A tale from the trenches

How a little non-profit managed to survive and scale up through COVID

Hi, I'm Sheena

  • CTO of Umuzi
  • I build effective + efficient remote education systems == tech + people + syllabus + ux
  • Learned to code around 20 years ago 🍌
  • Always had a passion for education
🧗‍♀️🏕️🧭⛰️🎸🔥🐍

Once upon a time, in an apartment block far far away...

(JeppesTown, Jozi, South Africa)

Umuzi

Umuzi

  • It means "home"... sort of
  • Non-profit training provider
  • Find high potential un/der employed youth
  • Pay them to learn
  • Train them in high value digital skills
  • Nationally recognized certification
  • Help alumni get and keep jobs

Holistic education

  • It's not just the technical stuff
  • Teamwork
  • Professionalism
  • Wellness support
  • Financial literacy

And then came COVID

We needed to change...everything

Stay true to our core

🔒 Locking down 🔒

  • 250 odd learners and a bunch of (also pretty odd) staff on site
  • Continue supporting our learners and partners
  • Computers, insurance, data, medical aid, transport...
  • Funding dried up
  • And most of our junior team mates were heading to "real jobs" in the near future

We needed to make sure none of our learners fell through the cracks...

And so we built...

First there was attendance...

Totally insufficient 🩹

  • Allow learners to hand in projects
  • Track progress + competencies
  • Compliant with NQF assessors
  • Other obvious school stuff...

Did we need an LMS?

(Learner Management System)

Learner Management System

  • Allows certain set up of curriculums by filling in forms (rich-text / WYSIWYG) ... our syllabus already exists as a hugo static site. Markdown + YAML + Git
  • Allows uploading of videos and other resources ... We can just use Youtube. No need to host big files
  • Fancy pants reports ... Education comes first

Our needs

  • Reduce dependency on staff! ... Peer to peer learning.
  • simulate real work environment as much as possible ... Most LMSs are like clever textbooks - we make professionals by simulating professional work environment
  • Tech ed as a first class citizen ... Some LMSs have plugins that could help a little... but pretty limited

Self-paced learning

Our superpower

We are very innovative in how we teach
  • Let's not lose that
  • Let's not limit future innovation

And so we built...

...what though?

  • Our syllabus is code
  • Kanban is a whole thing

Syllabus as code

Choosing the tech

  • Django - the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines
  • Django REST Framework (DRF) - quick, easy, rock-solid API development
  • React frontend

Introducing Tilde

Yes, this thing:
~
It means "home"... sort of

LEAN

laser focus on users

Learners

Learners

Repo project cards

  • Card in backlog, learner chooses to start
  • Backend...
    • Create Github repo
    • Protect main branch
    • Add learner and reviewers as collaborators
  • Learner makes pull requests
  • Peers review

Learners

Review + Feedback columns

Interpreting bouncy cards

  • If many learners approve and a trusted reviewer doesn't knowledge gap to be plugged
  • If a learner has one extra bouncy card They need help
  • If a specific project always leads to extra bouncy cards revise project spec
  • If a specific reviewer always involved in bounciness intervene
  • If a specific learner's cards just tend to be bouncier allocate support early

On the ground staff

Admin

Data requests and scripting

Great success!

  • We are better than we were on-prem
  • Learners can take part in our selection bootcamps on their cellphones :)
  • We are able to remotely teach learners across Africa

MISSION ++

To reduce social inequality in Africa through digital education

Takeaways

  • Django saves lives, try it out (especially if you hate ORMs)
  • Build-it-yourself versus off the shelf:
    • Do you even need the advertised features?
    • Will you retain your ability to innovate? Do you need to?