Challenge – Overcoming barriers to education
Mwabu exists to solve the challenges faced by primary school teachers in rural Africa. They use the Moodle App to improve student outcomes through African-centric digital content, cost-effective hardware, teacher training, and online/offline data capture and analytics. Their solutions are purpose-built to support untrained teachers, large class sizes, and low resource settings.
In rural African communities, children can face barriers to equitable education, such as teachers without formal training, large class sizes and low resources. Pupils may also lack access to the internet or existing hardware to learn offline, which creates the challenge of ensuring these students don’t miss out on the same educational opportunities as their peers with internet access.
Mwabu’s work helps to ensure that students in rural Africa have equitable access to a quality education and that their learning is not disrupted by challenges to resources.
Solution – A custom accessible Moodle platform
To address the challenges to education faced in rural African communities, Mwabu equips pupils with tablets preloaded with the Moodle App, which allows those without internet access or existing hardware to learn offline. The tablets are then set back to Mwabu periodically to sync with Moodle.
Titus developed a custom Moodle platform for Mwabu which included the Moodle App. This was a fundamental part of the project in order to raise standards of English, Maths and Science in impoverished communities.
Additionally, Titus integrated bespoke e-commerce functionality to allow people without a credit or debit card to purchase access to the platform offline and optimise accessibility.
In the project’s first year, the Moodle platform will reach 330,000 learners and 10,000 teachers in Zambia and Sierra Leone. Titus has future plans to scale Mwabu, which involve replicating the project within additional rural locations within Africa.
Results – Improving student outcomes
The project has been successful in breaking down barriers to education, empowering more teachers, and promoting key skills to young people. Early statistics show that the grades of students using the Moodle App are already improving across subjects. Highlights include a 10% improvement in maths scores and a 12.4% improvement in oral vocabulary skills.
Mwabu is committed to equal access to education for all pupils and works closely with schools to ensure this. A key example is the organisation’s efforts to ensure gender equality in all facets of the project. The charity ran observations to detect any discrimination in the use of tablets in the classroom, concluding that there is fair access to the equipment for all.
Find out about Moodle Premium Certified Service Provider Titus and how they work with customers to ensure the success of their Moodle-based online learning projects.
