Cardano e-Learning Platform

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

We perceive the limited number of free educational platforms and content relating to the Cardano blockchain platform as a barrier to the ecosystem's growth. Our proposed solution is an opportunity to serve Catalyst, the Cardano community and future developers. Over two years of producing the “Descentralización Total Cardano Podcast,” a Spanish language podcast that includes weekly live Q&As related to everything Cardano and interviews with more than 50 Cardano ecosystem projects, we have seen the need for developers and the community to engage in education through new and different sources.

In addition to the podcast, we have 2 years of experience operating a stake pool which has allowed us to be in contact with another demographic of the Spanish speaking community of Cardano. Many of our team members were guests on our podcast and have their own projects and interests in Cardano. From this mutual interest and passion in the Cardano blockchain platform, our project was born. Our podcast currently has 11.7k subscribers and an average reach of 1.1k per video. Between our podcast and stake pool operation, we have more than 1000 meaningful interactions monthly through engagement on social media platforms such as Youtube, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, and Whatsapp. This makes us uniquely positioned to start our project with a strong convocation, providing educational content and reaching potential users, both in the Spanish speaking community and beyond.

We aim to engage Cardano community members who want to learn to be developers, groups of female coding boot camps as well as developers interested in learning about e-utxo. We intend to serve the Catalyst community by providing educational content and increasing the number of developers in the Cardano ecosystem. 

Our proposed solution, an e-learning platform, will be implemented by a team of academic professionals who will research and create content as well as develop tools for evaluating the user's learning experience and measuring achievement on the platform. Our e-learning platform will provide high quality educational content organized into a written and audiovisual format and including a quiz test at the end of each course so the student can achieve measurable goals and demonstrate their learning through a score system. The result of this platform will be an increase in the amount of Cardano developers able to work on Catalyst and in the Cardano ecosystem and an enrichment and diversification of the ecosystem.

Latin America is currently the global region showing the 2nd strongest growth of its developer population, with a growth rate faster than North America and just behind the Asia Pacific region (source: Evans Data). This indicates there may be strong demand for instructional content for Spanish speaking developers. However, although we are a majority Spanish speaking team based in Latin America, we plan to create our content in both Spanish and English, as English is the most widely spoken language globally and we hope to be able to reach a wide audience. We intend to create enough content anyone can have the tools and knowledge at their fingertips to learn functional programming, Haskell, Plutus, Plutarch or Marlowe and everything in between.  

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The creation of an e-learning platform for Cardano developers will increase the number of developers in the Cardanno ecosystem able to create quality dApps, products and integrations which will ultimately lead to increasing the utility and adoption of Cardano. 

In order to have an ecosystem of different dApps, products and integrations for the community to use we need to address the need for learning resources that allows developers to gain an in-depth understanding of all the benefits that Cardano’s Extended UTXO model offers.  

With the goal of increasing products and solutions useful to the Cardano community we plan to create an instructional e-learning platform that covers topics related to Cardano and blockchain in a way that is comprehensive and step-by-step, starting with the basics and working up to the challenges of building on blockchain.

Topic categories we plan to cover:

Why create a new platform instead of using the existing educational resources available?

After a research process that included quoting a sample of online learning services we came across 3 reason why utilzing an existing learning platform is not the best option for this challenge:

In summary, many courses and learning resources currently available are not accessible to a large portion of aspiring developers due to the cost. Free resources available are often incomplete, don’t cover all the topics required to be able to create dApps and integrations in the Cardano ecosystem, or weren’t created for Spanish speaking developers or new developers in mind, using proven pedagogical methodologies and developed by academic professionals in the industry. Additionally, we have not found an easily customizable or updateable open-source learning platform that offers such a wide scope of topics with the in-depth instruction we have in mind.

We plan to make accessible content broken down into digestible lessons which make use of different formats (written, audiovisual) and include at the end of each lesson a quiz to measure learning achievements. We will also include access to docker containers so users can test what they have learned in the lesson.

Although this project is targeted towards developers, as the Cardano ecosystem continues to grow the interest for an educational platform that allows any community member access to the knowledge and topics we cover continues to grow.

The development of our product will be divided into stages where in each iteration we improve the user and learning experience based on the feedback received from the community.

We also see an opportunity in the industry to increase gender equality and empowerment of women through ICT, which is why we plan to partner with female coding boot camps and invite these groups to collaborate, learn and build with us in the Cardano ecosystem.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

High Costs :

To produce the level of quality content required for the project to launch successfully and be accessible to a diverse scope of users will require significant funds, specifically: 

• Research and Content Creators

In order to create the content and e-learning platform we envision, it is necessary to have a team of dedicated, qualified, and trained professionals collaborating on the project. If we are unable to obtain funds required to compensate our team at the industry standard rate for their work and preparation (certifications, access to resources) for the project, this could potentially delay the project timeline.

• Production of Audiovisual Content 

We find high quality audiovisual content related to the Cardano blockchain platform to be lacking. To remove as many barriers to learning as possible for a diverse group of users, we want to incorporate this type of content onto our e-learning platform. To achieve this we are choosing to work with an experienced video production company, however the cost of high quality audiovisual production is high.

• User Support

Ensuring the success of our e-learning platform will require implementing a user support service where users’ questions and doubts can be answered as they face the challenges of functional programming with Haskell (Plutus, Plutarch, Marlowe ) and understanding e-utxo. This will require contracting a trained support person with credentials in Cardano as a service.

• Incentives for Trial Period Users

To incentivize a diverse group to use our platform and complete the course during the a trial period we would like to offer financial incentives in the form of ADA or stablecoin in exchange for completion of the course and providing user feedback. 

In summary, we foresee insufficient funds or a delay in funding for the aforementioned costs as a potential risk for the success of the project.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Key milestones of our proposed project are broken down into stages and relate to the creation of a website and e-learning platform as well as the research and creation of Cardano blockchain content. These processes will occur simultaneously. 

The length of our project timeline for the creation of the minimal viable product (MVP) is 6 months. This is based on our ability to have different project teams working simultaneously to reach both the website building and content creation deadlines. We have broken down this 6 month period into stages of 2 months:

Stage I

Website design/build: 

• Creation of beta version of the site

Content:

•  Research and obtain credentials at Emurgo Academy

Stage II

Website design/build:

• Implement feedback on the beta version of the site 
• Execute code and design 

Content:

• Creation of courses & quiz content 
• Translation of Content
• Pre & Post production of audiovisual content 

Stage III

Website design/build, content:

• Integration of the content onto the website in its different formats
• Website testing
• Introducing the platform on different Cardano platforms to reach different communities such as developers, women coding boot camps, Catalyst 
• Integration of user support service onto the the platform

Upon completion of these key milestones, we will host weekly workshops on each course in order to present the topics to the community in a live format and allow interaction between instructors and users, answering doubts and receiving feedback.

The assignments will work from the beginning on their own goals as teams in order to move in an efficient way as a whole. Once the platform is online we should have weekly sessions with each course in order to cover the topic with the community on a live format so the teachers can also attend students' doubts.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Emurgo Courses = $5,700 USD ($1,900 x 3)

It is important our team is able to gain credentials within the Cardano ecosystem to demonstrate their credibility, knowledge and understanding of the Cardano blockchain platform.

Audiovisual Content = $20,000 USD 

To deliver the high quality audiovisual content required to successfully reach a wide and diverse learning audience, we will hire a professional video production company. 

Translation = $12,000 USD

Translation of content from Spanish to English and proofreading translation. 

Community engagement = $3,000 USD

To incentivize participation and completion of the course during the trial period,we plan to give financial rewards upon completion of the course.

Contingency = $10,000 USD

In case of a fall in ADA´s price we would use this $10,000 to mitigate the risk of salary loss during the project timeline, before the creation of the MVP.

Salaries = $50,000 USD

Salaries are based on a rate of $30 USD/hour. This accounts for differences in cost of living and wages across Europe, the US and Latin America, where we have team members located. This covers salaries for 46 hours of work a month for 6 months for our six salaried team members. 

Platform Creation (5 months) 

Infrastructure Build and Run = $38,000 

Back-end developer = $11,000 

Front-end developer = $11,000

DevOps = $8,000

Design/art = $3,000 

Run (cloud) = $2,500

Social Media 

Marketing = $6,000 

Marketing budget will include GoogleAds campaign, social media, and SEO management. 

Total budget: $180,200 USD

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Robert Frederick Auffarth

Crytopgraphy Research and Content Specialist

Robert Frederick Auffarth has his Ph.D in Mathematics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in the area of algebraic geometry. He is a professor at the University of Chile. He is project manager for The Math Project, a Cardano NFT project that aims to bring quality math education to the crypto space.

Academic Portfolio

YouTube Channel

Cardano NFT Project

Camilo Chacón Sartori

Blockchain Research and Content Specialist

Camilo Chacón Sartori is currently a Ph.D. student in artificial intelligence at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA), in Barcelona, Spain. He works in the area of hybrid algorithm design: combining heuristic and Machine Learning techniques, resolving combinatorial optimization problems. He has his masters degree in Computer Science and Informatic Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. He is the author of two books, one on the subject of computation and functional programming, the second on the lives and work of 12 great computer scientists in history.

Linkedin

Github

Marcomb

Sofia Cabrera

Blockchain and E-UXTO Content Creator and Student Support Service 

Sofia Cabrera is a student of Informatic Engineering at Duoc UC in Santiago, Chile. She is vice president of More Women in ICT.

Linkedin

Kidora Daal

Defi and Economics Content Specialist

Kidora Daal has a Master of Science (M.S.) in Financial Economics from the University of Chile. She is a professor of Economics at the Universidad Santiago de Chile USACH.

Linkedin 

Sebastian Aravena Osorio

Production Manager

Sebastián Aravena Osorio has a degree in Architecture from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the producer of the Individuo Digital YouTube channel, where he creates content related to Cardano and Crypto and has over 12k followers. He is a Cardano Ambassador. He also acts as chief technology officer for the E-Masters Academy.

Linkedin

Individuo Digital 

E-Masters Academy

Rodrigo Oyarzun 

Project Manager

Rodrigo Oyarzun is operator of CHIL Cardano stake pool. He is also a business developer and creator of content related to Cardano. He has experience working in blockchain since 2017. Building a community around the pool allows him to see a different side of the Cardano ecosystem

Linkedin

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes, we will likely seek further funding in order to expand and continue to offer high quality instructional content for free, ensuring it’s accessible to a diverse audience. Additional funding would go towards research, building new courses, platform updates, and marketing.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Platform Success Metrics: 

• Number of users on the platform - number of users who register, number of courses attended by users, number of courses completed
• User feedback surveys
• Support service response times

Courses: 

• Diversity of users taking the course (number of female coding boot camps engaged as an example)
• User feedback surveys

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

An e-learning platform will be launched with 30 courses available. We will have at least 100 registered users on the platform within a year. We will engage with a diverse range of users, including at least 5 female coding boot camps from Latin America.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

this is an entirely new proposal