CivWiz

Conventional civic learning mediums at the university level come with inherent barriers to broad student participation. Not only are they offered increasingly rarely, but they are also often forced to compete against prevailing academic and social commitments that make it difficult for students to engage with them accordingly. The COVID-19 pandemic and the requisite transition to remote learning have exacerbated these challenges. Moreover, the cost of education, the lack of time/opportunity, and issues surrounding inequity and exclusion in higher education constitute just a few of the barriers that individuals outside of the university system face when trying to engage in traditional civic learning mediums. 

The consequences of these many barriers are easily observed. The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found, in a 2016 study, that nearly a third of Americans are unable to name any of the United States’ three branches of government. Only 26% of Americans can name all three. Just five years earlier, in 2011, this figure was 38%. In 2015, it was 31%. 

It is clear, then, that the U.S. is caught between increasingly strong barriers to civic education and marked declines in civic competency/engagement nationwide. 

CivWiz is a free, dynamic mobile gaming app, available on iOS and Android, that has the goal of cultivating and evaluating civic and cultural competence across academic disciplines. We think that by making civics learning accessible, we can begin to knock down the barriers one faces when engaging with civics education and reverse the trends of declining civic competency nationwide. CivWiz has three primary components: 

1. Multimodal trivia games: each CivWiz module employs a variety of question styles (multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, “word scramble,” etc.,) covering a wide variety of civics-related topics from Constitutional literacy to sustainability to digital privacy to educational inequity. 

2. Gamified progression and competitive community features: CivWiz users can add their friends, earn in-game currency by completing quizzes and other learning games, and compete to climb up the CivWiz leaderboards. These features are backed up by our development team’s advanced user data analysis which allows us to better understand biases, thought patterns, and overall civic competence. 

3. Resources to empower social change: CivWiz will also eventually be home to a resource hub that supplies users with information regarding voter registration, contacting elected officials, and other civic engagement opportunities. 

The educators and civic activists behind CivWiz believe that everyone can and should be an active participant in their community. Thus, the app was designed with a focus on accessibility and usability such that anyone, regardless of their background or level of familiarity with civic engagement, can use, enjoy, and benefit from it. Given that 94% of people aged 18-29 have smartphones and that the average university student spends more than 50% of their waking hours on their phone, we think that a mobile app is the perfect medium by which to begin to address the issues of accessibility to and engagement with civic learning. 

CivWiz aims to foster a learning environment in which civic learning is pervasive, not partial; central, not peripheral. 

Right now, CivWiz's target population is college students at the University of Pittsburgh. As we expand our scope, this target population will grow to include students at other universities and partner institutions and, eventually, to anyone who wants to download and engage with the application. 

Students, at the University of Pittsburgh and other institutions, are currently underserved by the diminished position of civics learning in traditional academic settings. Civics classes are being taught less often, civics-related departments have shrinking access to resources, and university curricula are placing less and less emphasis on the importance of civics learning. 

These problems are also occurring at the level of primary and secondary education across the country. Everyone is being underserved by the systems of civic learning with which they engage. 

More than anything, CivWiz will address the needs of these target populations by filling in the gaps left by traditional modes of civics education. This means picking up where these traditional modes leave off and supplementing them such that anyone can have access to a holistic, comprehensive, and complete civics education. 

The CivWiz development team is uniquely well-equipped to design and deliver the solution outlined above to the target population precisely because we are the target population: students. That the CivWiz Student Fellows constitute the backbone of the project has many advantages. Here are just a few: 

1. Connectedness to other students

2. Connectedness to student organizations

3. Connectedness to well-qualified civic activists, educators, and researchers

Input from these three communities (students, student organizations, and civic activists/educators/researchers) has and will continue to guide CivWiz’s development and implementation every step of the way. So far, the primary means by which we have been engaging with our target population and working to better understand their needs is by conducting playtests and collecting feedback. A playtest we conducted last year yielded overwhelmingly positive feedback, but we did learn a few things that we needed to improve on from it. For example, some users reported back that they did not have enough time to answer certain questions while progressing through modules. Other users reported that the beta version of the app was too clunky to play on a mobile device. We took this feedback to heart and have since rebuilt the application from the ground up and implemented improvements corresponding to these concerns. 

Ron Idoko, the founder of CivWiz and Team Lead, is well-connected to the communities that CivWiz aims to serve. As the associate director of Pitt’s Center on Race and Social Problems and the founder/director of the Racial Equity Consciousness Institute, much of Ron’s time is focused on directly supporting/guiding teachers and learners in analyzing the complexity and pervasiveness of racism and other contemporary social issues. Ron’s direct, hands-on, praxis-centric approach to combating issues such as racism makes him the perfect person to lead CivWiz’s development. 

Connor Diaz, the Outreach Coordinator at CivWiz , is well connected to the University of Pittsburgh’s student community. Beyond his work at CivWiz, he is involved in the University’s Frederick Honors College and the various scholar communities therein, a student researcher in the University’s Law, Criminal Justice, and Society department, an Outreach and Engagement assistant for the University’s Social Innovation Center and the University’s Center on Race and Social Problems, and conducting research alongside other students participating in the Brackenridge Fellowship. Thus, he is himself a student, a member of student organizations, and a researcher in the field of civics. 

Moving forward, the CivWiz team aims to cultivate meaningful partnerships with student-led organizations and activist groups at the University of Pittsburgh. We think that inviting these groups to contribute content (quiz questions, resources, video lectures, etc.,) to the CivWiz app will be incredibly valuable. Some organizations that we’ve identified so far as potential partners include the Pitt Policy & Political Review, The Pitt Political Science Student Association, and Pitt’s Women in Politics club. 

Although the CivWiz app exists, it is still in its beta phase of development. We hope to have the build of the app finished by early Autumn 2023 at which point we will make the app available to students here at the University of Pittsburgh and collect feedback. We hope to have the app ready for full release in 2024. 

Here are a few barriers that support from MIT Solve could help us overcome: 

Financial barriers:

1. Limited size of CivWiz Student Fellows Team: The CivWiz Student fellows have been, and continue to be, central to the program’s success. Monetary support from MIT program would allow us to expand the team. 

2. Development Costs: Monetary support would also allow us to fund the continued development of complex features like group play for real-time competition among multiple users and advanced data tracking. 

Technical barriers: 

1. Scaling/integration: Eventually, CivWiz will be available to anyone who wants to download it, regardless of their affiliation with a university system. As such, the CivWiz team will need help ensuring that the application and its relevant databases/software systems scale effectively. CivWiz’s mission entails wide scale adoption. The MIT community can provide us with the technical expertise and resources we need to design, implement, and maintain scalable solutions. 

2. User Experience (UX) design and accessibility: Central to CivWiz’s mission is the app’s accessibility. As such, the application must be intuitive, user-friendly, and easy to pick up for anyone—regardless of their familiarity with technology or civics. Support from the MIT community would help the CivWiz team improve our UX design by offering input from design experts and providing us with a wide range of users on which we could conduct usability testing and from which we could collect feedback.

3. Data analysis/reporting: Also central to CivWiz’s mission is measuring its own impact on the civic literacy and engagement of its users. The MIT community can provide us with the technical know-how we need to effectively collect and parse the data necessary to gauge CivWiz’s effectiveness. This would not only help us secure more monetary support down the line but will also help us make sound, data-driven design decisions. 

4. Cybersecurity: Given that CivWiz collects and stores data on its users, cybersecurity experts from the MIT community will be very valuable in ensuring that such data is effectively and ethically protected against cybersecurity threats. 

Market barriers: 

1. User Adoption/Market Awareness: CivWiz, like any other new platform, may face challenges when it comes to building awareness around or driving engagement with the app. Monetary support from MIT  will expand our capacity to promote the app through advertisements, organize roll-out events and conferences, launch social media campaigns, etc. Non-monetary support in the form of marketing expertise from the MIT  community will help us to organize and execute these campaigns effectively. 

2. Partnership Development: The MIT community will provide CivWiz with a rich bank of organizations, student-led or otherwise, that can provide valuable content for the app. These organizations might also aid CivWiz’s mission by making us aware of volunteer and civic engagement opportunities that can be added to the app’s soon-to-come resource page. 

3. Monetization/Commercialization: Business-minded experts from the MIT  community can help CivWiz develop a long-term monetization strategy that ensures the platform’s financial stability and viability while not departing from its missions and values. 

We firmly believe that CivWiz is innovative enough to revolutionize civic learning and foster a culture of active civic engagement among students across the United States. Here are a few things that differentiate CivWiz from traditional modes of civics education: 

1. Cost: That the CivWiz app is free is central to its ability to achieve the broad impact to which it aspires. There are no monetary barriers that stand between potential users and the CivWiz platform. This alone sets it above traditional civics education mediums which usually have a hefty cost associated with them (tuition, enrollment fees, material costs, etc.). 

2. Accessibility: CivWiz aims to build civic competency from the ground up. Thus, users do not need any prior knowledge of or familiarity with civics to benefit from the app. Moreover, given that smartphones are now ubiquitous, the vast majority of  CivWiz’s target audience—young people—already have the means to download and play CivWiz any time. 

3. Emphasis on data-driven decisions: Unlike traditional approaches to civics education, CivWiz is dynamic and ready to adapt to feedback from its users. The ultimate goal of CivWiz is to improve rates of civic engagement and competency among young people. Collecting data on how well we are achieving this goal has and will continue to allow us to make informed design decisions for CivWiz to make it as good and effective as it can possibly be. 

4. Gamified Progression: A large part of CivWiz’s appeal is that it uses gamified progression to make civics learning fun and engaging. By making learning seem like a game, CivWiz has an advantage over traditional methods of civics education which tend to be perceived as more “boring.” 

5. Emphasis on student involvement: CivWiz is an app made by students for students. This means that the CivWiz development team is uniquely well-equipped to understand and respond to the needs and wishes of the app’s target audience. 

6. Strong Expert Backing: Behind the student-led CivWiz development team is a strong network of educational experts and civic activists who work hard to ensure that the app’s content is effective, appropriate, and accurate. 

7. Multi-faceted nature: CivWiz’s approach to improving rates of civics engagement doesn’t end with education. CivWiz’s approach is unique in that it also equips its users with real-world resources that empower them to affect real change in their communities. Examples of these resources include voter registration information, information about contacting elected officials, and information regarding volunteer opportunities. 

8. Emphasis on partnerships: Finally, CivWiz’s approach to civics education is innovative because it emphasizes community involvement in the curriculum creation process.

Our primary impact goals are: 

1. To empower people to have informed discussions about a wide range of civics-related issues: This goal involves providing people with the civic vocabulary they need to tackle complex issues ranging from racism to Constitutional law and everything in between. 

2. To empower people to affect real change and become more engaged in their communities: This goal involves providing people with the resources they need to become involved in civic and community life. Specifically, the CivWiz app will achieve this goal through its resource hub which will be home to voter registration information, information about contacting one’s elected officials, information regarding volunteer opportunities, etc.

3. To enrich our own Student Fellows: This goal involves providing our Student Fellows with real-world research and content creation experience that is transferable to whatever field they wish to pursue a career in. The continuance and expansion of the CivWiz Student Fellows program are central to the pursuit of this impact goal. 

4. To develop quality relationships with our partner organizations:  This goal involves integrating with communities such as that which this program provides. We also aim to reach out to student-led organizations and activist groups here at the University of Pittsburgh and eventually at other universities as we open up the app to more users. 

We plan to measure our progress toward our impact goals primarily through user-data analysis and end-user surveying. Some specific indicators essential to measuring our progress toward these goals include the quality of content created by the CivWiz student fellows, trends in the adoption of and engagement with the application, rates of civic competence and engagement among our users, and the number/quality of partnerships formed with other organizations that share our goals and values. 

The CivWiz gaming application will be used to provide students in learning settings with questions and simple games to offer hands-on education in civics.  We will receive additional help from our superiors at the Frederick Honors College, tweaks to the app from our developers, and funding from institutions such as MIT.  At the end of this year, we will release the app in beta to the students and faculty of the University of Pittsburgh.  This will give us mass beta-testing and troubleshooting through our user data analysis which will allow us to fine-tune the function of the app.

CivWiz will then have more credibility, more attention, and most importantly better features due to our streamlining of features in response to the way that users actually use the app.

With this streamlined version of CivWiz now complete, we will be able to release the app to our institutional partners and finally to a wide release on all major platforms.

CivWiz will provide students with new-found knowledge and resources to affect change in their communities.  Using the civic education we have provided, as well as the resources within the application for voter registration, information on elections, and opportunities for civic engagement near the user they will be well-equipped to make real change wherever they live.

The CivWiz app is built on JavaScript (JS). Our Development team uses React JS to develop the framework of the app simultaneously on Android and iOS operating system, Node JS for backend development, and REST API and other JS tools for general front-end development. 

One huge advantage that CivWiz has over traditional civic learning mediums is its robust database of stored user-data. With this database, we can (and do) analyze how different groups of people conceptualize and act on civics-related issues. The data is collected through user interaction with the app, managed on the administrator panel, and stored on a cloud-based database. Once stored, the technical team uses analytics tools like Python and R to parse the data.

CivWiz is part of the University of Pittsburgh's Center on Race and Social Problems and the University of Pittsburgh's Frederick Honors College Social Innovation Program. The University of Pittsburgh is a non-profit institution. 

Before joining Pitt’s School of Social Work, Ron Idoko—CivWiz’s founder and Team Lead—worked in the University’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (OEDI), where he dedicated his time to crafting and executing programming to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion as institutional components of social and academic engagement at the university. Connor Diaz, CivWiz’s Outreach Coordinator, has also worked in the OEDI. As such, diversity, equity, and inclusion, are principles that guide CivWiz’s development at every level. 

Moreover, the content behind CivWiz is formed around the Social Equity Consciousness framework developed by the University’s Center on Race and Social Problems. Grounded in research, education, and praxis, this framework fosters the personal and collective development of social equity consciousness, which is defined as “the dispositions, understanding, awareness, and skills that empower us to contemplate and cultivate social equity.” The ultimate goal of this framework is to catalyze community-wide opportunities for the development of programs and resources that encourage embracing our social differences and equitable social change in our communities. 

The questions and question categories found in the CivWiz app were and will continue to be created with this framework in mind. For example, the “educational inequality” category and its corresponding questions were created with the Framework’s “Gauging Social Inequities” node in mind. The Framework can be viewed in full here: https://www.diversity.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/social_equity_consciousness.pdf

CivWiz’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion does not end here, however. The selection process for the CivWiz Student Fellows prioritizes diversity in all its forms: identity, academic field, research interests, etc. CivWiz’s status as a free application that will eventually be open to anyone who wishes to download it is demonstrative of the project’s commitment to equity; by making the app free we are removing the financial systemic barriers that typically stand between people and civics education. Finally, the diversity of the questions found in the CivWiz application as well as the question categories that concern themselves with educating the app’s users about various cultures—ethnic, religious, or otherwise—around the world demonstrates CivWiz’s commitment to inclusion. 

At present, the CivWiz team plans to fund the app’s development through sustained donations and grants. Three of the CivWiz Student Fellows—Connor Diaz included—dedicate most of their time to searching out relevant funding opportunities and applying for them. In the past few weeks, the team has identified the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the HerbBlock Foundation, and the Rogovy Foundation as potential sources of monetary support. Support from these foundations and others will hopefully fund CivWiz through the entirety of its development, which we anticipate being the most cost-intensive phase of its existence. 

That said, the team is open to the idea of commercializing the app when it comes time to fully release it. CivWiz will always be free to use, but a commercialized version of the app might include within it in-app purchases for cosmetic items or other competitive perks. 

The CivWiz team is currently operating on a Pitt Seed Grant totaling $50,000 awarded to the project in 2021. In the past few weeks, CivWiz has also secured support from the Martinson Applied Projects (MAPs) program through the University of Pittsburgh's Frederick Honors College.