DAH-VARSITY AI

Using the cultural relevancy of video games, superheroes, and hip-hop culture we use AI during gameplay and the creation of User Generated Content to provide recommendations of resources within a 2-mile proximity to K-8 learners and their parents. 

To enhance inclusion and foster effective learning experiences, we collect the following data from the platform (prioritizing privacy, informed consent and transparency throughout the process):

1. User Engagement Metrics:
   • Time spent: Track how long students engage with different components (e.g., hip-hop culture, coding challenges, 3D modeling).
   • Frequency of logins: Understand how often students access the platform.
   • Completion rates: Monitor the completion of modules or challenges.
2. Learning Progress and Mastery:
   • Assessment scores: Collect data on student performance in quizzes, gamified assignments, coding exercises and design challenges.
   • Skill progression: Track students’ growth in STEM concepts, problem-solving, and creative skills.
3. User Demographics and Representation:
   • Ethnicity and background: Gather information on students’ racial and cultural backgrounds.
   • Gender: Understand gender representation.
   • Socioeconomic status: Consider socioeconomic factors that may impact access and participation.
4. Feedback and Sentiment Analysis:
   • Surveys and feedback forms: Regularly collect feedback from students about their experiences.
   • Sentiment analysis: Use AI to analyze sentiment in student comments or forum discussions.
5. Interaction Patterns:
   • Navigation behavior: Study how students move through different sections of the platform.
   • Collaboration: Identify patterns of collaboration among students (e.g., group projects).
6. Content Preferences:
   • Popular modules: Determine which topics or activities resonate most with students.
   • Preferred media: Understand whether students engage more with music, comics, or coding challenges.
7. Accessibility Metrics:
   • Usage across devices: Analyze whether students access the platform via mobile, tablet, or desktop.
   • Screen reader compatibility: Ensure accessibility for visually impaired students.

The collected data will permit the following functional enhancements:

1.     AI-Driven Personalization:

a.     Recommendation systems: Use AI algorithms to suggest personalized content based on students’ interests and learning styles.

b.     Adaptive learning paths: Tailor learning experiences to individual needs using AI.

2.     Retention and Dropout Analysis:

a.     Identify at-risk students: Predict potential dropouts based on engagement patterns.

b.     Interventions: Use AI to recommend personalized interventions to keep students motivated.

3.     Long-Term Impact Assessment:

a.     Alumni success: Track graduates’ career paths and achievements.

b.     University enrollment: Monitor whether students transition to higher education.

We will also research the following use cases to deploy AI:

1. Personalized Learning Paths:
   • Use AI algorithms to adapt content delivery based on individual progress, learning pace, and preferences.
2. Content Generation:
   • AI can create additional rap lyrics, coding challenges, or comic book scenarios to keep content fresh and engaging.
3. Natural Language Processing (NLP):
   • Implement chatbots or virtual mentors powered by NLP to provide instant assistance and answer student queries.
4. Predictive Analytics:
   • Predict student success or challenges based on historical data, allowing timely interventions.
5. Representation Enhancement:
   • Use AI to highlight diverse role models and trailblazers within the platform, reinforcing positive representation.

In 2021 we identified that there is a need to upskill Gen Z for new jobs in technical and creative industries as the Baby Boomer population leaves the workforce. Microsoft estimates there will be a global need for over 149 million tech jobs in the next 5 years. Our CMU NSF I-Corps research evaluated how increasing diversity can be a solution. African Americans and Hispanics are 44% (~23 M) of K12 students. African Americans and Hispanics comprise approximately 15% of the technology workforce.  In a city like Pittsburgh, for example, this has disturbing economic effects. The median income of African Americans, for example, is $32,000, and on average their education performance on state Math and English tests is 30-40 points behind whites. Entry-level $20/HR boost income to $43,206. In the gaming industry, while Black and Hispanics are more likely to play video games they represent 15% of the workforce. AI however presents an emerging opportunity with Black and Hispanics constituting 30% of the US workforce. This is double the rate in Tech and video games respectively but still below the overall workforce population percentage. In our research with the NSF, a common refrain we found is "You can't be what you can't see". This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy due to education inequity and a lack of cultural relevance in the context of these technologies to the lives of their individuals and examples of successful career journeys from people who look similar. While the journey of Damola and Wole Idowu as multi-generational black engineers who both got into select universities like Syracuse and Carnegie Mellon respectively at the age of 15 can inspire students, Blacks in engineering however are a rarity who represent 4% of the US engineering workforce. 

DAH-VARSITY AI offers the opportunity to revolutionize the way we educate our future leaders of tomorrow. 

For Pre-K-8 learners the AI system will be able to learn, identify, and report on students’ learning styles, areas of strength, and areas of growth. It will also be able to quickly adjust the level of difficulty while utilizing the platform. These things are important as we look at the teacher-to-student ratio and how to quickly address the needs of students. The ability to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses across the board also offers up additional information on the effectiveness of the curriculum or the method the teacher/school is delivering the content. Early identification or detection of needs is beneficial to ensure that students are not left behind when struggling to understand or working to demonstrate understanding.

From the educators’ perspective, the AI-generated reports will be able to offer reflection, correction, results of assessments, and suggestions that they normally have to work on off the clock at home. Being able to reclaim their time from manually writing these reports from scratch for each student allows them to reallocate their time to other pressing needs their students may have or to help them prep for their next lesson/class.

We are led by multi-generational Black Engineers who both got to select universities like Syracuse and Carnegie Mellon respectively at 15. 

We are advised and have partnered with distinguished scholars from some of the most prestigious universities in the world and corporate leaders in education.

Damola Idowu- CEO and co-founder of Toyz Electronics

Wole Idowu- CTO co-founder of Toyz Electronics

Drew Davidson, PhD - Advisor

Dr Jimyse Brown, President & Founder, Hampton Brown Consulting- Partner

Nikolas Martelaro, PhD- Research Partner and Professor Carnegie Mellon University 

Brett Ashley Crawford, Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University - Consultant

Toniesha Taylor, Ph.D. Texas Southern University Partner 

Symone Campbell, PhD Howard University Partner

Amy Yeboah Quarkume, Ph. D Howard University Partner

Todd Shurn, PhD Howard University Research Partner and Collaborator

Ganesh Mani, Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business Masters of Data Science Program PhD Research Partner and Collaborator 

Sean Branagan, Syracuse University Newhouse School of Communications  Advisor 

Steve Issacs, Epic Games  Collaborator 

Ernesto Escobar, Duke University Pratt School of Engineering Partner

Jason Perry Howard University PhD  Research Partner and Professor 

Deborah Johnson Howard  University Research Partner and Collaborator 

Kevin Deitrick Carnegie Mellon University Masters of Data Science Program Executive Director 

Jacoby Dubose, Ph.D. Howard University Partner

Christopher Goranson, PhD Carnegie Mellon University Capstone Partner 

Rockell A Brown Burton PhD Syracuse University Partner

Here is a link to letters of support

https://drive.google.com/file/...

We have built several partnerships. Our customers and partners include:

Manchester Academic Charter School (MACS) in Pittsburgh, PA. We are working with 15 students and impacting over 80 this Spring semester. 

The City of Pittsburgh Rec to Tech where we worked with over 60 students.

University of Pittsburgh where we had a cohort of 12 Middle School Students in the pre-college program Summer 23

We ran a cohort of 20 Elementary School Students at  Lemoyne Community Center in Washington PA Summer 23

We ran a cohort of 20 Elementary School Students at the Dragon’s Den in Homestead Pittsburgh Summer 23

Pennsylvania

New York 

Texas

Maryland

DC

DAH-VARSITY AI offers the opportunity to revolutionize the way we educate our future leaders of tomorrow. By offering the opportunity to develop STEAM skills through a 3D game environment, Toyz Electronics brings a way to change how educators engage with learners and how learners implement and practice lessons learned in the classroom.

Our innovation is mixing superhero and rap culture together to inspire students for STEAM. It combines science fiction with urban culture and storytelling that helps students think beyond their environment. This allows them to see themselves as STEAM superheroes. Our solution has 4 components; Inspire, Learn, Create, Sell. Our CMU-NSF I-Corps findings suggest that to engage more underrepresented students in STEAM you need a product that will Inspire students with visual representation.  Students need a culturally relevant curriculum to Learn. They need access to tools to Create. Given a choice of food security or STEAM education food comes first so a marketplace to Sell will fund STEAM learning. Our game Dah-Varsity integrates learning management system, TOYZSTEAM, with audio production and character creation tools and marketplace for diverse students to sell their creative works. A fully mobile superhero rap creative platform and marketplace can help scale our innovation to many more students. We have since evolved our innovation to include an AI model that captures information from gameplay to determine interest in further education in STEAM learning and match students with opportunities and resources and alumni communities of colleges that provide pathways to their desired field of study. We have turned user-generated content architecture of games like Minecraft and developed our own experience leveraging hip-hop and storytelling and the results are portfolios that have gotten young black women into colleges like Michigan, Georgia Tech, USC, CMU, and others. We have validated that students who have been assumed to not be capable could be exceptional in only 2 years of training with our platform, curriculum, and support community.  We are combining AI, with a learning management system that leverages eSports and earning badges on STEAM disciplines through gameplay in a real-time 3D video game and teaching students complex topics through project-based learning centered around user-generated content and hip-hop storytelling to amplify the individual voices within geographic areas in a dataset. For example, The Hill District in Pittsburgh has a median income of $20K but there are students we worked with University of Pittsburgh to upskill who told fascinating stories and created 3D avatars and recorded audio that are playable in our Dah-Varsity videogame. Another innovation is using eSports to build interscholastic competition like the NCAA and foster collaborative scholarship and create workforce pipelines and economic mobility for underserved populations. Additionally, we pair this with near-peer mentorship and University alumni. This brings equity to learners. 

Parents and guardians to keep up with the progress of their children so they have a more consistent report of where their children land on the charts. Through DAH-VARSITY, parents and teachers have a way of catching children before they get behind.

Using our Superhero Rap Concept students tell their biographical story and STEAM superhero creative story in our real-time 3D video game. They record their story in immersive audio and use our 3D video game. We simulate various career pathways and integrate learning engineering so students can obtain badges and take assessments during gameplay. This data is fed to our AI model which provides students with resources, mentors, career guidance, and connections to jobs and education opportunities. While playing the game students create user-generated content that serves as their portfolio. This is featured on a marketplace where students' resumes are displayed like gamified trading cards that update with gameplay as they earn STEAM badges and gain credentials.

We use LATENT DIRICHLET ALLOCATION to determine what the student interest is by analyzing their profile and bio. From here we weigh different areas of interest (Science, Technology Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) to analyze topics they will find interesting to study.

We use generative AI to provide suggestions and options they could pursue. 

We will also research the following use cases to deploy AI:

1. Personalized Learning Paths:
   • Use AI algorithms to adapt content delivery based on individual progress, learning pace, and preferences.
2. Content Generation:
   • AI can create additional rap lyrics, coding challenges, or comic book scenarios to keep content fresh and engaging.
3. Natural Language Processing (NLP):
   • Implement chatbots or virtual mentors powered by NLP to provide instant assistance and answer student queries.
4. Predictive Analytics:
   • Predict student success or challenges based on historical data, allowing timely interventions.
5. Representation Enhancement:
   • Use AI to highlight diverse role models and trailblazers within the platform, reinforcing positive representation.
6. AI-Driven Personalization:

a.  Recommendation systems: Use AI algorithms to suggest personalized content based on students’ interests and learning styles.

 b.     Adaptive learning paths: Tailor learning experiences to individual needs using AI.

We currently have tested our curriculum with 5000+ Students in Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, Maryland, DC, and Virginia. Since 2020 We have been BNY Mellon Upprize Social Innovation Challenge semifinalists and have conducted CMU-NSF I-Corps research. We launched Dah-Varsity in the Google Play Store in May 2021. We have been able to observe outcomes from the deployment of our software in informal learning setting and begun working in a formal learning setting this spring. We have built several partnerships. Our customers and partners include:

Manchester Academic Charter School (MACS) is a Middle School in Pittsburgh, PA which is partnering with us to develop approaches to build better pathways to higher education and workforce for diverse and disadvantaged students by engaging middle school students and their parents. We are currently working with 15 students and impacting over 80 this Spring semester. 

The City of Pittsburgh Rec to Tech where we informally deliver STEAM education using our curriculum and Dah-Varsity video game on City of Pittsburgh Windows computers. We worked with over 60 students in K-12.

They were able to learn about concept art, create their own stories, and 3D avatars, and record audio stories.   

University of Pittsburgh where we trained students, and they had a cohort of 12 Middle School Students at the pre-college program Summer 23

·       They were able to create their stories, 3D avatars, record audio, and feed information in our AI model that tells the socioeconomic status of where they are from. 

We ran a cohort of 20 Elementary School Students at the Lemoyne Community Center in Washington PA Summer 23

·       They were able to learn about concept art, create their stories, 3D avatars, and record audio stories.   

We ran a cohort of 20 Elementary School Students at the Dragon’s Den in Homestead Pittsburgh Summer 23

·       They were able to learn about concept art, create their stories, and use the audio recording function of our game to help with literacy challenges.

We have even built a product for this approach with a Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) expert. https://toyzsteam.com/dei/  Students work in inclusive groups and use creative storytelling based on this concept to learn each other's stories and become a super team for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Our work thus far has been heavily focused on building relationships with the community to deliver our culturally relevant and responsive curriculum. CEO Damola Idowu has a background of over 29 years of amplifying voices and issues affecting the community and developing solutions based on responsive engagement. Our approach has been to listen, outreach, collaborate, and then take best practices and build upon them. We have worked with organizations like Remake Learning which have thousands of educators in their network. We have also worked with foundations focused on challenges facing the community to engage and deliver customizable and flexible solutions to them and their partners. This has been paramount in how we combat the bias inherent in developing AI. We also convened scholars on our team from diverse backgrounds such as HBCUs like Howard University and TSU. We also are seeking input from targeted communities. 

In identified targeted communities, we also offer support for underfunded or defunded STEAM departments. This program allows students from those communities to still find ways to have access to a sector where they are ostracized, underrepresented, and steered away from pursuing. STEAM is important to the academic, social, and emotional development of a child, with the skills learned often translating to whatever sector each student decides to pursue. Addressing this head-on through an accessible, feasible, and relatable physical manifestation gives students the autonomy to tell their stories, gain knowledge, and be able to see what they are trying to achieve without losing yet another resource that will help them overcome systemic and systematic barriers placed before them due to a myriad of reasons.

Through the current platform, utilizing resources, individuals, and companies/organizations within the 2-mile radius, DAH-VARSITY allows a simulated world to become a reality. It gives access to a world that moves from the theoretical to the implementable while addressing the transportation barriers students and communities like the targeted demographic face when trying to access STEAM-related resources. This gives students, teachers, and schools the ability to begin new relationships with those vested in the program and seeing students learn and create as they inspire the next generation of the future leaders of America.

The program also has structures set in place to have scholars work in small groups, which will help them with social, life, and collaborative skill development. These three sectors are also points of where we saw our students regress during COVID-19, leaving this generation developmentally behind in those areas. Using a platform or medium like video games, which was a tool some people, especially our youth, used to keep in touch, connect with, and socialize with others during Covid, is an intentional and engaging decision to reach students where they are at.

10 partime

4 full time

We are working with our team member Dr Jimyse Brown is also a longtime educator and administrator at K-12 schools. She also works at Winchester Thurston to continue to pilot this program. We have several other partners like Manchester Academic Charter School (MACS) who will utilize this program in their Schools and also will work with Remake Learning to identify other partners along with leveraging our University partners who have several middle schools in their ecosystem. 

We provide an affordable, revenue-generating, Ed-Tech and e-commerce platform to increase the diverse talent pool for computer-related careers in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) Industries. Students are trained to make their own toys, making STEAM skill-building fun and engaging. They’re empowered to be TOYZMAKERS. In the curriculum,
students are directed to invent creative characters and designs within a hip-hop-infused universe. They can create comic books, games, 3D models, and music using open-source and free tools that are widely adopted in STEAM jobs. Their created characters are made to showcase each child’s personal obstacles and how he, she, or they overcame them. We ensure the applications are free to the students. Issues of access to quality education, workforce development, and available digital tools are at the core of the problem we are addressing. Problems of race and equity in America have been long documented and not addressed with adequate inclusive empowering technology that develops entrepreneurial skills for economic mobility. We provide Carnegie Mellon developed Maker education to disadvantaged groups for a nominal cost and empower them economically by teaching them to be "TOYZMAKERS". We also inspire them using the real-life story of our Black multi-generational founders via Dah-Varsity mobile game and TOYZSTEAM. Our app is free on iOS and GooglePlay so that globally students can access a version of our game for free. We also have a free version accessible by webGL dahvarsity.app The Dah-Varsity AI is integrated into all versions of our app.

We are a father and son Black duo of creatives, engineers, and entrepreneurs. The issue of racial injustice and lack of access to tech jobs hits home personally. Co-Founder Wole Idowu was one of 5 African Americans who graduated out of his ~300-person class for electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon in 2017. Co-founder Damola Idowu, Wole's dad has had to "Hack" the system to get his son opportunities, and other children aren't as fortunate. Joining Solve will provide access to like-minded problem solvers who can collaborate, and it provides access to resources to address the societal challenges we are addressing. Martin Luther King said it's a cruel joke to ask a man without boots to pull himself up by the bootstrap. Solve and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation can provide us with critical boots to get on the ground and make an impact on the challenges we are addressing. Technical support and financial support are critical for us. Joining Solve will help in both areas. We have developed new technologies for our solution like Artificial Intelligence and worked with the Master of Data Science program at Carnegie Mellon on a capstone project.