We are a group of people with various expertise who gathered together with one matching key goal - to keep our future generation enthusiastic about learning while getting connected globally. Too many bad news about youths being at home amid the Covid-19 crisis - depressed, lonely, bored, demotivated, etc - that affect their learning experience. Our mixed-method research that we carried out revealed the same issues regarding motivation and hardships around remote learning. With one vision, we decide to come together and address this issue.
Vision and Mission
We envision a future with an accessible, borderless world for pupils to connect, inspire and motivate each other in achieving their learning goals. School practitioners are to be linked to a global community and everyone can connect internationally, learn collaboratively and help each other to accomplish learning paths through a gamified, modern yet friendly virtual environment. With our platform, we want to support the United Nations Sustainability Goals on quality education, reduced inequalities, and partnerships for the goals. We strive for quality learning paths by professionals. A mentor is qualified through core and soft skills evaluation, including onboarding videos. Our Platform is inclusive. It's free of charge for pupils and schools and is accessible in all devices, online or offline. We are Non-profit, working with global Partnerships for similar objectives. Open Source content from certified platforms is used in our existing paths
Research Results
We conducted surveys and interviews with pupils from different countries. Most of them told that distant learning is inefficient as there are not enough teachers' explanations and feedbacks. A lot of pupils answered they feel lonely and want to find new friends to communicate with, especially from different countries to learn about other cultures. The idea of mentoring was also supported by pupils as mentors could help them with studying and even with personal stuff. All the respondents would like to have the app we developed.
matchEU and Social Impacts
matchEU is a learning platform for learning that we developed with three key features. It is hoped that matchEU could maintain pupils’ social and well-being that would help them survive the learning journey in a ‘new normal’ situation.
1. Global connection
Study partnership - Pupils can choose their study buddies and create their own space for discussion. While this can increase their motivation to continue learning amid Covid-19, this will also strengthen the intercultural competences among them. The cultural values inculcated within this App defines how impactful matchEU is to pupils' personal growth and development.
Mentorship - Pupils can choose a mentor based on their preferences. This allows them to work with those whom they are comfortable with and this will keep them motivated in learning the subjects of their choice. This will encourage a long-term, sustainable tandem and mentorship among student users and mentor users.
Friendship - The care-to-share space allows pupils to create a matching tandem among themselves and create a long-lasting friendship. It helps to maintain their social and well being as it allows them to share and care about each other, especially during the crisis.
Community relationship - Pupils are also connected to the community around the globe. This allows them to be more sociable while keeping their distance from each other. It is hoped that users can stay emotionally and mentally healthy to continue learning remotely.
2. Worldwide Courses
Free courses - Pupils are provided with readily-available courses created by multiple stakeholders around the world. This exposes them to a wider perspective that exists beyond a standard curriculum.
Easily accessible - With a service and client facing mobile application & web app in mind, pupils are provided with a link to content created on easily accessible platforms such as Moodle and Google Classroom. This allows equal chances for everyone to take up any course they are interested in.
3. Gamification
Challenges - Pupils are provided with ever-ready challenges that they could take up while competing among each other. This will increase the motivation, thus promoting sustainability in the learning journey.
Badges - Pupils are provided with a reward system that helps keeping them motivated to stay connected in the learning journey.
Ranking - Pupils are provided with a ranking system based on the badges they received or tracks they completed. This encourages and motivates them to accomplish their own learning paths while gaining world recognition. Mentors are also ranked based on pupils’ level of satisfaction.
Technical Complexity
We have managed to create a python app that runs backend which serves as a website and also processes requests related to the connections to other platforms such as Google Classroom and Moodle. There is also a python app working on the serving as an API for mobile apps and serving as a router to messages and ways to create groups of users registered in the database that matches them or just allow them to form groups and message different stuff. Work continues to make everything functions as a web version. Website frontend is done with react and the goal is to have it modularised and unified so it can be adjusted dynamically when new subsites are created. Works are also done on react-native mobile app.
The Future of matchEU
matchEU gives a powerful impact towards the growth and development of the youths in terms of their cognitive, emotion, and spiritual ability. Given this App is a much needed tool for the current situation, it is best to see how much this App is useful when the crisis is over. It will be an eye-opener to see how much values this App could bring to pupils for their future endeavours. Thus, it is a necessity to see matchEU keep moving forward.
We are looking for first funding, to pay for our working tools in order to create the MVP. Let's connect!
Let's connect - find out more and start with our landing page or stroll around on GitHub-BackEnd GitHub-FrontEnd and the video
Twitter: @eu_match Mail: matcheu20@gmail.com
Built With
- amazon-web-services
- bootstrap
- elastic-beanstalk
- flask
- heroku
- justinmind
- postgresql
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