Lina Labs

Lina Labs is the Philippines' first youth-led Ed-tech company addressing K-12 learners. Through an accessible, curriculum-aligned e-library, and a mobile-app learning management system, Lina Labs’ products promote national educational equity.

Plagued by an already poor educational system, as a result of poor student performance, teaching discrepancies, and a lack of government financing, the Philippines today finds itself struggling to recover from its two years of school closures. A nation already ranking last and second-to-last out of 79 countries in literacy rates and math and science subjects respectively in the 2018 International Student Assessment (OECD, 2018), now struggles with exacerbated inequalities within its educational system, with underserved and marginalized students living in far-flung regions having little-to-no access to any kind of educational intervention during the entirety of the pandemic. While wealthier students could participate in synchronous lessons through high-bandwidth apps like Zoom and Google Meet, the overwhelming majority of students who rely on DepEd's printed modules have not been able to connect with their teachers or access any resources. 

To this day, many areas are not allocated any governmental funds, leaving administrators forced to shell out their own money to compensate for the government's lack of financing for the educational sector. Upon visits to public schools in rural regions of the Philippines, I have been told that many of the government-allocated resources are filled with grammatical errors, inconvenient for school usage, and even sometimes do not line up with national curriculum competencies. Furthermore, digital resource proliferation has always been non-existent; in a recent study conducted by educational psychologist, Liza Olegario, it was found that learning materials in the Philippines are still heavily textbook-based, with no ed-tech software widely available to teachers and students who may not have access to the necessary resources to thrive in academic settings. 

Personally speaking to institutional staff and families suffering from this crisis, many expressed their desire for a comprehensive online platform that connects students to teachers and reduces dependency on this ineffective and inconvenient textbook-heavy curriculum. It is alarming that no other digital intervention strategy has been widely employed throughout schools over the two years despite a high percentage of Filipino households owning at least one mobile phone; UNICEF states that thirty-seven (37) percent of students do not plan on using any gadget for academic purposes. There is so much potential for the implementation of a digital educational platform, and yet a huge percentage of Filipino students have not been able to access adequate sources of schooling/education.

Short for the Filipino word Linang, translating into "cultivation" in English, Lina aims to provide millions of out-of-school Filipino children with the necessary cognitive foundations to succeed in modern society.

Lina Labs is a low-bandwidth e-learning ecosystem, a multi-pronged ed-tech solution with the ultimate goal of equalizing the educational playing field in the Philippines. Through accessible and quality learning resources, Lina aims to cultivate a safe and empowering digital learning environment for all Filipino learners.

Our core product, Lina Lectures, serve as the backbone for everything we do. Lina Lectures are curriculum-aligned notes and resources we aim to distribute to learners around the nation, through our website, app, and various marketing campaigns. Our ultimate aim is to have these resources touch as many lives around the archipelago as possible, and have hence optimised our website and mobile-app for low-bandwidth environments. Both Lina's website and mobile-app utilize Flutter technology, and allow students and teachers to access resources with little-to-no connection, as well as locally download any necessary content should they have brief access to connectivity before returning to far-flung areas with no signal at all. 

We also emphasize Lina's growth on social media platforms, such as Facebook and TikTok. Our target audience spend huge amounts of time on said apps (the Philippines being the world leader in social media use), and we have hence adopted a virality-marketing strategy through the creation of educational yet engaging content to be marketed on such platforms. We have also started rendering Lina Lectures onto Facebook Free, to support expansion into hard-to-reach areas. Through this holistic approach to user acquisition and the spreading of our Lina Lectures, we believe that we are best able to reach as many students and teachers as possible, bringing us closer to our end goal of equalizing the educational landscape within the Philippines.

"Hindi ako matututo dahil wala tayong mga gamit, at wala tayong magagawa."

"I can't learn, because we don't have anything, and we can't do anything."

This was told to me during one of my outreach trips to Tuguegurao, a rural region in Northern Luzon. The irony in this statement – it could've easily come from a student, teacher or parent, suffering from the identical throes of the Philippines' educational epidemic. These sentiments were further echoed during visits to the Visayas and around Metro Manila, displaying the universality of the effects of the exacerbation of an already shaky foundation in the national education sector, as a result of over two years of school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

To date, over 22 million students have suffered from this crisis, displaying huge learning losses – literacy rates have dropped drastically, as well as dropout rates – over just a three-month period between January and April of 2020, dropout rates went from 16.9% to 25.2% (US Agency of International Development). Parents, many of whom did not even attain high-school degrees of their own, were now tasked with teaching their child (oftentimes, multiple children) complex topics that they had not themselves learned in school. This, in itself, came with socioeconomic consequence that further burdened a family, as parents were forced to quit their jobs in order to support their children's academic needs. 

Research has also shown that in the Philippines, the already most-vulnerable students will bear the brunt of the adverse effects of distance learning (UNICEF, 2020), widening pre-existing divides within the nation and hurting both students' families and teachers. During the pandemic and the distribution of self-learning modules, many families had to traverse rivers and mountains in order to pick up and drop off materials, with teachers having to make the same journey to visit their students for rare at-home visits. Many areas are not allocated any governmental funds, leaving administrators forced to shell out their own money to compensate for the government's lack of financing for the educational sector. Teachers were also forced to work over 12-hour days, having to mark papers, collect, distribute and submit them back to governmental offices. 

A lack of support for the educational sector has been shown to exacerbate this national crisis; the Philippines shares a mere 3.4% of its GDP with educational organizations, significantly below the United Nations standard of at least 6%  (Teodoro, 2020). Teachers have cited inefficiencies within the current governmental system, currently unable to support the needs of the millions of students and teachers needing enough resources and materials to continue supporting academic endeavors.

During this time, we witnessed shows of resilience, love and passion between students and their teachers, but at what cost?

The power of what we do at Lina Labs lies in our product's ability to address each of these demographics, through our multi-pronged product approach. Lina Lectures, which are at the core of our solution, support students, teachers and parents through their mere accessibility – one of, if not the greatest problem facing today's Filipino educators and students. Their low-bandwidth and culturally accessible nature allows for widespread use in as many circumstances as possible, as we aim to create a legitimate and empowering digital space for all Filipinos to learn and benefit from. Teachers will have a huge chunk of their workload, traditionally dedicated to creating content and marking papers, taken off their shoulders with Lina's website and app. Students will be able to access any support they need in a centralized location, assured that each resource they use is verified and of quality, while also being able to connect with fellow schoolmates throughout the nation. Parents will be able to support students with the plethora of information and resources at their hands, merely by accessing Lina Labs and its products. 

The Lina team is a diverse, 100% Philippine-based group of talented and high-level engineers, developers, designers, psychologists and teachers. Members of the team hail from incredibly different backgrounds with experience in each of their respective domains ranging from blockchain technology, financial technology solutions, research in developmental psychology/learning methods, and local and international teaching opportunities. 

Team lead Julia Ongking believes that at the core of education lies the development and synthesis of different perspectives to create as deep and comprehensive of a worldview as possible. As a student herself, she was very grateful for the opportunity to enlist the help of skilled professionals and share her then-basic ideas with a unique and stimulating team. The huge range of individuals on the team (whose ages range from 15 to 74) lead to the formation of a huge pool of ideas and outlooks on Lina's growth into a fully functional program. With everyone's distinctive skill-sets and ideologies coming together over a shared passion for educational equality and justice in the home nation of the Philippines comes fresh and innovative ideas, proposals and solutions to an incredibly complicated and deep-rooted societal problem; Julia's initial ideas and inspirations ended up ballooning into a real, powerful and applicable digital solution that is now in the works to be distributed and marketed around the entire Philippine nation. 

The team's collective Filipino roots also arms them with a deep knowledge of the problem that is trying to be solved. All members of the team had themselves grown up within the Filipino school system, and hence bring their own experiences and insights to the table when deciding Lina's development path and expansion plans. 

Through working with local non-profits dealing with educational inequity, such as being a Product Manager at KadaKareer and a Research Intern with Teach for the Philippines, I have mentored and formed relationships with students from Lina's target demographic. Writing curriculum-aligned workbooks and resources, first-hand experiences, and meaningful interviews/conversations have equipped me with a deep insight and understanding of the educational issues in the nation. Furthermore, as a student, I have been exposed to a wide variety of distance/self-learning strategies, and understand available methods and features available, and others that are lacking and could be implemented into Lina's original software. I have also conducted an academic research study exploring the "Impacts of Prolonged Distance Learning on Filipino Children's Academic Performance", which further highlighted the urgent need for an educational intervention program to ease academic hardships from long-term school closures.   

Lina was first and foremost realized for the community. Thus, external input has always been a priority of mine since the conception of the app. Before even starting development, I met with a diverse group of Filipino and international scholars, teachers, parents, youth psychologists, and educational professionals to decide which features and design choices would be more beneficial on a larger scale. This platform is ultimately for community use, and I thus prioritized users' opinions and input to create as useful of an app as possible. Regular brainstorming sessions continued to be held throughout the advanced planning and development stages, with potential users providing feedback and features they wanted to see at our website and app’s launch.

To date, online curriculum resources in the Philippines are sparse and inaccessible to learners. When asked as to the support materials used by students when struggling with school, a common response was Brainly.ph, a community-generated internet forum where students could paste in a certain test question/topic they struggled with, and wait for unverifiable answers from other users online. Another frequently cited answer led me to Facebook, where a lot of students were searching for answers in student groups and forums. 

Not only did this further illustrate to me the need to create a community space for all Filipino students to interact with one another, but the lack of a legitimate, centralized resource hub where all students could bank on finding reliable materials to support themselves whenever the need arises. 

This solution, however, not only comes into handy during times of distance learning, as in a 2019 study conducted by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, it was shown that around 20% of fifth-grade students in the Philippines had to share textbooks in reading and mathematics. However, it is also seen that students in larger institutions experienced higher performance when provided one textbook each, as compared to having to share with peers. This digital and highly-accessible e-library, though, changes things. Many students have access to at least a mobile device with, at the very least, minimal data connection. By having this content library to access at their very fingertips, each student will effectively benefit from having a textbook each. 

It is this centralized and democratised approach to digital education that will truly free the Philippines from her inability to provide each student with the resources they need to fully realize the potential they have in their academic lives – by providing all educational stakeholders with all the quality resources they need, at the very tips of their fingers, we are able to equalize the playing field within Philippine education.

1. Access, access, access!

We want to touch as many students as possible, especially those who have bore the brunt of the negative effects of the prolonged school closures. To do this, we will be reaching out to as many schools of different circumstances and backgrounds as possible to see how our app will hold up under varying conditions. We will also be gathering regular feedback and conducting regular checkups: suggestions for improvement are crucial for Lina's prototype year.

This impact goal will be measured through:

• Number of active users – monthly
• Number of user signups – monthly
• Number / ratio of users across Luzon, Mindanao and Visayas
• Website clicks – monthly
• Social media engagement rates

By the end of 2023, we aim to have at least 1,000 active users on our product website, and 200 registered users (less of a priority on this one, as registration is not necessary for product access). In alignment with this, we will also be tracking the ratio of users coming from the three main Philippine island groups – in our quest for educational equality, we want to support learners coming from underrepresented regions, and to shift marketing strategies according to the gathered data to help increase uptake of learners outside of Metropolitan Manila.

We will also be measuring access through website clicks, hoping for a total of 750 monthly clicks by the end of 2023C. Lastly, we will be measuring engagement across other social media product platforms, with an emphasis on TikTok. We are looking to gain at least 1,000 followers by the end of this year, with a 12% engagement rate. 

2. Enjoyment and empowerment in learning

There are many underrepresented groups in education, such as indigenous and very low-income individuals who may not necessarily feel confident or happy under distance-learning conditions. Lina wants learning to be as fun and as inclusive as possible: through our interactive and sometimes gamified interface, students are able to engage in enjoyable experiences that many have missed over the pandemic. Furthermore, through our original curriculum development, we are including supplemental units and concept integrations on sustainability and Filipino culture and heritage to empower our students, elements often lacking from the current national curriculum.

This impact goal will be measured through:

• NPS Ratings – we aim to achieve an NPS rating of around 60, 6 points higher than the average rating of 54 in the ed-tech industry
• Qualitative interview data

3. Building a community sentiment

Parents, students and teachers all shared the common sentiment of missing the community feeling that comes from a face-to-face school environment, with many students still not being able to see their friends / struggling to engage socially with their peers since March 2020. We plan on encouraging communication amongst students and teachers throughout the nation through our user-generated content base, and safe and empowering community boards.

This impact goal will be measured through:

• Number of active users – monthly
• Number of user signups – monthly
• Number of posts on community boards (coming soon!) – monthly
• Engagement rate on community boards (coming soon!) – monthly

Lina is a lightweight and low-bandwidth e-learning suite that will be available in three iterations: low-bandwidth website, and a respective student and teacher app. Each platform will be written on Flutter, to adapt to all sorts of individual user needs, but will be optimized for mobile use, as a result of the high mobile penetration in the Philippines. Lastly, Lina Labs will publish its subject notes rendered onto Facebook free, to further support low-bandwidth and rural learners. 

On the Lina app, teachers can keep track of their students' work and grade them as efficiently as possible. Lina collects (and safely encrypts) performance metrics and data on students' performance across certain assignments and tests, which algorithms will use to construct a holistic and detailed student profile that lets teachers to provide personalized feedback and exercises for further student growth. Data is stored on Lina's cloud-based servers to keep the app as light as possible, while allowing parents and teachers to maintain records of students' progress and overall learning journeys. Lina's real-time, low-bandwidth messaging/forum solution also uses company servers to allow quick communication pathways between student, parent and teacher. The Lina subject notes website will also contain interactive community forums, where students will be able to interact with one another, share notes, have study calls, and ask for live help from trained and verified community moderators. 

In the future, Lina also plans to apply AI technologies to create as customised of a learning experience as possible to aid all parties through students' individual learning paths.

Upon launch, Lina is projected to reach no less than 1,000 users (this includes students, teachers, and parents) by the end of 2023 across twenty different schools. These schools will be using Lina resources concurrently with the national DepEd modules and will be using its comprehensive content library, chat/discussion features, and quizzes as curricular supplements. The users will be in consistent contact with the Lina team to aid in developments and improvements in preparation for a larger release in 2023. 

Once Lina has passed its prototyping stage and enters its phase of growth, we will enter the second quarter of 2024 with 3,000 users. However, we will be expanding aggressively over this year and hope to finish the 2024 school year with 5,000 users across thirty different schools who are able to use Lina as one of their main sources of communication and education. We will also start to target more out-of-school youth, and engage them with Lina's content library.

1. Technological

Lina will face technological barriers, especially when we expand to very rural areas with little to no signal strength. Although light and low-bandwidth, the app still requires some semblance of connectivity to function, which would only work in urban and semi-rural regions of the Philippines. We will have to come up with innovative strategies to support these communities and find a way to share lessons and content without WiFi or data.

2.  Financial

Although Lina is lucky enough to benefit from sustained grants from local companies, developing and maintaining high-quality tech platforms can get expensive. We are working on a sustainable monetization strategy to support future developments, and continuing to develop networks with VCs and other investors.

3. Legal

No members in our team are certified professional lawyers nor have any expertise in this field. Should conflict arise in the future, we will have to source counsel regarding technicalities and conditions in the law.

• Lina works with Filipino non-profit Kahon ng Karunungan (KnK) for mentorship and advice regarding the formation of curriculum materials and the delivery of lessons. KnK partner schools are also working with Lina for app development and improvements.
• The Philippine Center for Gifted Education (PCGE) also provides mentorship and support regarding curriculum development, outreach opportunities and app setup. 
• Lina is also in contact with individuals from the Philippine Department of Education, who aid in app development and will later advise on the most sustainable and far-reaching business model to follow.
• Lina has also benefited from partnership with the United Nations Development Program, through its participation in the Youth Co:Lab accelerator.

Currently, Lina is operating on a purely volunteer basis, which we foresee to run sustainably into 2023. Hence, for the near future, Lina will be relying on sustained donations and grants to continue expanding its reach and product base. Another notable passive income stream for Lina will be profits made from social media campaigns, sponsorships and ad income from sponsored ads on the Lina website.

However, we at Lina recognize the importance of setting the foundations for long-term financial sustainability. Team Lead Julia Ongking will graduate high school in the summer of 2024, and will begin executing plans for a paid, B2C digital tutoring center that will support Filipino students with entrance exams to local universities, as well as exploring a B2B freemium option for the Lina mobile app ecosystem, targeted towards wealthier private schools in the Philippines. Lastly, another possible and sustainable monetization avenue is to act as a home / display case for other Filipino creators looking to advertise their educational products – we will charge a small royalty fee for creators looking to house their work and get it to reach a wider audience – an option possible for when we are able to gain traction and celebrate a wider user base.  

While we have toyed with the idea of proposing a service contract with the government, we believe that at the early stage of development that Lina is currently in, and several past experiences with governmental corruption and intellectual property theft, it would be best to hold off of this approach anytime within the near future. Instead, we will be utilizing an integrated (service subsidization) approach for our social enterprise and our non-profit work, in which any profits made from our social enterprise will be funneled back into developing our non-profit work, in accordance with our ultimate vision of democratizing education to as many Filipino students as possible.