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MS4
- 1. Problem and Solution description
- 2. Analytics Persona
- 3. PAS (Problem-Alternative-Solution)
- 4. Context Canvas
- 5. Business Questions
- 6. VD Map
Gaps in childhood learning processes: In our country, children and primary educators face inequalities in access to educational resources and tools, especially in rural areas. These inequalities can affect how learning processes are supported and followed, making it difficult for organizations and educators to provide consistent and effective support, which ultimately affects children’s education.
Collaborative educational platform: The solution consists of an offline-first collaborative platform for educators and other educational collaborators, focused in primary education, where they can follow the progress of schools, classes, and their students. Through the platform, they can assess, organize, plan, and monitor the learning process, both in remote and rural areas and in urban schools.
To understand the needs of a user interested in the data collected via the app (including school, group, and student progress data, attendance, and session records) we designed the persona profile of an analytics-leaning user. Laura Quiroz is the Program Director and Monitoring and Evaluation Leader at the Ministry of Education. It is as follows:
| No. | MEMBER | PAS Hypothesis | Problem | Alternative | Solution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MATEO CANTE GARZÓN | PAS Hypothesis 1 | Field staff need to register each child's enrollment data during school visits, but rural schools have no reliable internet, so they record everything on paper first. Transcribing dozens of records afterwards is slow, error prone, and delays the moment the foundation can actually use the data. | Staff record data on paper during the visit and later retype it into personal Excel files, then one person manually merges everyone's files into a consolidated sheet a process where duplicates and typing errors are common. | An offline first mobile and web app where staff capture children's records directly on their device during the visit. Entries are stored locally, and once a connection is detected the app uploads and merges each person's records into the central database automatically, flagging possible duplicates. |
| 2 | MATEO CANTE GARZÓN | PAS Hypothesis 2 | Teachers in rural schools don't have access to good teaching materials, so they teach from old textbooks or from memory, which makes it hard to keep lessons consistent across grades and adapt to different students. | Teachers photocopy old textbooks or create their own lesson plans from notes, but it's inconsistent and takes a lot of time without clear structure. | An offline-first app where teachers can download lesson plans and activities by grade and topic. They can browse and save materials on their phone, and sync new content when they have internet. |
| 3 | SAMUEL CHARRY | PAS Hypothesis 3 | Teachers in rural schools need to use Shaia or other educational web tools, but they have no internet connection. This means they have to keep students' levels on paper or other physical tools, which can ultimately make them lose track of progress since the information is not properly organized and is difficult to maintain | Currently, each school tries to buy one laptop and pay for an internet connection if they have access to it, and assigns teachers to manually organize paper assessments into spreadsheets. If they do not have the resources, they provide teachers with simpler paper-based formats instead. | An offline mobile app where teachers assess students' levels, the app stores all the data locally on the phone, and syncs it to the cloud when an internet connection becomes available. |
| 4 | SAMUEL CHARRY | PAS Hypothesis 4 | Teachers have to efficiently teach a group with different learning levels, but without additional help or tools, managing an average of 25 students at different levels makes it difficult to provide personalized lessons. | The school assigns one teacher per learning level if they have enough staff, but most of the time they do not. Instead, they create general templates for each level, but these often do not adapt to the students' personal learning progress. | An app that automatically groups students by level after assessment, shows which students can work together, and suggests activities for each group. |
| 5 | SANTIAGO QUIROZ | PAS Hypothesis 5 | Mentors need to visit schools to provide guidance, but most of the time they arrive without knowing the teachers' needs because classroom data is scattered across paperwork and messages or is not up to date. | Mentors call or message teachers beforehand to ask for updates on students' progress and previous feedback, but the information may still be incomplete or outdated. | An app where mentors have access to each classroom's synced progress and previous visit feedback before arriving at the school. |
| 6 | SANTIAGO QUIROZ | PAS Hypothesis 6 | Volunteers want to help the school and children with their learning processes, but most of the time they don't know a class's or student's level or whether their sessions are actually helping, since they arrive sporadically or without much notice. | The lead teacher writes simplified instructions on paper and checks in with volunteers occasionally in person, but cannot fully update them because there is a lot of information to keep track of. | An app that shows each student's level and simple progress feedback so volunteers can easily access the information, even when they are new to the school or have no previous experience with it. |
| 7 | JUAN TRIVIÑO | PAS Hypothesis 7 | Teachers need to record each student's attendance per subject (4 hours/week per subject under the CAMAp methodology), but when this is tracked on paper or in separate notebooks, it's hard to detect early when a student starts missing sessions repeatedly. By the time the mentor or the foundation finds out, the student has already been absent for weeks and dropout risk is high. | The teacher keeps a paper attendance notebook per group and, if they notice a student missing often, mentions it verbally to the mentor during the next in-person visit, which can happen weeks later. | An attendance module in the app where the teacher marks present/absent per session and subject; the system automatically detects absence patterns and generates early dropout-risk alerts (visible to the teacher and synced to the mentor), using an attention color distinct from the brand color so it doesn't flag every row as alarming. |
| 8 | JUAN TRIVIÑO | PAS Hypothesis 8 | Teachers must plan sessions for 6 levels per subject, each with its three phases (demonstration, subgroup work with a leader,individual practice), but preparing differentiated content for every level takes a lot of time and often ends up being done the night before or even improvised in the classroom, which lowers session quality. | The teacher reuses the same worksheets or guides across several levels even when they don't quite fit, or improvises activities on the spot based on what they remember from past training sessions. | A planning module in the app where the teacher builds a session by selecting subject and level; the system suggests activities and materials already adapted to each phase (demonstration, subgroup, individual practice), and lets the teacher save and reuse plans across similar sessions. |
| 9 | Sebastian Rodriguez | PAS Hypothesis 9 | When a teacher leaves the school or a student moves up a grade, the new teacher needs to know what that child already achieved, but the learning history lives in the previous teacher's personal notebooks and paper records. The new teacher starts from zero, re-assesses the student, and repeats content the child already mastered, losing weeks of progress. | The outgoing teacher hands over a folder of loose papers or explains verbally during a short meeting at the end of the year, but most of the detail is lost and the incoming teacher ends up relying on their own first impressions of each child. | A cumulative student profile in the app that keeps every assessment, level change, and observation across grades and teachers. The history stays attached to the child, syncs when there is connection, and any authorized teacher, mentor, or foundation worker can open it and see where the student actually is before the first class. |
| 10 | Sebastian Rodriguez | PAS Hypothesis 10 | Several people (teacher, mentor, volunteer) record information about the same class or student while offline and on different devices. When each one finally gets connection and syncs, the records collide and nobody knows which version is the correct one, so the foundation ends up with duplicated or contradictory data about the same child. | Whoever syncs first "wins" and the rest is overwritten silently, or the team agrees informally that only the lead teacher registers data, which makes mentors and volunteers passive and delays information that only they observed. | A sync mechanism in the app that keeps every change with its author and timestamp instead of overwriting. When two records for the same student conflict, the app flags the conflict and shows both versions side by side so the responsible user can confirm which one is valid, keeping the central database consistent without losing anyone's fieldwork. |
| 11 | ISABELA MANTILLA | PAS Hypothesis 11 | Foundation workers need to communicate with mentors, volunteers, and school staff, but due to a lack of communication channels, it is difficult to collaborate on a student's or classroom's learning process or verify information. | Foundation workers try to review information through messages, calls, meetings, and physical records, but the information can become scattered between different people and tools. | An app that provides a direct communication and collaboration spaces between foundation workers, mentors, volunteers, and school staff, allowing them to share and verify information about students and classrooms. |
| 12 | ISABELA MANTILLA | PAS Hypothesis 12 | Foundation workers need useful and efficient information, but most of the time they receive static information through physical tools that do not take into account past history, tendencies, or new statistics. This makes collecting and transcribing information more important than analyzing it, which can make it difficult to turn the information into actions. | Foundation workers try to manually review and compare information from physical reports and previous records to identify what needs to be improved, but it makes the processes less efficient. | A platform that takes into account information from the entire process in a school, classroom, or individual child and organizes it to make changes, tendencies, and areas that need attention easier to identify. |
| # | Type | Question |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Type 1 | How many teachers complete an assessment per week? |
| 2 | Type 2 | Which grouping method do teachers use: automatic or manual? |
| 3 | Type 2 | What percentage use activity library vs create their own? |
| 4 | Type 2 | Do teachers sync data manually or wait for reminder? |
| 5 | Type 2 | How many teachers open the app more than once per week? |
| 6 | Type 3 | Which screen crashes most: Assessment, Grouping, or Planning? |
| 7 | Type 3 | How long does matematical's assessment take vs literature's assessment? |
| 8 | Type 3 | How long does it take to classify 25 students? |
| 9 | Type 4 | What is the most used activity for kids? |
| 10 | Type* | How many teachers complete full workflow vs drop off at each step? |
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