URGENT: Help TpISENT Help Students in Sierra Leone

Background

We cannot wait anymore. COVID-19 is here and it’s not going anywhere until the world finds a cure and vaccine. Even when those are found, the world has changed forever and things will never return back to what the use to be. We all know and agree that technology has played a significant role in keeping the world safe and functional.

In Sierra Leone, all schools were closed on March 31st, 2020 due to COVID-19. The government has announced that schools will reopen on July 1st, 2020, and stay open until September 2020. This is mainly to allow students to study for and take their National Primary School Examinations (NPSE), Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE), and West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (WASSCE). We want to officially launch the platform on July 1st, 2020 so that NPSE students can start using it right away.

Your donation will make a huge difference.

To help these students who will take the exams from July 31st to September 24th, 2020, TpISENT Sierra Leone Limited, a few other Sierra Leonean volunteers have come together and agreed that we should do something now and keep it going after COVID-19. TpISENT Sierra Leone Limited has already spent over USD 15,000 to develop the platform, a mobile app, and buy hard copies of past questions and answers.

We need your help to digitize the past questions, input the questions and answers into the platform, pay teachers to validate the answers, explain the answers and input the answers into the platform, provide internet access to the teachers and volunteers to ensure they can work from home and practice social distancing.

How your donation will be used?

• Pay the salaries of experienced and qualified teachers who are responsible to answer the past questions, create course content, and teach courses online.
• Pay a small stipend to our volunteers who are responsible to digitize past questions and solution, maintain the platform, provide assistance and help desk services to students and teacher
• Buy internet modems and pay monthly Internet subscription fees for volunteers and teachers

What is the project?

West Africa Open Education Platform

Phase 1: https://mooc.edu.sl - A free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform for teachers and students in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia, Ghana, and Nigeria. Trained, experienced and qualified teachers in Sierra Leone use the platform to publish West African Examinations Council (WAEC) curriculum-based course content. Students use the platform to learn, compete, and collaborate with their peers and facilitators. Students test their knowledge using West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE), Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), and National Primary School Examination (NPSE) practice exams consisting of past questions from 2000 to 2019. Check out frequently asked questions  for more details

How are we going to measure success or failure?

Students and teachers using the system will create accounts using their email address, phone number, country, district, school name, educational level, gender, and exam. The platform analytics bundled with activity completion tracking will provide insights into how the students and teachers are using the platform. In September 2020, we will send out an electronic survey to all students and teachers. The goal of the survey is to understand from their perspectives if the platform played a meaning-full role in the exam they just completed and how they are feeling about the exam. When the exam results are released, we will send out another survey. The goal of this last survey is for us to get their exam results and know if the platform played a role in that result.

What will success look like?

Imagine it’s 2030 in Sierra Leone, West Africa;

An illustration of students using mobile devices in a community

• The literacy rate for all people aged 10 and above is 99%.
• The unemployment rate is below 2%.
• No child is born at risk of ending up on the street.
• Women have the same access to education as men
• Citizens are equipped with the knowledge and understanding of how to contain and prevent diseases.
• More than 60% of its citizens use technology for learning, working, and entertainment
• Citizens receive free and quality education daily from the comfort of their homes, community centres or in school with and without an active internet connection. They choose their learning paths, track their progress, practice what has been studied, receive badges when they complete a series of practice exams and receive a certificate of completion