a-friend system which will grant certain users the ability to expand their reach to students and tutors in surrounding cities and schools.
- Hybrid of For Profit and Nonprofit
- 4
- 1-2 years
Combined Skills/Knowledge in:
- Objective-C
- Machine Learning
- Java
- Swift
- Android Studio
- Javascript
- Ruby
- C++
- Python
- Fluency in a Total of 11 Foreign Languages (German, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Italian, French, English, Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese)
- App Development
- Core Data
- Critical Thinking
- Effective Time Management and Punctuality
- Advanced and Responsive Web Development
- Marketing Strategies
- Google Play Store
- App store
- UI/UX Design
- Data Science
- Team Work
- Trouble Shooting
- Debugging
- Node.js Development
- Estimate scope of the project and its cost
Our revenue model consists of a premium subscription, a commission fee on certain transactions, and in-app purchases.
In addition to this, access to the platform could be leveraged through exclusivity and bartered to universities depending on their student body size.
We are applying to SOLVE in the hopes that by doing so we will be able to establish new relationships and connect with other fellow Solvers with whom we could potentially partner in order to accommodate as many students as possible within our platform.
SOLVE could also considerably aid us in financing the development of our platform and its expansion to lower-income neighborhoods, as well as in developing nations in Africa, Latin America, and South-East Asia.
One of our primary barriers is the lack of access to sufficient funding in order to finance our servers and the launch of our app, in addition to the purchasing of certain programs and frameworks necessary to our mobile app. SOLVE could help by either providing us with some funding which would be greatly appreciated or even simply by offering us an opportunity to be in the spotlight and potentially obtain recognition among angel investors, along with other students and educators who could join our platform and help us grow!
- Technology Mentorship
- Connections to the MIT campus
- Impact Measurement Validation and Support
- Grant Funding
- Preparation for Investment Discussions
- Other (Please Explain Below)



