Digital Chronicles

Mission: Providing quality and affordable smart solutions for day-to-day education challenges for both rural and urban schools.

Vision:  To create opportunities that promote an education system that is relevant to modern society.

Core values: DC commits to the values of; Integrity, efficiency, accountability and teamwork

• Plans and sets goals and targets for the team to attain in a specific timeframe.
• Oversees functionality and provides guidance, instruction and direction to the team to achieve aligned goals.
• Communicates and motivates the team to remain focused on organization's values, mission and vision.
• Collaborates with stakeholders to ensure projects' harmonization.

The team lead and team members will carefully plan for the LEAP project activities alongside DC's ongoing operations and allocate responsibilities according to areas of expertise. While effecting the aforementioned, time management and efficiency will be of great priority. Collaboration and effective communication within the DC's team and with LEAP Fellows will be considered very key for the LEAP project success.

DC is led by a team of qualified and experienced personnel that are committed to the Organization's core values.

The Team Lead, also CEO, Vincent Kamugisha is a well decorated and experienced teacher with BASS and BEd from Makerere University (MUK) and University of South Africa (UNISA) respectively. He contributed significantly to high learner academic performance as well as extra curricular in Buffalo City Municipality, Eastern Cape, South Africa as well as Mbarara City in Uganda. He envisioned a world of teaching and learning with technology as a driving force and successfully incorporated technology in the teaching process.

The chief of operations (COO), Louis Kamugasha possesses a Social Sciences bachelor's  Degree from Makerere University (MUK) as well as MBA from Kampala International University (KIU). He has experience in Project planning and management and is a valuable asset to this team. His experience in the NGO world and MBA qualification sets him up for our hybrid model of Organization. He will be key in the planning process.

Timothy Atwanzire, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) has a masters Degree in Computer Science from Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) and heads the Systems Development Team (SDT). Timothy is a very enterprising developer, well versed with a number of programming languages, and is proud to be among the pioneer developers that changed the health sector with Telehealth.

This amazing team of leaders position DC strategically to effectively support the LEAP project despite other priorities within the organization.     

A Data-Driven Diagnostic School management system that analyses individual learner potential, guiding teacher's and management's course of action.

While the 21st century has introduced new teaching methodologies, emerging and persistent threats continue to undermine the quality of teaching and learning in Uganda and developing countries.

 A teacher graduates from Teacher Training college with so much excitement to go and change the lives of young people in society. When he/she gets in the classroom, 50-100 pupils coming from diverse background, diverse culture, language and competences are ready to welcome their new teacher. The teacher is already envisioning engineers, doctors, accountants, lawyers, teachers and all sorts of professionals as his/her products to be proud of in future. Quite soon reality sets in. This teacher is assigned not only to one but two or more other classes with almost similar numbers of learners per class. 

A full day of teaching (7am-5pm) is enough to make the teacher tired but he/she has to make lesson plans daily, set assessments, mark and process data for reporting, all of which processes are done manually. Term one and two are handled with vigor and excitement. By the end of the first academic year, burnout signs start manifesting in form of physical and emotional exhaustion. The newly found profession turns into a routine of boredom, with all the joy varnished. Learners get progressed to a new grade when the teacher barely knows them by name.  The teacher has to hang in there because it’s the only source of livelihood. By the end of their last year in primary school, only a few  pupils can make it to a high school of good standard while the majority are welcomed in the sort of high school that absorbs all who failed, as long as they can afford the tuition. Others join fee-free publics secondary schools. Majority from this kind of high school never make it to tertiary institutions. 

The teacher’s dreams are gone, his/her products become jobless and societal menace. They never turn out this way because they never have good brains. No, they all have potential that is not discovered. The work-load without a proper support system is heavy for the teacher to explore learners’ different abilities and competencies. Such is the leaners’ and teachers’ fate not only in Uganda but in Africa and other developing countries. Teacher-retention capacity in schools is currently at its lowest. According to Bureau of labor statistics,40% of new teachers in 2019 had left the teaching profession by the end of 2022. The teacher's work-load, compounded by COVID-19 effects made teaching such demanding profession. Digest of Education statistics 2021 recorded 5.3% School dropout rates in 2020. 

Digital Chronicles (DC) has designed and developed a Data-Driven Diagnostic School Management System (3-D SMS) that has come in handy to save the plight of teachers, learners and school management. 

Most of the countries on the African continent have adopted the governments'  Education Management Information System (EMIS) which focuses more on the number of schools, number learners and teachers and their respective daily attendance, all of which are for accounting purposes. 3-D SMS treats each learner as an individual rather than generalization and returns each individual leaner’s academic and co-curricular capabilities. This feature aids the teacher to customize remediation and necessary support to individual learners thereby harnessing the learner’s full potential. 3-D SMS analyses each teacher’s performance level and highlights potential obstacles to be addressed. It automates most school processes helping school management in decision making with accurate information. After the system has been installed in the school, with an option of either online or offline, DC’s IT team and trainers through a series of sessions, train all system users (teachers and administrators) to use the system effectively. The team makes follow-up visits to review and evaluate success rates and to offer needed assistance. Teachers become more efficient and productive after a rigorous training on how to use the Application. Schools where 3-D SMS is being piloted have demonstrated high leaners pass rate academically, as well as exploring the different leaner giftings outside the classroom. 

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the solution, DC has used formative research, combining usability studies, implementation studies and correlational studies. 

The research focused on three key aspects. The first aspect was to track the features of the application that were frequently used by the teachers and school management. The second aspect aimed at identifying the relationship between  teacher age group and adaptation to the innovation. The third aspect was to determine the effect of teacher training prior the use of application on overall usability.

The research revealed that, most teachers used the solution mostly, at the end of the term to capture learner marks for generating learner report cards. A few teachers had used the innovation along the term to help them identify learner strengths and weaknesses before the formal assessments. The research also revealed that younger teachers below the age of 34 used the solution more than teachers aged 35 and above. The teachers who had received the training were more comfortable using the solution compared to teachers who joined the schools after DC had offered training to teachers. At the time of launching the solution to the, DC concentrated more on demonstrating how the solution worked without emphasizing in-depth training. 

In the pilot group where the solution is being tested, DC has received positive reviews and  overwhelming appreciation about the innovation. The pilot group comprises of private schools but not public or government schools. The test results reveal that we are now ready for the next phase.  Our goal is to transition from the pilot to the scaling stage, taking the solution to both the private and public schools. However, we need to take conscious steps by carrying out in-depth research studies. Strengthening the evidence base will be of highest priority if the transition is to be successful. We need to accelerate the impact of this solution through a stronger connection to evidence. We are lacking in professional research and expertise thus the need for a LEAP project. Recommendations / reports  from LEAP Fellows will guide our scaling process while maximizing benefits and minimizing both short-term and long-term bottlenecks.  

• How does government policy influence teacher adaptation to technology in and out of the classroom?
• How can DC scale its innovation beyond borders at the lowest possible cost but with greatest impact? 
•  Are ELs (Education Leaders) ready and willing to collaborate with ADs (Academic Developers) to advance education? 

To scale our solution for greater impact, we need a course of action based on reliable and verified  data or information. Extensive research done professionally provides a strategy for an action that is less of errors and risks. Our desired outputs of the 12-Week LEAP Project sprint include but not limited to; 

• evidence base research findings that can inform us to scale in a strategic manner,
• a proposed action plan based on the outcomes of the research,
• specific interventions or strategies to address based on the findings of the research,
• suggestions for different directions future research can take. 

Given the above desired outputs of the 12-Week LEAP Project sprint, we believe that the above selected type of research /studies would be more sufficient to gather the necessary data.

As mentioned before, DC is an entity led by a qualified and experienced  team that commits to its values, mission and vision. After the conclusion of the LEAP Project sprint, DC will act upon the resulting outputs in the following way;

• the team will formulate a strategic action plan for scaling based on the recommendations in the LEAP report.
• DC's existing innovation acceleration approach will be aligned to the LEAP recommendations to form a consolidated scaling approach.
• As may be recommended in the report, review or update of the solution may be made before scaling, to maximize solution benefits or gains.
• DC will embark on resource mobilization (both human resource and financial) to effectively implement the recommendations from the report.

Short-term outcomes of the 12-Week LEAP Project sprint for DC and 3-D SMS include but not limited to;

• increased usage of 3-d SMS covering a wider geographical coverage.
• a healthy partnership between government and DC for 3-D SMS. 
• an improved enabling environment for teaching teaching and learning in a wider coverage.
• a good number of teachers delighting themselves in the profession.
• improved productivity for more teachers.

Long-term outcomes of the 12-Week LEAP Project sprint for DC and 3-D SMS include but not limited to;

• A relevant education system that does not only focus on imparting knowledge to learners but also focuses on the diversity in the learner population and explore their potential.
• Increased employability.
• A generation that is economically self-sufficient.
• Better living conditions.