Agavi

Educational technology (edtech) is overly complex, too expensive, and uncreative.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, the transition to digital education left disabled, rural, and impoverished students behind because existing edtech systems are targeted towards privileged customers.

Agavi is a system designed for use by teachers and students
everywhere else in the world, where bandwidth and electricity are often
unreliable or unavailable.  In addition to low resource demands, the
system is also designed to make science learning experiential.  Rather
than being yet another system for showing videos and quizzes, Agavi
allows teachers to utilize phone sensors and GPS location in their
activities, making the smartphone an agent in its environment rather
than a mere portal to passive content.  Additionally, the system is
being designed with artificial intelligence capabilities, using activity
performance data from around the world to help a teacher adjust content
to be locally relevant and effective.

Education technology (edtech) comes in two flavors:  show-and-tell builders and choose-your-own-adventure builders.  Show-and-tell builders are by far the most common, allowing teachers to remix text, images, videos, and sometimes simulators, and display it for students, perhaps coupled with quizzes and exams.  They tend to replicate the unengaging passive learning modalities of the 20th century.  Choose-your-own-adventure builders are much better suited for teaching the skills necessary to succeed in the 21st century, as they allow for active learning experiences.  However, they tend to be overly complex and expensive, often requiring dedicated learning design staff and custom solutions.  Essentially, privileged classrooms can buy their way into virtual reality, augmented reality, and always-on cloud computing, while everyone else is left with technology that has changed little since 1999.  "Everyone else" often includes the most disadvantaged populations in the world, including rural, impoverished, and disabled students, resulting in extremely inequitable educational outcomes simply because edtech has spent too much time chasing the 22nd century instead of addressing the existing 21st century digital divide (patchy internet connectivity, lack of accessible options, outdated smartphones and laptops).

Agavi is a web-based adaptive learning system that I am developing with my team that allows the creation of interactive choose-your-own adventure activities regardless of internet connectivity or newness of a teacher's phone, via local instances.  Rather than showing students a wall of questions, the system allows a teacher to split an activity into tasks that students complete one-by-one, providing feedback and alternative pathways when students make a mistake.  Tasks can include reading and answering questions, sure, but Agavi will also be context aware, allowing teachers to integrate phone sensors, bluetooth-connected sensors, and GPS location to create digital-analog tasks that simply aren't possible in current learning environments.  Imagine having a learning system that checks a student's experimental setup using low-cost sensors and gives them feedback before they even collect their first bit of data!

As teachers create, share, adopt, and adapt each others' content
globally, Agavi will keep track of how activities are "mutating" to
adapt to their local environments, allowing the construction of an AI
recommendation engine that helps teachers rapidly adapt content to
better serve their local students.  It will finally allow teachers to
stand on the shoulders of giants, instead of constantly reinventing the
wheel.

The solution targets the science teaching and public outreach system from top to bottom.  With a simple-to-use interface that contains no more complexity than absolutely necessary and one that is built to be accessible for all abilities, teachers of all levels of comfort with technology and physical abilities will be able to quickly build and deploy activities to their students, review how the activities have performed, and identify students' skillsets based on their performance in the activities.  Teachers will no longer need to attend lengthy seminars to understand how the new edtech flavor-of-the-week works ... it will be intuitively obvious.  By keeping the system simple and innovative, the system will be easier to deploy in regions that are currently underserved, especially places with unreliable internet connectivity, such as rural regions, refugee camps, and Indigenous reservations.

Students at all levels will benefit as well.  The COVID-19 pandemic
forced a rapid switchover to edtech that was not prepared for the scale
of challenge.  The go-to solution was Zoom classrooms, but they required
high-bandwidth, reliable internet connections which for many students
are not affordable or sometimes even possible.  And research has shown
that interactive activities that challenge students are far more
effective than passive videos and slides.  With a
choose-your-own-adventure builder that is cheap and easy for teachers to
use, students will benefit from new activities that will progress them
through concepts one at a time, get them physically moving on scavenger
and treasure hunts around their local environments, and engaging with
their environments using their phones and low-cost sensor kits.  Their
smartphones will become learning partners, rather than learning portals.

Equitable classrooms start with empowered teachers.  Too many teachers feel disempowered by edtech due to cost, complexity, and access.  Agavi
directly addresses these issues with a cheap and simple system with full
offline functionality.  Additionally, by linking with sensors and GPS
location, Agavi allows for the development of activities that are unique
and experiential, resulting in more engaging digital-analog experiences
for students.  Finally, through the AI system that will observe how
activities change as they move from teacher to teacher, teachers will
receive customized support for localizing content they receive from
others, building on global experiences.

We finished our first prototype in late June and have begun testing it with teachers in the US, Ukraine, Brazil, and Indonesia.  We are working with teachers and instructors both in the formal educational setting (schools and universities) and informal setting (observatories, libraries, museums, national parks).  Because the prototype has a fraction of the anticipated functionality of the final product, we don't feel it is quite at the pilot stage yet.

Agavi is innovative because it is being built to solve the problems of the most difficult learning environments first (this was driven by my teaching experience in eastern Indonesia prior to the COVID-19 outbreak).  Most edtech starts its life in high-bandwidth, high-tech environments, which results in design choices and architectures that are impossible to later modify for low-bandwidth environments.

Agavi is also innovative because it will treat the phone as an agent in its environment, rather than a portal to videos, text, and other passive content.  With the ability to access phone sensors (compass, barometric pressure, accelerometers, thermometers), wi-fi/bluetooth sensors, and GPS location, Agavi will allow teachers to build custom activities that have students using their phones like Star Trek's tricorders, something that is not currently done.

Finally, through the unique data architecture surrounding the tasks,
Agavi will be able to identify and track "mutations" in content as it is
shared and modified by other teachers.  This will allow research into
how teachers adapt content that has never before been possible.  By
identifying and harnessing these unique insights, Agavi will be able to
identify common modifications and changes associated with specific
learning environments, allowing other teachers to benefit from these
insights as they prep content they find in Agavi's library for their
unique classroom challenges.  Imagine having a system that automatically
swaps continental examples for island examples if it knows that you
live and work on an island.  Currently, that all needs to be done
manually by every island teacher.

The core technology for Agavi will be web-based, with app functionality when necessary to work offline.  We are not interested in using anything cutting-edge, rather, we want to focus on "lowest common denominator" web technology so that we can have the broadest impact.  The less power and bandwidth that it uses, the better.

The novelty will lie in the low-cost tech ecosystem that surrounds Agavi.  For example, Agavi will be capable of running on SolarSPELLs
(solar-powered Raspberry Pis distributed in impoverished areas to act
as digital libraries).  Agavi's sensor ecosystem will also have an API
to enable a "maker" community to develop around Agavi that we hope will
build and extend Agavi's capabilities with sensors and tools that we
haven't conceived of but that Agavi will, nevertheless, be prepared to
handle.

The core web technologies (HTML, Javascript, databases) in Agavi have been utilized for 30 years.

Active learning approaches have been demonstrated to be more effective than passive learning in multiple studies, as well as meta-studies of these studies (Nature, 2015).

Intelligent tutoring systems that allow the construction of active learning activities have also been shown to be effective in engaging students and yielding improved student outcomes (Astrobiology, 2018), as well as identifying root causes of poor performance (Journal of Learning Analytics, 2019).  However, although these systems can collect this vital information, it often isn't surfaced by these systems and can only be discovered through post hoc analysis.  Agavi is being designed to rectify this short-coming through its analytics system.

Phone sensors are most commonly used in apps designed for physics education (ie, PhyPhox).  Geology education can also use field notebook apps that can utilize GPS and compass data.  These tools, although they can drive engagement, are often too specialized to be in widespread use.  I believe this is a demand that teachers don't realize they have yet because the right tools don't exist to allow easy usage of low-cost sensors in the classroom.

Low-cost tech options like SolarSPELL are hugely empowering, providing teachers with new resources and skills (report).  Makerspaces likewise are empowering for students.

The existing technology from which Agavi will be built has been
successful independently.  Agavi is unique in that it will bring these
technologies together in a new way.  Focus-group testing with Agavi
concept designs and the first prototype with teachers working in challenging teaching and learning environments yielded a high level of enthusiasm.

The largest risk will be with data security, as Agavi will collect student and teacher data by necessity as they build and interact in the system.  Most edtech companies seem to ignore this complication, leaving users little say in how that data will be utilized.  Agavi will be compliant with FERPA and GDPR regulations and give teachers and students full control over their data and how it is used.  All will be informed of what data the system collects and will then be able to decide if their data remains completely private, is usable by Agavi AI, or is available to education researchers (broadly or specifically).  For education researchers, we will likely develop a business model of paid access and arrange cost-sharing options for teachers and students whose data will be utilized by the researchers.  Teacher and student generated data will be anonymized, with identifying information kept in a separate database.

We are currently working with early adopter teachers in the US, US Virgin Islands, Ukraine, Brazil, and Indonesia (~10 teachers).  We anticipate working with several dozen teachers a year from now and impacting hundreds of students.  Within five years, we anticipate impacting thousands of teachers and millions of students globally.

Our impact goals for the next year are to begin selling low-cost subscriptions to a fully functional system and cultivating a dedicated user base.  We are currently working through volunteers who are building the first iteration of the system.  Through crowdfunding, bootstrapping, and partnerships, we anticipate being able to pull in enough funding to get us to launch.  Post-launch, we expect to grow via word-of-mouth.  Additionally, we will be developing strategic partnerships to gain users and add quality content to the network.  These will include working with the SolarSPELL project, which has a distribution agreement with the PeaceCorps for global deployment.  It will also include working with science education and outreach groups, such as the International Geoscience Education Organization, the International Astronomical Union's Office of Astronomy for Development, and the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.  Each of these organizations works with teachers and learners at all levels, with a focus on teachers working in difficult environments.

Because Agavi is still in development, we are monitoring progress according to the functionality of the system and enthusiasm/usage of our early testers.  We are also monitoring community interest in the project through Google analytics on Agavi's website, contributions to crowdfunding campaigns, conversations with strategic partners, and the number of new partners who approach us about the project.

We have five people working on our team on a volunteer basis.  The lead is located in the US Virgin Islands, the back-end developer is located in Arizona, the front-end developers are located in Romania, and the analytics experts are located in California.

Additionally, we have several student interns who are working on components of the system over the summer.

The team lead has been working in the education sector for 20 years, and with edtech for 10 years, including design, development, distribution, teaching, and education research.  He has experience living and teaching in the US mainland, US territories, and eastern Indonesia, and will be adding Ukraine and Brazil in the next year.  He is trained in astrobiology research and education at the PhD level, and as a result, excels in making unique linkages between people, concepts, and cultures.  Currently, he is living and working in challenging teaching and learning environments to gain first-hand experience in the challenges these communities face, in order to better inform the design of the nonprofit's programs and endeavors, including Agavi.

Our back-end developer has 20 years of coding experience and hails from an Indigenous background and community.  He has firsthand experience with the challenges of education in Indigenous community settings, which informs the design of the Agavi's back-end functionality and user experience.

The front-end developers are enthusiastic Romanian students and
recent graduates.  Growing up in post-Soviet Romania has given them deep
insight into educational inequities and the patchiness of current
edtech solutions.  Their recent experiences in education inform the
design of Agavi's front-end functionality and user experience.

Our analytics expert hails from a disadvantaged background, having to work through difficult community and school settings to complete his degree.  As a result, he has a strong interest in helping identify students who are struggling and surfacing them for teachers to help more directly.

The approach for building the Agavi leadership team is to deliberately recruit from the communities we are seeking to serve to ensure that
their perspectives and priorities are reflected in the final product.
 The team lead comes from a dual-culture household (American and
Ukrainian) and actively seeks out lived experiences that help him
understand the groups he is working with (hence living and teaching in
Indonesia, US Virgin Islands, Ukraine, and Brazil).  The co-lead is a
young woman from Romania well-integrated in the Romanian start-up tech
sector.  The back-end developer is US Indigenous with connections to
many Indigenous groups in Arizona and North Dakota.  As the team
expands, we plan on continuing to draw leaders from the communities with
whom we are working most closely.

More than funding, we need experienced guidance as we start on our business journey, especially as we expand to South America (based on the founder's upcoming science education work there in early 2022).  Most of us are trained teachers and programmers with little business experience.  We are learning as we are growing, but the challenges of growing and scaling call out for expert guidance, especially in navigating the international market.  In my previous job, I watched our intelligent tutoring system provider mismanage their business and eventually be forced to sell their technology to their competitor.  After the sale, teachers were cut off from the system.  I want to plot a more successful trajectory and implement the change we promise.

We are currently a small group of volunteers, whose previous experience has been teaching, scientific research, and programming.  We are confident that we can build an excellent solution.  We are less confident that we will be able to build a successful business around it.

We would be most interested in partnering with groups focused on development and education.  Partnership priorities are to develop a
diverse set of teachers working in diverse settings to implement, test,
and provide feedback on Agavi to ensure it is meeting teacher needs
globally and advocating for Agavi once it does so.