Cursofi

Most of the working-class and informal workers, employed or unemployed,  will not prioritize studying or formalize their knowledge.

Working long-hour shifts plus extras leave little time to study and if they find time, they are exhausted by the end of the day and will rather spend it with family or other activities that generate extra income.

What about if the people gain skills while working and leverage this time?
Manual and operative jobs demand low concentration and the tasks mostly focus on using our hands and body. 

Cursofi is the APP where people will gain skills by listening to audios, downloaded to the smartphone while working or doing other activities in a micro-learning strategy and a practical approach. 

Skills such as learning a new language, sales techniques, planning and basic finance can be taught with audios and can promote a technician to supervisor with the right knowledge. 

According to the OIT report related to jobs in Guatemala and its effect due to Covid-19, activities involving agriculture, cattle and phishing count for 31% of the jobs. Commerce, restaurants and hotels count for 27%. 

More than 50% of Guatemala's economy is based on jobs that don't require special skills. Thus, these job's salaries are low. 

Even though the government and organizations offer non-expensive and quality education, most people will prioritize other activities that will generate extra income or having personal time. Their opportunities to be eligible for a better job are set aside. 

The problem is finding the right time and if the worker can leverage its shift time to learn without underperforming in its activities (which demands in most cases low concentration), can be a big game-changer. 

These numbers and assumptions are not far from other third-world countries where most of the jobs demand manual repetitive labor. 

The Cursofi APP is an educational tool for learning skills, general knowledge and languages by listening to audios. Visual aid is also shown to help users understand certain topics (i.e. Math formula for interest rate)  

Cursofi works in a microlearning strategy (10-15 minutes audio). In this time frame, one can obtain knowledge in various areas. The user can then listen to the audio while working or having free time (At lunch, commuting, idle time or working). 

All of the content is practical knowledge without going deeper into extensive theory. 

The users can download the contents of the learning paths so they can view/hear them offline with no restrictions. They can access a public wifi hotspot and get all the necessary resources.

Learning paths are available so the user can take the right courses to enhance their abilities such as learning English, customer service, communication and sales between others. 

The Cursofi Web-App is the portal where we want content creators to submit practical courses and share their tips and tricks. For example, a well-trained and recognized sales manager will instruct the users on how to be more effective in closing sales.

Cursofi aims to train the working class that has jobs that demand low concentration but are able to use earphones while performing their job. It also aims to offer a flexible alternative to people looking to gain skills at any time and anywhere.  

Cursofi wants to leverage its user's time by multitasking between their current job/activities and learning a new skill.

The method is based on micro-learning audios so the users will not be full-time on the phone screen when learning. If the person is employed, this could flag a warning from the employer addressing that the person is procrastinating. 

Many of the target people will listen to music at their work or free time but we want them to listen to audios and develop new skills and knowledge. 

Cursofi will transfer the knowledge organized and entertained where the person takes small audio lessons (10-15 minutes) so the progress is not measured over a long lecture. 

We aim to partner with other entities so the courses are recognized and certified by the local and international academic authorities. This will be done by sponsoring/partner the courses by either a company or an educational institution so support its contents. 

Ultimately, the users can certify their learning path by an institution and have certification such as "Customer service ready" or "Sales and marketing ready". 

Since the users can access offline the contents of the learning paths at the Cursofi APP, they can log in to a free and public wifi spot to download all the necessary multimedia. The users don't need to have direct access to the internet and the courses can be taken practically anywhere at any time. 

Job opportunities will be opened to the users since we want to elevate their knowledge and skills in the areas that have more job offerings and better salaries. 

The business model includes an unexpensive monthly subscription (10$ for a family of 3, with access to all courses and learning paths) 

We are currently developing learning paths and writing the material to be recorded. 

The first skill path that we are working is on learning English since in my country and most likely the LAC region, call centers have good and stable job offerings. Besides being fluent in English, the path includes customer service techniques, problem-solving and proper communication. We aim to partner with a company that can also train people on using a PC. 

The second skill path is based on sales and how can a person be more fluent, convincing, persuasive and communicate when trying to close sales. This includes numeric skills, marketing, goals and planning among others. 

We have more learning paths to develop that we believe can promote a person's job to one that requires more analysis and decision-making. A sales manager's path will include finance and customer service for example. 

Sexual/Mental education, manners and communication are also planned.

Cursofi innovation proposal bases on that we want to leverage persons time at its maximum and provide practical knowledge. All this while performing other tasks such as working or other activities. 

This micro-learning based on audios will not compromise the person activities since we aim to have quick informative sets and since it's based on audios, the person can still be focusing on their main activities. 

The micro-learning strategy has been used in the past but it has been focused on written material, short videos and small lectures. 

We want to become the podcast of learning, constantly adding new material and encouraging to keep up with the program and its updates. 

A workbook and printed content could be necessary for some course.

Our main technology is not new and it's having an APP capable of playing audios and multimedia previusly downloaded to the smartphone. 

Along with the app, the ability to display properly the learning paths progress over them while suggesting companion skills. 

The Web-App is also not new and it will be a capable cloud server serving the multimedia requested by the users. Will serve as the portal for content creators to upload the media. 

The most relevant learn-by-audio case that we can mention is the Pimsleur method where a person can learn a new language by only listening to audio and having a side work-book. This strategy has been used by other apps like Babbel, Speakly and Audible.

One of the concerns is that the created content is hard for the users to understand since we are trying to use only audios. This could harm our user experience and after a few lessons, the users might drop the learning. 

The courses and learning paths should also be recognized by external entities so they build value on what are the users learning. For this, we aim to partner with either government, private and educational entities. 

Another concern is how the users can pay and log in to the platform. Most of the target persons would not have a credit card to complete the monthly subscription. Also, there are people which do have a smartphone but can't access the email service. For this, we thought about having an auxiliary login so users can log in with their ID number and can deposit at a bank the monthly fee providing them their ID number and a reference code. 

We are currently at a prototype stage. We aim to serve 5,000 people by the first 6  months of operation once launched in Guatemala. 

We want to create, well-studied, organized, entertaining and rich content. This is not easy since we need to create a general model to accommodate most of the target audience. Also, not all the topics can be covered in the same fashion so our goal is to create solid material and be effective and efficient when training the users. 

Another goal is to partner with recognized entities so the learning paths gain value and can be used as valid resume items for job interviews. 

We also understand that some topics can't really be taught only by audios so we aim to have courses like Microsoft Office, electricity and plumbing to have hands-on experience with real-life practices and practical troubleshooting. 

We would like to constantly be evaluating the progress with small quizzes and suggest that the users re-take a specific course in case a failure threshold is reached. 

User experience and course structure at the pilot stage will be crucial to polish the methodology and technology. 

The majority of the courses and learnings paths are expected to have a final exam that we hope to perform presential at recognized institutions premises. 

Part time, Victor A. Vargas Contreras (Bussines model and product owner)

Part-time, Jennifer Lafaffer (Programmig APP)

Part-time, Pablo Monterroso (Programmig Web-APP)

Between Jennifer and Pablo, we have developed an APP and Web-App for service providers companies called Optacheck. We now have around 500+ users in Latin America and the expertise to deploy solid software and apps exists. Our expertise expands to integrate hardware, software, firmware and mechanical areas. 

I started this idea of Cursofi viewing the time spend by cashiers in my country. They will be idle most of the time and just waiting to perform a sale. Sharing this idea to Jennifer and Pablo we thought on, How can these people leverage this time in a productive way? So instead of looking constantly at social media, we build ideas on hearing podcasts and watching small videos. Activities that the users don't need to pause and can happen parallel with the activities. 

Our small team has grown being agnostic on race, gender and/or personal preferences. We like to be an effective team focused on good relationships between us. 

We definitely need mentoring to take this project to another level. Given MIT previous challenges, we would like to have the best mentorship and take solid steps for deploying Cursofi. 

We believe our financial and business model can be enhanced. 

Also, we need mentorship on how can we evaluate the progress of the users over the learning paths. 

We also need guidance on how to set the bases when creating courses where mostly audio will be played. 

Educational institutions so they can validate the content and generate completion certificates. 

Private entities or persons who can share their expertise on regional markets. 

The Government in helping to distribute and funding the APP than can educate y a disruptive fashion, its people.