Darsel

Darsel is designed to help solve a global learning crisis which is most acute in low-income and resource-constrained communities.

Even before Covid-19, six in ten children around the world were not learning and failed to meet minimum proficiency levels. This learning crisis correlated highly with income levels (at the country level). 

The pandemic has exacerbated learning inequalities and learning losses while also reducing student excitement and motivation. More than 90% of the world's students have been affected by school closures, but less than half had access to digital distance learning solutions. After all, approximately 40% of the world remains offline, and it is estimated that only one in three can reliably watch videos online. In other words, only one in three have reliable access to digital learning platforms like Khan Academy and edX.

Darsel is specifically focused on re-engaging K12 learners in low-resource settings where access to modern EdTech solutions is limited. Our initial focus is mathematics, and our platform is designed to increase student motivation and improve learning outcomes. We work mainly in public school systems in low- and middle-income countries.

Darsel is a learning platform which can be accessed and navigated entirely through text-based channels such as SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

In short, Darsel is an intelligent and autonomous chatbot.

Darsel contains proprietary content. In 'practice mode', students can practice skills by answering questions on Darsel. Hints, solution explanations and mini-lessons are provided to help students learn along the way.

An AI-powered personalized learning algorithm automatically learns about each student's skills (by maintaining probabilistic models of student skill mastery) and personalizes content accordingly. Thus, students who are struggling are automatically exposed to easier questions to build foundational skills. This means that Darsel is remedial: it identifies and rectifies learning gaps.

Darsel is also designed to be used as a homework tool in a school setting. Students can use classroom codes to unlock curriculum-aligned content, including teacher-curated quizzes and assessments. In this scenario, teachers receive data, insights and recommendations (e.g about topics requiring additional instruction). Darsel can also be used to prepare for specific standardized exams.

Darsel is currently focused on math skills, and is available in English and Arabic (with limited content in Thai and Spanish). 

Darsel's target population is communities who have constrained access to modern education technology, due to either device-related constraints or internet-related constraints (e.g. weak internet infrastructure, high cost of data, etc.)

Darsel is currently being used in public schools in Jordan, and will soon be launching in India, Nigeria and the Philippines.

The primary beneficiaries are students, with an initial focus on students between Grade 4 and Grade 12 (ages 10-18). Teachers are also beneficiaries, as Darsel automates homework processes (creation, assignment, grading) and provides data-driven insights. Parents, as well as school administrators, siblings, and other community members, are also important stakeholders.

Resource-constrained communities exist globally (including in the US), but Darsel is focused on communities in low- and middle-income countries where education systems have limited resources.

Darsel serves the learning needs of the target population not only by being accessible, but also by being engaging and effective at improving learning outcomes.

Founder is from Syria and is personally exposed to the limitations of connectivity constraints. He has worked with refugee education organizations in the Middle East and is committed to ensuring that quality education and the benefits of EdTech become truly accessible to all.

Moreover, in our pilot programs in Jordan we are working closely with teachers who provide continuous and invaluable feedback. We also use interviews and surveys to collect feedback from students and parents and learn more about their needs. Their feedback has played a critical role in shaping our product and strategy.

We know that Darsel's platform is effective at engaging learnings and improving learning outcomes (based on evaluation of our Jordan pilot) and that there's high demand for Darsel in many countries (based on outreach efforts and agreements to pilot on 3 other countries). We hope Solve will help us scale our impact. 

Specifically, we are seeking partners and advisors to help us with:

• Scaling the organization to work effectively with public school systems across multiple countries and regions. This will have challenges related to identifying the right organizational structure as well as navigating cultural differences.
• Formalizing research and publishing results: We are collecting incredibly rich data about student learning, and our upcoming pilot is structured as a randomized control trial to allow for rigorous impact assessment. We are interested in collaborating with external researchers to formalize our findings and share them with the academic community.

In brief: Darsel enables K12 math personalized learning through simple, low-bandwidth channels like SMS, WhatsApp and FB Messenger.

Darsel implements features from the frontier of EdTech (AI-driven personalized learning algorithm and skills networks, high-quality content, gamification elements, etc.). However, what is truly innovative about Darsel is the application of these features through low-cost, low-bandwidth text-based channels such as SMS and WhatsApp. Thus, Darsel is bringing the latest advances in EdTech to the bottom of the pyramid.

In doing so, Darsel is unlocking - and demonstrating - the full potential of text messaging channels in education. These channels have not been adequately leveraged in education, despite their growing popularity in other sectors (financial inclusion, healthcare, government services, etc.)

Darsel hopes that it will help catalyze interest in text-based learning solutions (and in particular, the use of AI in text-based platforms). In fact, Darsel intends to make its software open-source in order to facilitate the emergence of other solutions.

Our stated goals are to significantly improve learning outcomes for 1 million students by 2025 and 100 million students by 2030. 

One year goal: Darsel is used in 5 public school systems (in 5 countries) and improving math learning outcomes for at least 10,000 students

Five year goal: Darsel is significantly improving learning outcomes - in math and beyond - for 10 million students

We measure learning impact on students in several ways:

Impact on school test scores: In our last pilot, a 2.5-week intervention was associated with a 5% increase (0.1-0.2 SD) in in scores on end-of-term exam results (covering 4 months of curriculum) after controlling for baseline scores, time effects, etc. Our upcoming pilot is structured as a randomized control trial, allowing us to measure impact on test scores with more accuracy.

Learning on platform: We also observe and measure student progress on our platform itself (separate measurements for different skills and topics) 

Self-reported learning: We also use surveys to students, parents, and teachers to collect data on perceptions of impact on learning and motivation

Other relevant indicators include usage / retention statistics and drop-out rates

Briefly: Students learn by spending time on our autonomous learning platform, and we reach them through teachers and public school partnerships

Darsel's team develops the platform software, produces curriculum-aligned content, and enters into partnerships with school systems. Under these partnerships, teachers introduce Darsel to their students and receive weekly reports. Students spend time on Darsel (~15 minutes per day) from a household phone, on a channel like SMS and WhatsApp.

On Darsel, students answer questions and read hints / explanations / etc. which are personalized and curated by our algorithm to maximize learning. This directly leads to improved learning outcomes. Usage of Darsel also improves motivation and excitement due to motivational and gamification features.

Learning and motivational gains on Darsel translate to improved performance in the classroom and on school examinations, with positive outcome effects on academic performance and educational attainment, and ultimately on human capital, quality of life & the community's level of development. 

Darsel is a chatbot. 

Our front-end relies on simple messaging technologies like SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger which require no/minimal bandwidth.

Our back-end systems, on the other hand, use AI to power our personalized learning algorithms which enable efficient student learning on our platform. We also leverage cloud computing solutions to effectively deliver our service to students around the world.

Darsel is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team, and proactively seeks to recruit employees from beneficiary communities. Darsel's team members - and all volunteers to date - are from and/or have worked in low-income countries in our target population. 

Darsel's content creation guidelines, published in March 2021, explicitly mandate that all produced content is inclusive and locally-relevant.

Darsel is aware that societal and practical constraints (e.g. lack of safe public transportation infrastructure) can prohibit labor force participation. Darsel's work policies (allowing flexible schedules and remote work for all) were intentionally designed to maximize inclusivity.

Intervention and Channel

Our intervention is a chatbot that can be accessed through platforms like SMS, WhatsApp and FB Messenger. Our chatbot allows students to learn and practice math by solving curriculum-aligned questions (and receiving hints, explanations, etc.). Students use Darsel from home, on a household device, as a formal supplement to K12 education.

Our model is B2G2C. Specifically, we reach K12 students by partnering with public school systems (e.g. state or national-level ministry of education), which allows us to reach teachers who in-turn introduce students to Darsel and oversee their journey on our platform.

Resources and Activities

Our content team are producing high-quality, curriculum-aligned content (questions, hints and explanations mapped to a network of skills and learning objectives). This content enables learning on our platform.

Our technology team develops and operates our personalized learning algorithms as well as the infrastructure that powers the chatbots across multiple platforms (SMS, WhatsApp, FB Messenger). The chatbots deliver our learning content through simple text messages, and our algorithms provide a personalized and interactive learning experience.

Our partnerships team works with school systems and teachers to facilitate activities including pilot design, teacher training, student onboarding, technical support, etc.

Stakeholders, Segments and Value Proposition

Students are our key beneficiaries. They spend time on our personalized learning platform (chatbot) from home, which increases their motivation levels and improves their math learning outcomes. We observe learning impact through the platform itself & by analyzing changes in math grades. 

Teachers are secondary beneficiaries, as we share data and analysis (e.g. on learning gaps) with them. This data allows them to increase student motivation and to adapt and optimize classroom lessons (e.g. to prioritize learning gaps identified by Darsel). This occurs with minimal effort for teachers, as the platform itself is completely autonomous. 

Public school systems - e.g. ministries of education - are our customers (they pay us for creating new content aligned with their curriculum, and for large-scale data analytics). They are also the decision-makers who allow Darsel to be implemented at scale (top-down).

Cost and Revenue

Our costs consist mainly of labor costs (especially for development of new content) and technology costs (paid to our technical partners, like AWS).

Our revenue comes from philanthropy from individual, corporate and institutional donors, and will eventually include earned income (from governments).

The platform is free for students and teachers, but in the long-run governments will pay us for development of new curriculum-aligned content as well as value-add services including analytics (service contract). Thus, government partnerships will unlock both scale and financial sustainability for us.

In the short-term, donations and grants will support Darsel's development and preparations for scale.

So far, we have secured support from some of the world's leading accelerators and institutions, including Y Combinator, Fast Forward, Stanford and Google.

No revenue has been generated from government partnerships yet, as demonstration pilots are free. We hope earned revenue to begin in late 2022.