@sheena@fosstodon.org | https://sheenaoc.com

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A tale from the trenches

How a non profit, in-person training provider survived COVID

Hi, I'm Sheena

  • Product Development & Tech Enablement lead at Umuzi
  • I build effective + efficient remote education systems == tech + people + syllabus + ux
  • Python is my love language
 🧗‍♀️🏕️🧭⛰️🎸🔥🐍

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

(JeppesTown, Jozi, South Africa)

Umuzi


It means "home"... sort of

Umuzi

  • 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
  • Don't let funding partners down
  • 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...

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
  • Keeps your content super secret ... We like open-source
  • Fancy pants reports ... Education comes first

Our needs

  • Reduce dependency on staff! ... Peer to peer learning + automation
  • 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

Mastery-based learning

Skills build on skills

Benefits of MBL

  • Learners are often more satisfied with the instruction they receive
  • Improves aspects of growth mindset
  • Decreased amount of variability between learner outcomes
  • Learners are more likely to stay _on task_
  • Advanced concepts become easier to master

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

  • Needed to build FAST
  • Support lots of learners immediately
  • Modern frontend technologies
  • What will our future team look like?

Choosing the tech

Tech stack ++

HTMX + AlpineJS instead of React stack

Django

  • The framework for perfectionists with deadlines
  • Batteries included
  • ORM at the core
  • Define tables, then most of everything else is configuration

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

Peer review on projects

  • Saves time for staff
  • Learner only added as reviewer if they have completed the project
  • Spaced repitition
  • See different ways of solving the same problem
  • Communication skillz

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 users

Admin code

Devs

DRF code

The hard part?

Figuring out what to build
Our constraints made our solution better!

Great success!

  • Our learners did fine
  • We are better than we were on-prem
  • Learning environment more closely resembles realistic work environment
  • Learners can take part in our selection bootcamps on their cellphones :)
  • We are able to remotely teach learners across Africa

What's next

MISSION ++

To reduce social inequality in Africa through digital education

empower other educators!

  • Teaching a learner changes a life
  • Empowering educators changes many lives


🧡

Thank you!