Open Grant Proposal: Koha: Bringing Equity to Education through Incentivised Learning.

Name of Project: Koha Proposal Category: app-dev, technical-design, docs, metaverse Proposer: `KohaAdmin (github.com)’ (Optional) Technical Sponsor: Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP and dual-licensed under MIT, APACHE2, or GPL licenses?: "Yes"

Project Description

The lack of incentives for Young People to access educational content that contributes to their results, and their futures. Koha's mission is to bring equity to education through incentivized learning. We are developing a multi-sided marketplace, Koha Ed, with a Learn to Earn (L2E) Protocol, connecting Young People everywhere with Digital Education Content Creators. Koha Ed motivates Young People to consume Educational Content, and complete measurable Learning Tasks, whilst earning monetary rewards and NFTs. Koha rewards the learning journey, not the results. Through Koha, Content Creators access new revenue streams.

Parents, other family members, and guardians can purchase Koha tokens and use them to incentivize Young People to undertake Learning Tasks in return for “pocket money”. Koha rewards Content Creators every time their content is accessed. Charities, Foundations, NGOs, Governments, and Corporations can “sponsor” learning tasks using purchased Koha tokens so that all Young People, everywhere, regardless of their circumstances, can earn rewards.

The Koha solution requires Decentralised Content Distribution infrastructure that supports structured data: Identity, Credentials, Digital certificates, Profiles, Curriculum Vitae (Resumes), and Digital Educational Content (Games, Puzzles, Documents). Koha also requires decentralised storage that distributes unstructured data to be consumed from the optimum location relevant to the Koha End User. Video content is an example of unstructured content.

Koha Content Creators will have sovereignty over their content. To ensure their content will be served from the optimum location relevant to the Koha End User, and sovereignty over their content, creators require a decentralised approach that will, in turn, reward the content storage providers for their content storing and serving services.

Value

What are the benefits to getting this right? At Koha, we have identified a real-world problem and conceived a brilliant “crossover” solution that crosses over into blockchain and Web3 to disrupt a traditional Web 2.0 space, bringing with it vast numbers of new users, and revenue opportunities, to decentralised storage, blockchain, crypto, and ultimately, Web3.

Building Koha on Filecoin will bring real-world revenues to those who provide content storage and distribution services. Those who invest in these services will have a constant demand as new content is published and served to Young People everywhere. Using a decentralised storage network gives content creators sovereignty over their valuable content. Our model proposes that content creators who become successful brands could sell their brand, and content, to investors who value a yield. Content Creators will have access to new revenue streams that heretofore are only available on centralised platforms such as YouTube or learning platforms such as Udemy.

Koha brings equity to education as Young People will have open access to measurable sponsored digital learning tasks no matter where they are from, or what their circumstances are. Those in less privileged circumstances can be sponsored to undertake learning tasks by other interested groups such as Charities, Foundations, NGOs, Governments, and Corporations.

What are the risks if you don't get it right? In the current centralised systems, the reward to content creators is either subjective or is wholly controlled for the benefit of the Wb2.0 platform’s management and shareholders. Content creators can be de-platformed, or demonetised, on a whim, and often for no apparent reason. Koha’s decentralised approach will protect content creators from such possibilities.

Without the motivation inherent in incentivised learning, Young People will continue to rely on their natural inquisitiveness to search and find interesting relevant content. Content creators will continue to publish on centralised platforms. There will be a lack of equity in education resulting in Young People not being able to work towards a better, brighter future.

The primary risk of not getting Koha content distribution right is that performance of content delivery will be slow and unwieldy. This will result in Koha’s users being frustrated and having low confidence in learning on Koha. In addition, we must get the UX right such that it is a frictionless experience for our end users, learning tasks sponsors, and content creators.

What are the risks that will make executing on this project difficult? Koha will be built on blockchain, including smart contracts for the tokenisation of processes, there is a risk from the association with cryptocurrency. We aim to mitigate this by ensuring Koha’s users must complete a sponsored learning task that introduces the concepts and technologies that we will use. The sponsorship fees could come from blockchain foundations, blockchains, and other interested parties.

Deliverables

Research and produce a detailed specification of the technical architecture for the Decentralised Content Distribution solution, including identifying 3rd party service providers. Research GitHub repo with tutorials including workflows to interact with decentralised storage.
Design Koha’s Decentralised Content MVP.
Develop software components for storing and retrieval of content with Filecoin including decentralised identifier for Koha End Users and content creators.
Develop a Proof of Concept project to include participating communities of Koha End Users, Learning Task Sponsors, and Digital Education Content Creators.
Create documents, blogs, podcasts, tutorial videos, and demos that explain Koha’s Decentralised Storage approach to other entrepreneurs, and how they can use it, to solve the real-world problems they have identified and want to use our open-source solution.

Development Roadmap

Milestones:

Research and produce specifications. a. Research Decentralised Content Storage using Filecoin. b. Design and document the content dataset, templates, process flows, interfaces, and storage resilience/redundancy. c. Establish Koha Github repository for code and tutorials/documentation. d. Continue discussions with project participants and enter MOUs for our MVP based PoC. e. Engage with, and agree on participation, with parents’ associations, behavioural therapists, educators, charities, foundations, Regional and global NGOs, and the digital education content creator’s ecosystem. f. Define the Economic and Financial model for Koha’s Decentralised Storage solution. g. Identify 3rd party services for Decentralised Identifiers, Personal Data Management including NFTs, and Digital Resume.

Estimated Time: 2 full time person months @ $6,000 per month – Total $12,000

Dates: 15/08/2022 – 9/09/2022

Design Koha’s Decentralised Content MVP. a. Define the bare minimum features that will enable content storage and retrieval with Filecoin. b. Design workflows, and associated interfaces.

Estimated Time: 1 full time person months @ $6,000 per month – Total $6,000

Dates: 29/08/2022 – 23/09/2022

Develop software components for decentralised storage and retrieval of content with Filecoin. a. Develop code libraries and manage code base on Github repo. b. Conduct end to end testing and adjust as appropriate to ensure maximum performance and interoperability.

Estimated Time: 2 full time person months @ $7,000 per month – Total $14,000

Dates: 19/09/2022 – 14/10/2022

Develop Proof of Concept project plan a. Engage with PoC participating communities made up of Koha End Users, Learning Task Sponsors, and Digital Education Content Creators. b. Create a detailed baseline PoC project plan: i. Project Charter including Project Sponsor, Steering Committee, and Stakeholders. ii. Write Project Scope iii. Time iv. Resources v. Budget vi. Risks vii. Communication plan viii. Project Post-mortem c. Put in place agreements for baseline project funding with strategic partners, blockchain foundations, and charities interested in bringing equity to education.

Estimated Time: 1 full time person months @ $7,000 – Total $7,000

Dates: 29/08/2022 – 23/09/2022

Documentation, blogs, podcasts, tutorial videos, and demos. a. Our approach is wholly open source: i. Make Koha’s codebase available to other entrepreneurs. ii. Provide supporting content that explains Koha’s Decentralised Storage approach. b. Develop clear and concise instructions on how Koha’s solution can be used. c. Develop Use Cases by way of examples. d. Define support contact resources for others who plan to use Koha’s solution. e. Write Weekly Project Blogs f. Produce bi-weekly podcasts g. Produce short engaging tutorials h. Produce a “black box” demo that will eventually be based on Code Complete solution.

Estimated Time: 2 Person Months @ $5,000 – Total $10,000

Dates: 15/09/2022 - 14/10/2022

Total Budget Requested

$49,000

Costs are for people resources only. The team will be decentralised and remote. Equipment and services costs are our own.
Along with the Koha founders, we plan to use the budget to engage with two additional team members: a. Developer b. Product/Project Lead
We will use open-source tools and libraries.
There is some overlap in our milestones as there are dependencies between design, development, and documentation. We will manage these dependencies based on resource management and risk in our project plan.

Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

We plan to integrate the Decentralised Storage Solution with our Koha platform and Learn to Earn Protocol.
Once integrated, the Decentralised Storage Solution will be paid for by Koha’s transaction revenue model.
Revenue attribution for Filecoin will be researched and defined as part of Milestone 1. Research and Produce Specification, Part f. Define the Economic and Financial model for Koha’s Decentralised Storage solution.

Team

Team Members

Marcel Henry Koha
Alex Baker Koha
Developer (TDC) We are in discussions with several suitable developers capable of stepping up to Lead Developer. They have each confirmed their willingness to join our team under the right circumstances.
Product/Project Lead (TDC) We have identified this person and they have confirmed their willingness to join our team under the right circumstances.

Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

Team Website

https://www.kohadao.com/

Relevant Experience

Marcel Henry: CTO, self-starter, team player, motivator. Worked at innovative, pioneering, start-ups & global technology companies (Microsoft).

Marcel as a Founder: raised over €17m personally or as part of a leadership team including M&A transactions. Led product design, development & deployment, early-stage Business Development, Go To Market troubleshooting in the Public & Private sectors.

Marcel as a Technologist: Smart Cities, Urban Mobility, Travel, Air Quality & Carbon, Blockchain, DAOs, Tokenomics, Networking including IoT, Data Centres, Edge Computing, Mobile Technologist, Geospatial Search and Augmented Reality. Leader of PMOs, defining methodologies, driving adherence to frameworks.

Marcel has been involved in several early-stage blockchain/crypto projects, identifying the problem, defining the solutions, writing whitepapers, developing the brand, and leading early-stage business development.

Alex Baker is a seasoned start-up junkie, having started, developed, and exited two companies in the web2, IoT, and Big Data space. Alex has built teams that built solutions for browser and mobile with complex back-end infrastructure and beautiful front ends that focus on a fantastic user experience.

Alex is the parent of a neurodiverse child and knows that to ensure adequate learning; it’s essential to provide content beyond the school environment; he has also seen first-hand how incentivised learning works to propel his children forward.

Alex has been an early adopter in the crypto space; Alex has now dedicated the last 18 months to a deep dive into all things web3, investing in several projects. Part of a thriving crypto community in Ireland with around 1700 members, Alex is an active member and has presented on several topics related to DAOs and regulations.

Alex wants to ensure that KOHA appeals to the average web user instead of the crypto elite, and his focus is on providing a fantastic user onboarding and user experience.

With Alex’s background and successful start-up experience, he has been asked to join several web3 projects. Still, for now, he wishes to focus his efforts on providing the world with a web3 education platform that will benefit the community.

Marcel is also from a neurodiverse family and has personally, and through his son, experienced the challenges of learning in the rigid school system environment. Realising that tapping into the gratification experienced through incentivised activities, engaging content, puzzles, gamification and recognised achievements, has resulted in Marcel teaming up with Alex to solve the inequity in education for all Young People, including the neurodiverse.

Team code repositories

Additional Information

We heard about the specific Filecoin Grant through discussions with Chain Link

Marcel@kohadao.com Alex@kohadao.com

Using Figma, we have designed and developed the front-end UX for Koha End Users, Learning Task Sponsors, and Content Creators.

Using Miro, we have researched and explored all the many aspects of the ecosystem and the problems we aim to solve.

We are engaged with several organisations focused on the difficulties facing the Young People of Ukraine. It is very much anticipated that these Young People will one day return to a normal life, living in Ukraine. One of the concerns relates to Ukraine's Young People's ability to maintain pace with their national curriculum whilst their education is disrupted, or whilst they find themselves displaced in another country. Koha is being proposed as one solution to this problem.

Koha would also benefit the Young People's families by becoming a source of "Pocket Money" under circumstances where such "luxuries" are not affordable. As part of this, we are participating in the Super Connect initiative on a specific track for how technology can be used for the benefit of Ukraine's citizens. Super Connect is run by Empact Ventures and Hays Technology.

Further to this, Human Trafficking is considered a constant threat to Ukraine's Young People. And elsewhere across the world. We have started working with concerned agencies on a proposal, including the development of Digital Education Content , to educate Young People on how to identify the situations where Human Trafficking is a threat to their safety and freedom.

filecoin-project / devgrants

Koha: Decentralised Content Distribution for Digital Education Content. #787