ACKTEC Technologies

Describe the product or program that is the focus of your proposed LEAP project.

ACKTEC Technologies is an edtech company focused on creating an ecosystem for learners. Our platform, KidsQwest focuses on providing children aged 0-12 quality educational courses aggregated from educational institutes with proven track records. Our courses include language, arts, STEM, dance and many more.

Children are often limited to the curriculum and exposure they have in school. The curriculum is largely focused on academic subjects, and sometimes the curriculum is not enough to prepare them for higher learning and holistic development. Parents also face challenges in sending them to enrichment classes after school due to time and financial constraints.

With KidsQwest, children can supplement their academics while going beyond the classroom to develop other skills. Our courses are structured such that there is a progressive curriculum for children to follow. Teachers can use our courses to supplement their teaching. Parents can also expose their children to a multitude of extracurricular activities through our variety of courses for a lower cost.

Select the key characteristics of your target population. Select all that apply.

• Infants (birth to 1 year)
• Pre-primary age children (ages 1-5)
• Primary school children (ages 5-12)
• Rural
• Peri-Urban
• Urban
• Poor
• Low-Income
• Middle-Income

In which countries do you currently operate?

• Indonesia
• Lao PDR
• Malaysia
• Singapore

In which countries do you plan to be operating within the next year?

• Indonesia
• Lao PDR
• Malaysia
• Singapore

How have you worked with affected communities to design your solution?

We have approached schools and residential zones to showcase our product through virtual and on-site demonstrations of our platform. Through these demonstrations, we get to understand the students' and teachers' challenges. 

The curriculum in many schools is sometimes not properly structured and teachers are lacking in ready teaching materials. Preparation of the teaching materials also take up too much of a teacher's time, hence they sometimes are unable to prepare good teaching materials or neglect their students.

There is a need for fun and interactive way for children to stay engaged and learn in school and at home. Due to the pandemic, schools are more open to integrating digital means into lessons. Parents also see the need to nurture the different domains of their learning, beyond their standard school curriculum, such as language, dance, music and STEAM. These would have to be made affordable for parents to support such holistic development of their child from young. 

Our platform KidsQwest help to address these concerns. Our course offerings are structured progressively and teachers can use them to enrich their lessons for children aged 0-12. The lessons are aggregated from reputable sources and lessons are designed to be highly interactive so as to ensure children enjoy these lessons while learning. The wide variety of courses also means that parents can enrol their children for a wide array of lessons for a fraction of the cost if they were to do so for their children in physical tuition and enrichment centres. 

What is your theory of change?

Our theory of change is that if quality education for Indonesian children aged 0-12 years becomes more accessible and affordable, then they would be able to get greater exposure to holistic learning from international curriculum and hence improve and empower more young Indonesian students to be able to compete in the global scene.

Our team procures quality content from many educational partners with proven track records. Their content are digitised and gamified on KidsQwest to make learning engaging and fun for children. Distributors, schools, residential areas and even foundations are channels that we go through to reach out to our target audience.

KidsQwest advocates for holistic learning that goes beyond academic excellence. Teachers can use the academic subject content to supplement learning resources in school. While children are also able to engage in different extracurricular and enrichment courses, such as STEAM, music, dancing and even martial arts courses.

Immediate outputs would be to have more students and teachers to use the platform for teaching and learning. This will allow us to collect data to be able to analyse user behaviour and feedback on how the platform can be further enhanced for users. 

Long term outcomes would be to see and measure the impact of our beneficiaries in terms of their employability and standard of living in the long run.

How are you currently using evidence within your theory of change?

ACKTEC Technologies is at the second level of the Nesta Standard of Evidence. We constantly remain in contact with our partners to check in on the usage of our platforms and the quality of the content. We also speak to teachers to see if there are any observable improvements in the classroom.

We have received positive feedback from some of our partners so far, but many are still in the early stages of use.

How are you currently tracking and measuring your solution’s impact?

We track and measure user behaviour on the platform such as active usage, learning progress and recurring users. 

• The active usage numbers is useful in assessing the efficacy of the courses and gauging exisiting users' experience. 
• Learning progress data is an indicator of how each user benefits and time taken to finish the courses.
• Recurring users are indicative of how useful the platform is for that user and also shows us what type of users are likely to benefit most from the platform.

We also measure how useful and effective for teachers to use the content in schools. This could be done through surveys with the schools on how students' learning and attention in class have improved and also how teachers are able to have more time to focus on students' growth.

These indicators help us measure whether our platform is positively impacting learning outcomes and the holistic development of each child.

One-line project summary:

We strive to create a digital learning ecosystem where educators and learners alike collaborate.

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Pitch your LEAP project: How and where would integrating evidence (or stronger evidence) into your theory of change increase your organization’s impact?

1. What are some other metrics of success that we can show to other potential customers to entice them to use our platform?

2. How should I be pitching this project to obtain more funding from external investors to fuel our growth?

3. Who are some of the other stakeholders that we can partner with to either increase the amount of quality content we can bring onto our platform or provide us with more children we can impact?

We hope we will be able to derive better strategies that will help us to drive user base and ensure users actually use the platform. We strive to make the most impact with a high user base and utilisation rate of the platform. We are also looking to expand our network to reach out to more content partners to join us in providing more quality content and find like-minded educators that can help to enhance the credibility and learning experience for the children.

A successful outcome would be reaching out and impacting more children to ensure they have access to quality education that prepares them for the future. Growing the variety of courses on our platform will also ensure choices for our users to develop in different aspects in addition to academics. Hosting the LEAP project will help us to sharpen our strategies to in measuring and expanding our reach to our target audience.