The school system in Colombia is at capacity and cannot retain its students. 80% of out-of-school persons are past the age for catch-up programming, with an increase of 60% in adolescents dropping out in 2019. The longer students are out of school, the less likely they are to return. Missing school increases risk of violence and negatively affects their health, education and economic prosperity.
The Audio-Class System uses a multichannel approach to share educational content at different levels of interactivity to match the level of access of the student. Automated messaging systems such as whatsapp and interactive voice response allow the student to have an engaging remote learning experience that responds to them quickly and at any time of the day. While radio is our lowest interactive experience, our radio content is designed with pauses and responses to allow the student to gauge his progress. Teachers are able to keep an eye on their students and cater their learning to their needs. We have received qualitative feedback that our digital teacher is supportive, charismatic, explains well and our adapted learning activities are seen as fun. On the teacher end we’ve heard how the tool can be used to strengthen their current remote learning practices and how it can be used in presencial classroom to encourage and retain students and for practice before major exams.
We are in partnership with 3 schools, the regional secretary of education in Norte de Santander and the lead organization in the educational cluster in emergencies, Norwegian Refugee Council. Our scaling strategy aims to scale through individual schools offering flexible learning models to vulnerable populations. Working in partnership with governments, refugee communities, and peer organizations, AudioClass is a low-cost, scalable, in-demand solution with the potential to influence national and global policy around access and quality in education and can reach children across a variety of contexts.
If you want to try our prototype, please reach out to us and we’ll give you a code to test the whatsapp model of the intervention. The Audio-Class System was conceptualized in June of 2020, to this day March 2021, we have begun a two week pilot of our system with 100 students in 3 schools in Colombia, both in rural and urban areas. Over the next 3 years we hope to launch our system in Colombia.
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