Mavis Talking Books and Edubot

According to UNICEF, Nigeria has about 20.2 million children out of school - the highest in the world. 

There is already a shortage of teachers for the in-school children with a recent report from the Universal Basic Education Board (UBEC) stating that of the 694,078 teachers needed at the primary school level across the country, only 499,202 teachers are available. Reports show that in different geopolitical regions, up to 50% (and up to 70% in other regions) of the available teachers are not qualified.

Most of these out-of-school children are in the hinterland areas where English - the language in which most education is done in Nigeria, isn't the language of their immediate environment - indicating that the teachers they need should be conversant with the language of the immediate environment of the learners, further reducing the pool of teachers that can have any sort of transformative impact on the learners. 

Though the introduction of technology is a good way to bring structured quality content to the learners, conventional education technologies available such as mobile phones and computers face their own challenges in hinterland areas when it comes to the availability of power and internet. Due to the poverty in those areas, providing such materials for the learners brings security issues as well because those devices are desirable to ordinary members of those communities. 

Concentrating these devices in the hands of the teachers alone leaves the community with the same problem that if these teachers improve themselves, they leave these hinterland areas in search of greener pastures, leaving the learners with the same problem they had at the beginning. Those who don't improve themselves are often even afraid to properly use these technologies to improve their lessons further reducing the possibility of improved learning outcomes. 

This system also makes it hard to carry along those with learning difficulties and they are often left behind as the teacher carries along at the pace of the fastest learner or at least at the average learning pace of the learners leaving those with learning disabilities behind and often times unable to participate in such interventions. 

Our solution is a combination of two technologies, aimed to both foster learner-centered education and Learning Facilitator empowerment. The first technology is the Mavis Talking Books with the second being the Edu-bot - the Mavis AI-powered WhatsApp chatbot. 

The Mavis Talking Book simply consists of the Mavis Pen and the Mavis Book. Tap on the Mavis Book with the Mavis Pen and enter an interesting and interactive audio-visual world with lessons, games, and songs. With the content delivered in the language of the learner's immediate environment, assimilation is easier, and learning outcomes are greatly improved. 

The Learning Model involves in most cases, small-group learning where learners sit in groups of 3 and share one Mavis Talking Book kit. A learning facilitator can monitor a good number of these small groups, moving around to ensure that the learners are learning. 

This method also makes it very possible to group learners according to their learning capacity and level to ensure that the learners learn at their own pace and are not intimidated by the speed of other learners. A link to the  product video can be found 

To enable Learning Facilitators (who sometimes in these hinterland areas could be just respected members of the community) to know what to do when facilitating their lessons, we have introduced a WhatsApp chatbot. Ordinarily, seeing that these Learning Facilitators come from these underserved communities getting those with the quality, experience, and confidence to innovate around the ed-tech solution is very difficult. The chatbot is basically like having an experienced coach with the Learning Facilitator. They can navigate to whatever lesson they're doing with the Talking Books and receive step-by-step guides on what the objectives are and what they should do with the learners, eliminating their fear of new technology and giving them the confidence they need to facilitate their lesson. 

Our solution serves two main categories of people: 

1. Learners in underserved communities: These children oftentimes don't have access to quality education, have limited dreams, and are easily coopted into insurgent groups, further worsening the security situation in Nigeria. Providing them access to quality education in a language they understand improves their overall wellbeing, gives them something to hope for and puts them in a better place to benefit from other interventions. The group learning model also develops their sense of community and responsibility. 
2. Learning Facilitators: These can be teachers in the area or respected members of their community. These people also use the Talking Books to improve their subject content expertise. They use the chatbot to build their confidence as they get information on how to particularly conduct their Mavis lessons. This symbiotic way of learning also fosters a good relationship between the Learning Facilitator and the learners. 

The ripple effect reaches the community coalition officers, the parents of the children and the community as a whole.

Our team consists of professionals and experts in Technology and innovation, strategy, teaching, and Basic Education, as well as psychology and behavioral insight into the learning patterns of children and learning facilitators. We are also situated in the North where most of the out of school learners stay. Our headquarters is in Abuja, the Federal Capital of Nigeria and so is easy to interface with the Headquarters of most of the organizations that we deal with. 

Our team lead is also the Engineer in charge of building out the Mavis Talking Books and the Mavis Chatbot. He has also been to all the areas where the Talking Books are being used, training the Learning Facilitators, interfacing with the local and international Organizations, meeting with the stakeholders, and most importantly, interfacing with the children and understanding their learning patterns. 

We continue to modify our solutions based on what we see on the field and the fact that the products were developed in-house means that making changes and additions to the product based on what is required in the field, developing new languages, and partnering with other Technology Innovations to make learning easier for the learners is very possible.  

So far we have built out the Mavis Talking Books for literacy and Numeracy for Basic Education in English, Hausa, and Kanuri Language. We have served about 14,090 learners with the Mavis Talking Books and up to 283 Learning Facilitators with the Mavis Talking Books technology. 

We have worked with International Organizations such as the FCDO (DFID as at the time of implementation), International Rescue Committee (IRC), the US Embassy Abuja, and local organizations such as AreaI Africa, Teach the Child and other organizations in the country. These are the organizations that have sponsored the use of the Mavis Talking Books to different underserved communities from low cost primary schools in Lagos, to government schools in Abuja all the way to out-of-school children in Borno State and IDP camps in Abuja, Adamawa and other areas around Nigeria. 

We have also worked with organizations that work with special needs children mainly because of the fact that the audio visual nature of the Mavis Talking Books makes it easy for the children with learning disabilities to use repeatedly until it sticks with them. 

We have done multiyear interventions with some of these organizations, scaling up and expanding the project at each stage. One of such examples is our current work with the International Rescue Committee which is currently in its third phase  providing learning to out-of-school children in Borno state Nigeria. 

1. In the first phase, they did a feasibility and desirability study where it was seen that the learners and the Learning Facilitators found the Talking Books very helpful. We found increased attendance from the learners and an eagerness to learn. 
2. In the second phase, they did an implementation study to assess if there are actual improvements in learning outcomes for the learners. This second phase was also very successful and we can share the reports with you on request. Other research especially optimal sharing ratios for the learners were tested.
3. We are currently in the third phase where we are evaluating the effectiveness for scaleup. Things from the implementation research that would further help the Learning Facilitators with their lessons have been implemented. One of these is the Mavis Chatbot. So far the implementation has been amazing and the reviews from the Learning Facilitators show that it has greatly improved their ability to facilitate the Mavis lessons. 

There are several hurdles that we currently face and we feel strongly that Solve will be in the best place to help us navigate this terrain: 

1. Though we are a for-profit company, we deal with two main market targets: the NGOs, governments, and organizations that support out-of-school children that can't purchase the Mavis Talking Books themselves and are in dire need of education support and then there's the other side where we have regular parents buying the Talking Books for their children for after school support or even homeschooling. Knowing how to position ourselves is usually a struggle and we feel that Solve can help us put some clarification to this.
2. Most of our interventions are with Local and International agencies running their education programs and we come in to support their initiatives with our own programs. As a result, we are sometimes limited to the scope of what they want us to do and the roles they want us to play. Gathering our own evidence from our own fully funded program will help us get the required data and set relevant templates for implementing our programs with other organizations and governments. 
3. We've recorded more success with International and Local organizations. However, we know that for scaleup, we would need to further engage the governments to have their buy-in and support and this is something we haven't been able to do as well as we would love to. We believe that Solve's involvement, support, and training will give us more insight as to how we can approach this. 
4. We intend to go beyond Nigeria into other African countries. Adapting our solution to fit their requirements and the issues of international businesses is something we haven't cracked yet. With Solve's involvement, we feel we will get the required experience that will give us a head start in making this happen. 

The normal solution to education in out-of-school areas has been interventions to increase enrollment in schools. This introduces a learner-centered model that scales the ordinary hurdles of technology implementation in rural communities in Nigeria such as lack of electricity or internet access. 

The fact that the Talking Books are programmed in the language of the immediate environment makes assimilation a lot easier and has proven to have a lot of success.  

The fact that learning can happen anywhere eliminates the need for extra capital expenditure on buildings and associated infrastructure. This way learning can happen anywhere, anytime - even for those who go to work in the mornings or go herding during the day. Learning is made flexible for them. 

The Learning Facilitators learn from the same materials that the learners are learning from. This way learning never stops even if the Learning Facilitators get better jobs and new Learning Facilitators are brought into the program.

Using technology that is not far from what they have always been used to - a book and a pen for the Talking Books and WhatsApp for the Mavis chatbot, it provides a soft landing in terms of introduction to education technology, showing the benefits of technology in education and making them more open to accepting more advanced forms of technology in education. 

Our theory of change basically states that if we have out-of-school children and we have them use Non-Formal Learning Centers to learn using the Mavis Talking Books, programmed in the Language of their Immediate environment, facilitated by Learning Facilitators who would be teachers or respected members of their community, we will see improved learning outcomes in the Children. 

The Learning Facilitators will get subject matter expertise from using the Mavis Talking Books and improve their capacity to facilitate the lessons by making use of the Mavis Chatbot. 

The small group learning model ensures that the learners here, communicate among themselves, understand, and can ask questions to the Learning Facilitators. 

The fact that the structured content is on the Mavis Pens and that it can be charged by simple solar devices (having no screen) means that learning can continue without the internet or electricity supply. 

Our impact goals include : 

1. Improved Learning Outcomes for the learners in underserved areas in Nigeria - To measure this, we do baseline and end-line tests for the participants of our programs and record the learning gains. 
2. Improved quality of teaching and facilitating - we measure this by focused sessions with the teachers and discussions with the learners and community coalition officers who though not teachers, monitor the activities in the Non-Formal Learning Centers. 

The core technologies powering our solutions are Optical Index (OID) technology for the Mavis Talking Books and blend of Messaging Technology and Artificial Intelligence for our Mavis Chatbot. 

The OID technology consists of the infrared camera in the pen and the printed patterns on the books - more like barcode scanning. The different patterns on the book have IDs which when clicked on with the Mavis Pen produce the audio that they've been programmed to produce. 

The Whatsapp Chatbot makes use of the messaging technology but this time with the opportunity to preload a knowledge base for the information regarding the Mavis Talking Books so that Learning Facilitators that have direct questions can get required answers from the AI backend. At the moment, our system is linked to open AI's GPT-4 model. 

Full time Staff - 10 

Part-time Staff - 2 

Contract Workers - 3 

We've been working on this solution for about 8 years. 

At Mavis Computel, we make sure that everyone working with us feels welcome, ensuring that different perspectives on the education problems in the space we operate in are considered. Our motto - everyone learning and everywhere a classroom shows that we intend that no one be left behind and we make sure it is reflected in our team structure. Our working hours for our leadership team and staff are flexible with focus only on being able to deliver on the set tasks in line with the vision of our organization. Our hiring for core and contract staff follows the same rules. We are focused on delivering on tasks and building one another to the best versions of ourselves in a way that is most convenient for all the members of our team and we've discovered that they work best when they are comfortable and find that the work structure values our personalities, our time as well as our other interests. We forged partnerships and worked with different organizations local and international that share similar values. 

Our business model involves mainly providing the Mavis Talking Books with the Mavis Education small-group learning model and the Mavis WhatsApp chabot to the learners and learning facilitators in underserved areas particularly in Nigeria. 

We provide this mainly to organizations local and international that intend to do education services in these underserved communities. They provide the funding while we work with the Community leaders, members of the mass literacy program, and the State Basic Education program to make sure that the government is aware of the ongoing interventions. This is so that there's the possibility of scaleup with government intervention at the end of our projects. 

Our programs usually start with Stakeholder meetings to discuss with the community leaders and members of the Education sector in the state where we are carrying out the project. This enables us to set up a Technical Working Group that provides oversight during the project. Mid-project and end-project workshops are carried out to show them what we have done, take their input and corrections, and position the projects for adoption and scaleup. Also, due to the fact that the Talking Books are given to the community and that the Learning Facilitators have permanent access to the chatbot, using these materials post-project duration and sustaining learning for the children is more feasible. 

After the Stakeholder meetings, we get the learners and Learning Facilitators who will participate in the project. We train the Learning Facilitators on how to use the Mavis Talking Books and introduce them to the WhatsApp chatbot that has all the information they need to properly facilitate these lessons. We also hire or train available coaches in the area that go around to make sure that the Learning Facilitators are facilitating the learning process for the learners. 

The deployment comes after training. The learners are introduced to the tools and learning commences immediately. 

If budgeted for, we do monitoring and evaluation using Early Grade Reading Assessment and Early Grade Math Assessment for the learners. 

Most of our contracts have come from International and Local NGOs that are focused on using Education Technology to improve learning outcomes for children in underserved communities. We have worked with them to provide school strengthening, and after-school support for low-performing learners, and out-of-school children in underserved communities, IDP camps, and such areas. 

We intend to properly document our processes with these learners so that we can attract more evidence-based funding.

We constantly apply for more grants to ensure that more learners have access to this learning opportunity. 

We also work with the governments to help them address the out-of-school problem, providing alternative means to educate the children without the high capital expenditure of building more schools and recurrent expenditure of trained teachers. Though this angle hasn't been explored to the fullness of its potential, we hope the training and experience at MIT solve will help us better make use of these opportunities, especially in the area of sustainability and scaleup through service contracts. 

The quality of our materials and learning process is opening up the door to the homeschooling environment where parents of children who are unable to pay the high school fees of bigger private schools, enroll their children in smaller schools and equip them with the talking books to supplement their learning and help them to catch up on their own. This is purely commercial as these parents buy the Talking Books for their children and serve as the learning facilitators to help them learn. 

Providing this blend of commercial and social impact income streams is part of how we have been sustainable and intend to be even more profitable.