Boost

Boost is an m-learning platform for creating interactive and engaging courses to help boost your career to the next level.

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What problem does Boost solve?

During this global lockdown, many people worldwide are forced to stay and work from home and others have sadly lost their jobs. Millions of people are however looking to improve or learn new skills so that they can come back after this crisis stronger and better educated.

However, the traditional e-learning approach of watching a teacher speak for hours in a video is proven to have low engagement and efficacy rates. This lack of engagement results in low knowledge retention.

To best utilize our time and encourage growth during these difficult times, we need a better solution for learning.

What solution does Boost provide?

Boost is a platform for interactive courses split into two products;

The first product is the mobile app that allows students to enrol in courses that feature interactive and engaging content. Lessons require the student's participation to answer multiple-choice questions, fill in answers, vote in polls, and play matching games. Interactive course material like this has proven to be up to 6x more effective than completing courses containing just video or written content.

The mobile app is built using React Native and utilizes the Amplify tooling from Amazon for managing users, authentication, databases, and GraphQL API. As Amplify is based on Serverless technology, our API can easily and automatically scale up to serve millions of users.

The second part of Boost is the teaching platform. Teachers can use the Boost platform to build and manage interactive courses as well as see course analytics e.g. course enrolment, student performance, and student demographics.

What did we achieve during the hackathon?

We’ve created the first version of our mobile app. Students can already sign up, choose topics they’re interested in, browse and search for courses, and complete lessons with polls, multiple-choice questions, and matching games.

We also created the first mockups for the web platform for course creators. These mockups demonstrate how users can create and manage courses through Boost.

We have also compiled a business plan with in-depth market and competitor analysis as well as target group segmentation. To get early insights and beta testers we prepared two lead generation surveys targeting learners and content creators that we sent out to the mentors and participants of the EUvsVirus Hackathon.

Our impact on the crisis

At Boost, we aim to empower those struggling in the crisis, whether they’ve lost their job or are looking to use their spare time to learn skills to advance their careers, by providing them with a platform for improved learning.

For experts in their field that have lost their jobs, teaching courses can also be a source of additional income, lessening the economic impact.

What do we need to continue?

Our first step will be to release the first versions of both the mobile app and web platform to our beta testers. In order to do so, additional development and marketing are required.

Thereafter, our primary goal will be to grow our user base, first by partnering and working with course creators to populate the marketplace with great content across a variety of topics.

In order to get to market quickly we want to expand the team with expertise in the following areas:

  • Marketing - To scale the platform and attract new course creators and learners we need to design and implement our marketing plan.
  • Engineering - The mobile app and web platform require additional implementation in order for us to get to our first release.
  • Legal - To ensure that we are complying with all relevant laws and best practices e.g. GDPR, Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policies, we require legal support.

What value do we provide after the crisis?

After the crisis, we believe that the value of Boost will continue to grow. Though we observe a spike in e-learning adoption during this crisis, the global trend for self-paced mobile learning, research states, is on the rise. We hope to positively impact those looking to improve themselves during this global lockdown but are also looking to the future to help many more learn new skills and grow their career in a more effective way.

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