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“Dad! I’m a detective now!!”

My daughter seemed pretty excited to be going through KCPE exam test questions after an SMS informed her that she is now a
detective on the trail of the nefarious ‘Ms Mandizi’. This is a situation that is far from usual as she, like the typical
10 year old, is less than enthusiastic about using free time to answer exam questions.

This points to the startling success of ‘gamifying’ education delivery, a model the Shupavu 291 platform is pretty good at.

I have, or rather, my daughter has been using the platform for 4 weeks now. Here is a summary of our experiences thus far:

Reinforcement:

I like how each correct response is preceded by some kind of affirmation like ‘Brilliant!’, ‘Great!’ after which an
explanation is provided as to why that was the correct choice..just in case said student was guessing. When a student gets
an answer wrong, the platform returns a more subdued ‘Incorrect’ or ‘Good Try’ followed by the explanation. I was surprised
how such a simple device could have such a strong positive effect. Two other parents I discussed this with shared similar
sentiments.

Earning Points:

Each correctly answered question would earn the student points. This makes it easy to motivate and structure rewards for
the student based on number of earned points within a defined time period.

While I did not see it, It seems there is a possibility of accessing a leader board which would allow students to compete
against each other in various subjects or quizzes. My daughter expressed an interest in competing against her class mates
and a childhood friend who is a different school altogether. Nothing like a little healthy competition to drive the
learning.

Remainders:

Shupavu constantly tries to engage your child..occasionally sending “I miss you” texts encouraging the student to dial
*291# to continue interacting with the platform. Other times, it completely dispenses with the niceties and launches into a
quiz, sending in a question for the student to answer and continue along their journey.

Report Cards:

Shupavu allows you to request report cards as and when you want them and will also send periodic updates on the student’s
performance. This is expecially useful for the parent to gauge how much learning is happening and they can use this
information to adjust their reward system accordingly.

The reports are not very detailed though. It could very well be that I needed to use the platform a little more. Chances
are you already know the subjects that your student may be weak in. The platform however, would be able to pinpoint
specific topics that the student would best benefit from remedial tuition should that be necessary.

Other observations:

Here are some observations that I can’t quite categorize so I’ll just list them here:

  1. When a student has been inactive for a while, the platform will try and prompt to the student to get engaged by sending a
    question for the student to answer. Oddly enough, it seems to send the same question over and over again rather than choose
    from a pool of different questions.
  2. I would highly recommend a handset that has a ‘threaded sms’ view so that it is easy to track a question and it’s response.
    The sms responses can be quite numerous which means a typical ‘kabambe/mulika mwizi’ spec phone will probably run out of
    memory/storage in short order.
  3. I think this platform would be an excellent tool for parents who, for various reasons, opt to home school their children.
    It can supplement their text book material with additional material either from Wikipedia or from the ‘Ask a teacher’
    service.
  4. I would appreciate an online portal that can provide statistics on my child’s performance and topics she may require
    reinforcement on.
  5. A limiting factor of the solution in it’s current form is that the student is dependent on the parent/guardians handset to
    access the solution. This may limit the amount of work they are able to do on the platform if said guardian is not
    available to provide their handset for this access.
  6. I am not clear how the platform supports multiple students using the same handset. I have two children at two different
    levels. I am not keen to buy a handset for every child accessing the platform on my account. I would be keen to learn how
    multiple children can use the same handset where each get their own tailored experience.

 

All in all, I have had a pretty good experience with Shupavu thus far. I am seriously considering a dedicated handset for
this service.

Just crack the multi-student on single handset problem first!