Pandai - Personalized Quality Education for All

Pandai is an app to help school students aged 7 to 17 learn and improve their academic performance.

School students in Malaysia, like many of their peers around the world, often worry about how to improve their academic performance in school. 

However, for a student, it is difficult to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in all the subjects the student is taking in school, which makes it difficult to know what and where to improve.

In schools, teachers generally do not give personalized feedback to all students. 

Other forms of after-school interventions such as tuition classes and workbooks also do not give students this output.

We launched Pandai in 2020 to solve this problem. 

Pandai is a learning app for school students aged 7 to 17 that helps them learn and improve their academic performance.

Using Pandai, students engage with our curriculum-based assessments by answering gamified questions. 

By doing so, Pandai will generate a comprehensive report that informs not only the final grade, but also a complete breakdown of their performance based on various criteria such as:

• chapters
• topics
• subtopics
• thinking skills
• difficulty levels
• etc

This allows the students to have a clear plan to improve, say, a C grade in Physics into a B. 

In addition to our core assessment offering, Pandai also offers learning tools such as videos, live help, study notes, flashcards, virtual lab simulations

Pandai is a digital solution that is scalable, and it can be used by students at all performance levels, from "weaker" students to top students. 

It has the potential to improve the grades of millions of students in the region.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

It is difficult to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in all the subjects the student is taking in school, which makes it difficult to know what and where to improve.

In Malaysia, like in other Southeast Asian countries, the education system is highly competitive and exam-driven. The most desirable outcomes of the education system, such as university admission and access to scholarships, are heavily tied to academic performance, i.e., the grades they get in school and in public examinations. This is a common pain felt by all 5 million students in the public school system.

In order to improve their academic performance, students and parents engage with several forms of intervention -- hiring personal tutors, attending classes at tuition centers, buying workbooks, etc. 

CURRENT SITUATION

In Malaysia, 74% of parents feel what students are getting in school is not enough, and they spend up to US$900 a year on after-school interventions such as these.

Although these interventions might work to a certain degree, they 1) might not be accessible to all students due to geographical factors, 2) might not solve the root problem of identifying students' strengths and weaknesses and providing personalized recommendations to improve.

Aligned with our motto "Personalized Quality Education for All", Pandai provides personalized recommendations and pathways for students (based on their strengths and weaknesses). It is accessible to all students everywhere, using any internet device, and it is also available on offline mode.

TARGET POPULATION

Pandai is focusing on students in Year 1 to Form 5 (corresponding to age 7 to 17) in the Malaysian public school system. They are divided into primary school (Year 1 to Year 6) and secondary school (Form 1 to Form 5).

According to the Ministry of Education Malaysia, the total number of students is 4.7 million (2.7 million primary students, 2 million secondary students). The number is expected to increase by around 4% a year.

The Pandai app is designed to be usable by students from all grade levels, and all academic abilities. Pandai covers the subjects that students learn in school, and it is fully aligned with the national curriculum.

By using Pandai, they can improve their academic performance, and have access to quality, personalized education that is previously out of their reach.

ENGAGEMENT WITH TARGET POPULATION

Before we started Pandai, we conducted several interviews and focus groups with school teachers, to identify the main issue that they have with student learning, and what solution they wish existed in the market. 

We also engaged with hundreds of students, and conduct user interviews to identify the pain points and what they really want. 

The accumulation of these data allows us to build Pandai, and until today, we keep iterating our product to ensure that what we build is really wanted and validated by the market.

Our proposal is fully aligned with the Challenge posted by Octava Foundation:

1. Pandai is designed to be accessible

Pandai can be accessed with any device (Android, iOS, or web), requires low bandwidth, and can be used on offline mode for those with limited connectivity.

2. Pandai is affordable

Pandai can be used for free, and the free app will be available forever (no trial period). However, Pandai also provides a subscription option for those who would like to access more features and tools.

3. Pandai is focused on underserved K-12 learners 

Our users are students from Year 1 to Form 5 (equivalent of K-12 in Malaysia), and Pandai makes special efforts to reach out to those underserved, whether economically or geographically.

4. Pandai utilize evidence-based educational content informed by the science of learning

Pandai is built using input from our users and a panel of advisors who are experienced educators and researchers in education. Pandai is currently being assessed by Education Alliance Finland as an external validation of our pedagogical methods.

5. Pandai is aligned with curriculum outcomes.

All our content is fully mappable to the learning outcomes in the national curriculum of Malaysia, hence making it usable by all students.

In summary, Pandai aims to increase equitable access to quality learning opportunities through our app. This is especially true for underserved learners in low connectivity environments, who can use Pandai on offline mode.

Khairul Anwar Mohamad Zaki

CEO of Pandai Education Pte Ltd

There are many online learning apps available in the market. What makes us innovative is that we focus on a practical pathway to improvement, which can be quantitatively measured, instead of being an educational material repository. The Pandai app is designed to be outcome-oriented and practical, so students can use it to improve their performance in a concrete way. This is reflected in the following three examples of Pandai use cases:

Example 1: By interacting with our assessment system (quizzes, topical tests, and exams), students can get a complete assessment of their performance, with a recommendation on what and how to improve.

Example 2: Every question in Pandai comes with a fully automated grading, complete explanation (not just an answer), and recommendations (related videos and notes). This is to ensure that answering questions in Pandai does not become a rote activity, but also an active learning process.

Example 3: Although in Pandai we have textbooks and notebooks for students to study and review, we also provide a flashcard feature so students can effectively learn using the active recall and spaced repetition method. This ensures that students can actively learn the content instead of just interacting with the content passively by reading, and thus increasing the student academic attainment.

We launched the beta version of the app in January 2020, after we interviewed our users and learned what they wanted. We built our app quickly and released three versions (iOS, Android and web) in quick succession. Pandai was a fully free at that point.

Since then, we have been very engaged with our users, getting their feedback, conducting user interviews, tracking their usage data using analytics tools (Redash, Amplitude and Segment), and improving our app constantly through our biweekly Product Development Cycle. This is to ensure that the users experience remain our highest consideration when building a feature or a product, and we validate all our assumptions by testing them with real users.

We relaunched in January 2021 with a much better app. Around the same time, we introduced a premium account that users can obtain by monthly subscription.

Our technology consists of several main components.

1. Content Builder 
   1. The web-based content builder built with open source technology like PHP and MariaDB is the central component of the pandai ecosystem. It allows various content authors, editors and external contributors such as publishers and teachers to generate academic content inside Pandai.
   2. The content builders include tools like Media Managers, LATEX, Language Translator and more.
2. Learning Web Application
   1. The web-based learning application is available to students, teachers and parents.
   2. The application is built for modern browsers using Javascript technology such as AngularJS and JQuery. Its responsive and lightweight interface provides a smooth and pleasant experience to the users.
3. Learning Mobile Application
   1. The mobile application is available to students on iOS and Android devices, with optimised UIUX for mobile phones and tablets.
   2. The application is built using the native framework (Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android) to utilise native functionality fully.
   3. The app is designed to be lightweight (small file size) and can be used offline in areas without internet.
4. Live Online Learning
   1. The live online class is provided over the WebRTC technology optimised for the low-bandwidth user experience.
   2. The UIUX is customised to meet online learning needs to includes features like a quiz, pool and whiteboard.
5. Data Analytics and Recommendation Engine
   1. Data analytic using various third-party technology like Redash, Amplitude, and Phyton is used to analyse users' data and behaviour.
   2. Pandai utilised AWS Machine Learning technology to provide learning recommendations to the students.

The following Theory of Change has been produced by the Pandai team with the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) team represented by Ms. Pratigya Kalra, as part of the UNDP Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) module in the Social Impact Challenge Accelerator program.

Problem:

We want to improve the access to quality education for students in Malaysia, so they can have higher educational attainment.

Activities:

1. Launch of the Pandai app

2. Getting users on the Pandai app through promotion and campaigns

3. Monitor user performance on the Pandai app

Link between Activities and Outputs: 

By getting a larger number of users on Pandai, we can have a bigger impact towards the target population (7-17 years old in Malaysia), and a better representative of the academic performance of the target population

Outputs:

1. Pandai gets many users on the app from among the underserved communities

2. Pandai users improve their academic performance after using Pandai consistently

Link between Outputs and Outcomes: 

The more underserved students use Pandai, the more Pandai can help improve their educational attainment.

Outcomes:

1. Students from underserved communities get access to personalized quality education.

Short Term: 20% of users of Pandai are from underserved communities

Long Term: 33% of users of Pandai are from underserved communities

2. Students from the target population improve their academic performance

Short Term: Among 300,000 users of Pandai, 50,000 improve their academic performance in schools, reflecting 1% of the total target population (5 million).

Long Term: By 2026, there will be 1 million users of Pandai, and 70% of them (700,000) will improve their academic performance by at least 15 basis point or roughly, by one letter grade. 

This will be a huge impact, involving 14% of students in the country, many of them from underserved communities.

These are the indicators we track for our impact goals (refer to our Theory of Change):

1. User Data

- Number of registered users

- Number of active users (DAU/MAU/WAU)

- Number of users from underserved areas

2. Usage Data

- Time spent on Pandai daily

- Time spent on various activities on Pandai

- Number of questions answered per week (and other similar metrics for other activities too, e.g. no of minutes watching videos)

3. Performance Data

- % of performance increase in each subject

- % of users that shows improvement in in-app grades and school grades (self-reported, with validation)

- Data divided into several categories (grades, rural/urban, geography, etc)

Our impact goals are:

1. By 2022, improve the academic performance of 1% of Malaysian school students.

2. By 2024, improve the academic performance of 7% of Malaysian school students.

3. By 2026, improve the academic performance of 14% of Malaysian school students.

How to achieve them:

1 year: Among 300,000 users of Pandai, we hope to get 50,000 users improve their academic performance in schools, reflecting 1% of the total target population (5 million).

3 year: there will be 600,000 users of Pandai, and 350,000 users will improve their academic performance by at least 15 basis point or roughly, by one letter grade. This is 7% of students in the country.

5 years: there will be 1 million users of Pandai, and 70% of them (700,000) will improve their academic performance by at least 15 basis point or roughly, by one letter grade. This will be a huge impact, involving 14% (700,000 out of 5,000,000) of students in the country, many of them from underserved communities.

Product

Currently we are improving our product to make it more effective for students. This includes making our content better, our user interface more intuitive, and our product more appealing for students. This is achieved via our biweekly Product Development Cycle, where the whole Pandai team will suggest improvements of existing features or the creation of new features on the app based on users' feedback.

Technology

We are working on making the app very scalable so it will function well even with 10x increase in the number of users and 100x increase in the number of user engagements.

The four team members have known each other since 1998; we went to high school in Malaysia together before getting our university education abroad (3 in the US, and 1 in Japan).

After working for several years in multinational corporations, in 2008, Khairul, Akmal, and Suhaimi quit their corporate jobs to start two companies: ArdentEdu, which is focusing on education, and AidanTech, which is a software house.

ArdentEdu is a traditional education company: it does not involve much technology, and it conducts mainly face-to-face programs and runs paper-based educational programs. However, through ArdentEdu, we managed to work together with 2800 schools in Malaysia, and have countless interactions with all levels of education stakeholders, from the Ministry to schools, teachers, administrators, students, and parents. The 14 years we run ArdentEdu gave us a unique perspective on the Malaysian education industry and the needs of the market.

In 2020, we decided that in order to scale and have a further impact, we should integrate our expertise in the tech sector, with our deep knowledge of the education industry. This enables us to create an edtech solution that can bring a larger impact to a larger audience. We interacted with teachers and students that we know from our previous education business, and from their feedback, we launched Pandai in order to improve education in Malaysia.

There are 41 full-time team members currently working on the solution. The team members focus on solution development includes content developers (50%), software engineers (20%), and product developers (15%).

We have also worked with over 80 external authors, editors, and teachers (as contractors) to develop academic content inside Pandai.

Khairul (CEO) is experienced both in education and tech. He is an expert in computational thinking (currently, the most prominent paradigm in computer science education worldwide) and has represented Malaysia in various international education bodies. He was the CEO of a software house AidanTech for 12 years, and had experience dealing with large corporations and government bodies to implement tech solutions.

Akmal (CTO) is an experienced tech expert, with senior experience in multinational corporations (Intel, WHO, Shell) and as the head of 50 engineers in AidanTech. Under his leadership, AidanTech has completed more than 100 large-scale projects involving clients in the private and public sector. He leads the technical team in Pandai covering of web dev, mobile dev, UI/UX and server.

Suhaimi (COO) is an expert in the education part of the business: he has experience in education policy, curriculum and content development, pedagogy, talent development, and educational research. He is a graduate of MIT, and has been involved with gifted education (among others, as head coach of the International Mathematical Olympiad team) since 2007.

Nazatul (Head of Product) has experience as a teacher and administrator at a private school in the suburb of Kuala Lumpur. She has been involved with various roles such as pedagogical training, student development, module development, classroom practice, as well as in the marketing role at the organization.

In 2015, Khairul founded the Malaysian Computational Thinking Association (CompThink), whose objective is to promote computational thinking -- back then a novel idea in the education system -- among school students and teachers. Among others, CompThink organized the annual Beaver Computational Thinking Competition, a hugely popular online contest with 5,000 participants annually. It also organized workshops and conferences for teachers.

Due to his expertise, in August 2015 he was appointed by the Ministry of Education to study the best practices of computational thinking education in other countries, in order to revamp the computer science education in schools in Malaysia.

He formed a research team and was tasked to study the education systems in 7 countries (US, UK, Australia, Singapore, Denmark, Estonia & Finland). He met with ministry officials, education experts, academicians, NGO officers, education administrators, teachers, and students from these countries, and reported his findings in a comprehensive report. The report was then presented to the Director-General of the Malaysian Ministry of Education; it was duly accepted and became the framework of the Computer Science subject which was introduced in the national curriculum in 2017.

1. Ministry of Education (MoE)

Pandai is working on several initiatives with the MoE. One of them is a feature on the Pandai app for teachers, which provides daily short content for teachers about pedagogy, teaching content, and professional development. This feature is called CINTA (Continuous Improvement in Teaching App), and was a winner of the MyHackathon 2020 event.

2. Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation

Pandai is part of the National Technology and Innovation Sandbox (NTIS), an initiative under the Ministry. One of the NTIS projects is a pilot project to introduce Pandai in the school environment at 5 selected schools.

3. National STEM Association (NSA)

Pandai is a member of the Industry Experts Hub at the NSA and works closely with other members toward championing the STEM agenda in Malaysia and bridging the STEM gap between academia and industry.

We would like to connect with impact investors around the world.

We would like to work with investors with particular focus on impact investing so we can bring our impact to more students and into more markets.