Please describe your proposed solution.
Background
Our proposal focuses on the development and implementation of an incentivized learning platform, which will not only provide valuable educational resources but also reward students with digital assets on the Cardano blockchain as they progress in their learning journey.
This project is a continuation of a previously funded project in fund 9. According to the project implementation framework, a two-phase implementation timeframe was developed – a research-based phase and a content creation phase.We applied for funding for the research phase, as that was the only phase that was funded in Fund 9. Under the first phase, we embarked on four (4) main activities;
Research-based phase
• drafting and documentation of the registration of the learning platform per the laws of our country,
• research on content and target audience,
• website design and
• partnership formation.
With the help of our team's effort and external support, each activity has been successfully implemented with all necessary documents as evidence of project completion submitted to the cardano team and the community. As the structure of the project requires, this is the final phase of the project : the content creation phase. Ideally, the completion of this phase will transition the project into its official launch.
Research Recommendation
The research phase found that Ghanaian students are motivated to study blockchain technology because they see it as a way to acquire digital skills and become tech entrepreneurs. The project could consider providing certification and cryptocurrency tokens as incentives for course completion. Therefore, the project should consider providing certification and cryptocurrency tokens as incentive for course completion if possible. Both provides high motivation for course completion among students”. Generally, students are primarily motivated by incentivized learning systems. However, the challenge lies in the absence of a platform that does not only fosters engagement but also introduces students to emerging technologies like the Cardano blockchain platform that aims to bring financial and social inclusion to the world.
PROPOSAL OVERVIEW
The central theme of the objective of the startups and student onboarding challenge focuses on startups and students. Education is the backbone of startups; therefore, ideally if students are well-informed about blockchain technology, it will transition into the generation of blockchain-based ideas. In view of this, instead of startups, our project focuses on providing an online education on blockchain technology, its benefits and potentials. Admittedly, there are several online blockchain technology learning platforms; however, what our platform presents is the missing pieces, especially in Africa where the inequality gap in education keeps widening. To bridge this gap, we’re convinced that an incentivized learning platform, which also serves as a library is what the required to drive students into learning blockchain technology.
The focus is to provide well-streamlined, standardized, and easy-to-understand web-based video lessons on blockchain technology and the cardano ecosystem that can easily be accessed by the student community in Ghanaian Universities. The ownership of smartphones by a significant number of Ghanaian students makes them a viable entry point for this project. The complex nature of the blockchain space is not an easy area for new users, especially secondary school or college students, which is why there is a lack of interest. Through this initiative, we intend to introduce the concept of blockchain and the cardano catalyst platform via a series of easy to understand, short theoretical and video-based lessons on blockchain technology to a large audience of young Ghanaian students who are new to the cardano network. This would also include a short assessment after which the completion of each lesson participants would be rewarded.
In addition to simple educational materials, we are planning to focus on more comprehensive guidelines for new users, developers, and start-ups, which will help increase their interest in Cardano. Students are often motivated by incentivized learning, therefore, this initiative would provide the motivation for students not only to earn but also to invest in the cardano coin and eventually increase the number of Cardano coin holders. The blockchain project presents a new way for students to navigate the blockchain space and earn value from their time and resource investment in knowledge acquisition through our platform. Our platform would provide users with a system of value that rewards them and makes it easier to onboard students who are new to the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.
Why an incentivized Approach?
This approach is an effective hand on and learning platform that focuses on simplifying the complex nature of the blockchain space via the provision of a video-based learning lessons. This is an efficient incentivized way for a lasting learning experience that will help onboard students into the Cardano ecosystem. We’ll create a web-based platform that will be accessible to everyone with a phone and internet. The platform will aggregate blockchain information, separating it into various areas of study in theory with attached short videos for each lesson. The content of the theory and video-based lessons on blockchain and the Cardano ecosystem will cover several areas (not limited to those listed below) such as:
• What is Blockchain?
• What’s the history of bitcoin?
• What is Cardano?
• How to create a cardano wallet?
• How does the Public Key and Private Key of the blockchain work?
• The concept of project catalyst and the various role?
• What is NFT?
• What is Smart Contract?
• What is DApp?
• What's DAO?
INCENTIVE
The project would focus on incentivizing the learning of basic areas of education for a beginner (student) who is new to the blockchain ecosystem and more especially for a person new to the Cardano ecosystem. The incentivized program would be divided into two categories: an Education-based incentive and Referral-based incentive.
EDUCATION BASED INCENTIVE
Under the education-based incentive, we intend to provide educational lessons on ten (10) key areas of interest needed at an entry level into the Cardano ecosystem. The ten (10) areas would be a starting point, however, upon a successful implementation of this project per our milestone, we'd introduce users to more complex areas under the Cardano blockchain ecosystem. The essence is to transition our target audience into the Cardano community, onboard them and eventually make them active participants of each role within the Cardano community. For each of the area of study that the project seeks to provide lessons on, an amount of $1.5 in ADA would reward to participants for the successful completion of each assessment, with the total amount summing up to $15 in ADA ($1.5 per assessment). This reward would help students have a practical experience of the crypto space and also make the platform the best option for students who are willing to learn and invest in cryptocurrency.
REFERRAL BASED INCENTIVE
The referral program would be designed to reward users for referring new users. As a marketing strategy, we would reward users with $2 of ADA for referring one new user. This reward will be subject to term and conditions. Users will only be rewarded upon completion of the educational lessons and the mandatory referral of just one person. This arrangement is to ensure that users don’t focus on just the monetary value but the knowledge acquisition.
MARKETING STRATEGY
• As part of reaching a large audience with this project, we’ll collaborate with the Opportunity summit, a platform that seeks to educate the Ghanaian student population on the Cardano Network. Under this collaboration, we’ll market our platform to the students at each event organized by the group. This will be done alongside our regular marketing both online and offline.
• We would also advertise the project via the various social media channels. Additionally, we'll create help centers in the form of social media channels. A place where people with different forms of enquires, questions are addressed. This will also provide access to valuable sources of information and assistance on difficult to understand blockchain concepts on our website. The platform would be community-driven, where people can freely share their ideas, thoughts, and concerns.
Main challenge
• The main challenge is the creation of multiple accounts by existing users. As part of ensuring the security of our platform, there would be a KYC requirement to help avert the incidence of users exploiting the system by creating multiple account. The platform would require a cardano address to which incentive payment would be made.
• The other challenge for this project is the issue of funding.In that regard, we consider that because this project is solely towards the advancement of the growth of the Cardano ecosystem, project catalyst will be our primary source of funding. However, we'll also apply for funding from organization that share in our vision of providing education on blockchain to a large group of the African population. Aside that, we'll also welcome donations from benevolent individuals willing to help, by providing crypto addresses on our website.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
HOW THE PROPOSAL ADDRESS THE CHALLENGE SETTING
The central objective of the startups and student onboarding challenge is to focus on startups and students.Education is essential for startups; therefore, ideally if students are well-informed about blockchain technology, it will transition into the generation of blockchain-based ideas. Because of this, our project focuses on providing an online education on blockchain technology, its benefits and potentials. There are several online blockchain technology learning platforms, but our platform fills a gap, especially in Africa where the inequality gap in education keeps widening. We’re convinced that an incentivized learning platform, which also serves as a library, is the way to bridge this gap and drive students into learning blockchain technology.
The focus is to provide well-streamlined, standardized, and easy-to-understand web-based video lessons on blockchain technology and the cardano ecosystem that can easily be accessed by the student community in Ghanaian Universities. The ownership of smartphones by a significant number of Ghanaian students makes them a viable entry point for this project. The complex nature of the blockchain space is not an easy area for new users, especially secondary school or college students, which is why there is a lack of interest. Through this initiative, we intend to introduce the concept of blockchain and the cardano catalyst platform via a series of easy to understand, short theoretical and video-based lessons on blockchain technology to a large audience of young Ghanaian students who are new to the cardano network. This would also include a short assessment after which the completion of each lesson participants would be rewarded.
In addition to simple educational materials, we are planning to focus on more comprehensive guidelines for new users, developers, and start-ups, which will help increase their interest in Cardano. Students are often motivated by incentivized learning, therefore, this initiative would provide the motivation for students not only to earn but also to invest in the cardano coin and eventually increase the number of Cardano coin holders. The blockchain project presents a new way for students to navigate the blockchain space and earn value from their time and resource investment in knowledge acquisition through our platform. Our platform would provide users with a system of value that rewards them and makes it easier to onboard students who are to the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.
Why an incentivized Approach?
This approach is an effective hand on and learning platform that focuses on simplifying the complex nature of the blockchain space via the provision of a video-based learning lessons. This is an efficient incentivized way for a lasting learning experience that will help onboard students into the Cardano ecosystem. We’ll create a web-based platform that will be accessible to everyone with a phone and internet. The platform will aggregate blockchain information, separating it into various areas of study in theory with attached short videos for each lesson. The content of the theory and video-based lessons on blockchain and the Cardano ecosystem will cover several areas (not limited to those listed below) such as:
• What is Blockchain?
• What’s the history of bitcoin?
• What is Cardano?
• How to create a cardano wallet?
• How does the Public Key and Private Key of the blockchain work?
• The concept of project catalyst and the various role?
• What is NFT?
• What is Smart Contract?
• What is DApp?
• What's DAO?
BENEFIT/IMPACT OF THE PROJECT TO THE CARDANO ECOSYSTEM
The proposed Gateway to Blockchain - Student Learning Center has the potential to provide valuable educational resources, onboard new users, foster community engagement, and contribute to the long-term growth of the Cardano ecosystem by creating a knowledgeable and skilled user base. The primary goal of the project is to provide educational resources on blockchain technology and the Cardano ecosystem to Ghanaian students and incentivize their learning journey by rewarding them with digital assets on the Cardano blockchain. Here are the potential benefits of this proposal to the Cardano ecosystem:
Education and Awareness: The project aims to provide educational resources to students in Africa by providing a well-streamlined, standardized, and easy-to-understand web-based learning platform. By offering educational lessons on blockchain technology and the Cardano ecosystem, the proposal intends to raise awareness among students about the potential of Cardano and cryptocurrencies. This will contribute to expanding knowledge and understanding of the Cardano ecosystem.
User Onboarding: Through this reward system, the project seeks to attract and onboard more students into the Cardano community. By rewarding students with ADA tokens, the project aims to motivate them to actively participate in the learning process and explore the Cardano platform. Increased user adoption and engagement can help the Cardano ecosystem grow and thrive.
Developer Engagement: The proposal recognizes the importance of developers in the Cardano ecosystem and aims to introduce more developers to the Cardano catalyst community. By providing comprehensive guidelines for new users, developers, and startups, the project intends to attract developers and enhance their skills. Increased developer engagement can lead to the creation of innovative applications, smart contracts, and decentralized projects on the Cardano platform.
Long-Term Growth: The project hopes to collaborate with educational institutions to integrate the learning platform into their curricula or extracurricular activities. By partnering with educational institutions, the project can achieve sustainable growth and ensure the continuity of educational initiatives beyond the initial implementation phase. The integration of blockchain education into academic settings can contribute to the widespread adoption and utilization of Cardano technology in various sectors.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
METRICS FOR MEASURING SUCCESS OF THE PROJECT
Ultimately, in monitoring and evaluating these metrics and gathering feedback from students and users, you can validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the project in achieving its goals. This information will help you make data-driven decisions, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate the project's success to the Cardano community. The success of this project will be measured in two fold; both long and short term.
Short term metric.
The project's success hinges on some key indicators with specific target for each indicator. After the first three months of the project being rolled out, an assessment would be conducted to adjust these targets under each indicator based on the assessment report. The assessment report would include a SWOT analysis on data gathered from our platform. And at the end of a successful implementation of this project, we’ll measure the success of this event by;
Based on these key performance indicators, we anticipate that, a successful implementation of the project will help achieve the following milestones;
• Have at least 50 students trained
• Project that 100 students will view the page.
• At least onboard 20 students into the Cardano community
• Create Cardano wallet accounts for at least 20 students.
• Create a Cardano social media community on WhatsApp, Telegram, and YouTube with at least 20 active followers.
Long-term metric
By continuously monitoring and evaluating these metrics and gathering feedback from students and users, you can validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the project in achieving its goals. This information will help you make data-driven decisions, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate the project's success to the Cardano community. The success of the project can be measured through various key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. Here are some ways to measure the success of the proposed Gateway to Blockchain - Student Learning Center project:
Number of Students Trained: Measure the number of students who successfully complete the educational lessons and assessments provided by the platform. This metric indicates the reach and engagement of the project among the target audience.
User Engagement: Monitor user engagement levels, such as the frequency of platform visits, time spent on the platform, and interaction with educational materials. This metric helps assess the level of interest and active participation of students in the learning process.
Number of Cardano Wallet Accounts Created: Track the number of new Cardano wallet accounts created by students as a result of their engagement with the learning platform. This metric indicates the project's effectiveness in onboarding new users into the Cardano ecosystem.
Feedback and Satisfaction Surveys: Conduct surveys or feedback sessions to gather insights from students about their learning experience, the quality of educational resources, and their overall satisfaction with the platform. This feedback helps assess the project's impact on students and identify areas for improvement.
Growth of Cardano Social Media Community: Measure the growth and activity level of the Cardano social media community established by the project, such as the number of active followers, engagement in discussions, and sharing of ideas. This metric indicates the project's success in fostering a vibrant and collaborative community within the Cardano ecosystem.
Collaboration with Educational Institutions: Evaluate the success of collaborations with educational institutions, such as the integration of the learning platform into curricula or extracurricular activities. Measure the number of institutions that adopt the platform and the level of student engagement facilitated through these partnerships.
Developer Engagement: Assess the number of students who express an interest in becoming Cardano developers or participating in Cardano-related development projects. Monitor their progress, involvement in the developer community, and contributions to the Cardano ecosystem. This metric reflects the project's effectiveness in attracting and nurturing developer talent.
Certification Program Success: Measure the number of students who successfully complete all online training and receive digital certifications. This metric indicates the project's impact on the acquisition of blockchain knowledge and the recognition of students' achievements.
Project Reporting and Transparency: Evaluate the frequency and quality of project reports shared with the Cardano community. Monitor the community's engagement with these reports and their feedback. This metric demonstrates the project's commitment to transparency and accountability.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
Output of the results from the project.
After meeting our targets, we expect to collaborate with policymakers in our educational institutions to create partnerships that will foster education and awareness among student communities.
To make the project more efficient, we plan to split it into two phases, each lasting four months.
Accountability
To ensure that our team is accountable and transparent to the Cardano ecosystem, we will provide all of the necessary documentation from start to finish of the event, including video recordings where necessary. We will also post these documents on all of the Catalyst affiliate social media platforms, in addition to our monthly report to the Catalyst community.