Remote Web Development Mentoring (Research Project Results)

Learn to Earn
A Study in Web Development Training in Kenya
By Israel Kloss

Abstract
Kenyan and Tanzanian secondary school students appear to be very
interested in and motivated to learn web development. During the course of this
study, we sought to answer the question "Do MOOCs (Massive Open Online
Courses), remote mentoring, or some unique combination of both lead to
increased web development achievement among students in East Africa?” (Kloss
2014). We posed this question first with our 2014 Experiment.com grant.
The implications of such knowledge could lead to increased opportunities
for students living in poverty to develop self-sustaining businesses that can
directly provide a viable means of financial support for themselves and others.
We recruited teachers (IT volunteers from the US) to implement a remote
mentorship training program designed to offer basic web development skills to
young Kenyans. Various factors influenced the success of this program,
(including student access to technology, date/time of classes and internet and/or
electricity outages). We concluded that there is much potential for a combination
of both MOOCs and remote mentoring to lead to increased web development
achievement among students in East Africa. However, there are significant
obstacles that must be overcome in order to achieve this success.
Introduction
After eighth grade in Kenya, school is no longer provided free by the state
which means it is financially out of reach for millions of primary school graduates
(Glennerster, et al., 4). From 2008-2012, the secondary school net attendance
ratio dropped to only 51.6% for males and only 48.3% for females. This is much

lower than the 96% primary school completion rate for both sexes for the same
period (“Statistics”, 2013). A 2011 report explains one of the largest reasons
behind low secondary school attendance.
“Despite the recent reductions in secondary school fees, these fees still
present a major financial obstacle. The 2005 Kenya Integrated Household
budget shows that on average secondary school expenditures accounted
for approximately 55% of annual per capita household expenditures. ... the
pressing burden of secondary school fees prevent many students from
attending secondary schools.” (Glennerster, et al., 5).
If you’re one of the lucky ones to get a secondary education in Kenya,
you’re even less likely to reach post-secondary education as fewer than 150,000
students score high enough on their final high school exams to qualify for entry
into one the few universities with scholarships available in Kenya (“High Scores”,
2015).
Educational Technology Solutions
Because Kenya’s state primary school system is full of problems, there
are some organizations using technology to improve educational outcomes for
students who struggle financially; however one of the most successful
organizations, Bridge International Academies, only works at the primary school
level in Kenya. While it isn’t yet tackling the secondary school problem, its
success is worth nothing. Bridge, which won a Fast Company “Most Innovative
Companies” award, has plans to educate 10 million children across dozens of
countries by 2025. Founded in Kenya in 2009, Bridge has built 412 primary

schools across Kenya and Uganda which charge only $6/month per student, on
average using what they call “data-driven” and “Academy-in-a-Box” models.
Bridge, using mobile payments and highly scalable computer technologies has
already managed to prevent much of the grift, sloth and financial corruption from
entering their system despite the general acquiescence across Kenya to the
regularity of corruption within the primary school system. This is no small feat for
a 6-year-old startup and their success with technology-enhanced education in
Kenya bodes well for upcoming opportunities to expand student’s opportunities at
the secondary and postsecondary levels.
Technology is improving educational outcomes among students who
might not normally be able to access education in East Africa. This is true even
beyond secondary school. Students with access to technology can teach
themselves the basics of web development through MOOCs and remote
mentorships with volunteer computer programmers and web developers. This is
the ultimate opportunity we sought to investigate through this case study.
Learn To Earn Background
In June 2012, my wife and I, after giving our 2-weeks’ notice, left our jobs
and flew to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This was the beginning of our journey
across 12 cities looking for opportunities to make a difference. While this was my
first time in Africa, my wife had previously worked in Tanzania teaching English
with Village Schools International.
During our time in Kenya, we met Cavin Ochieng, an eager young man
aspiring to be a Computer Science student. We didn't know it then, but Cavin’s

inquisitive mind and his focused questions of us would point us to a new goal for
our trip and beyond. A few days after getting to know Cavin, we learned that we
were both arriving to the same town (Mombasa) in 2 weeks. So we swapped
phone numbers and arranged to meet in Mombasa where I agreed to train him in
web design and development for a few days. We met at a “cyber café” (an
African a café with internet) and I started teaching him.
Cavin learned eagerly and was able to quickly complete the tasks I
assigned him on my laptop. I had never taught or mentored before, but I found it
exhilarating and fun because Cavin clearly cherished this web design training.
After a week of doing 5-6 hours of training per day, Jen, my wife, and I traveled
to our next destination and had some time to reflect on the week with Cavin.
Cavin, like most young people in Kenya, needed a job for post-secondary school
fees so we decided to continue teaching Cavin, but remotely from the USA.
We returned to the US with this endeavor in mind as well as a strong
desire to use our backgrounds in teaching and web development to have a
positive impact on more East African students living in poverty. During our trip,
we had noticed that there was ample entrepreneurship going on all around us --
on street corners, at markets, in villages etc. all around Kenya, a culture of
Entrepreneurship is visible. For example, M-Pesa (M stands for mobile and
“pesa” is Swahili for “money”) is arguably the most successful 100-percent
mobile banking system in the developing world. M-Pesa was born in Kenya and
is now owned by Safaricom. 70% of Kenya’s total population has mobile phones
(“Statistics”, 2013) and 10% of Kenya's GDP comes through M-pesa ("Mobile

Payments"). We noticed the hunger for more technology all around us as an
opportunity to help satisfy Kenyan's hunger for “what’s next”.
Learn to Earn is Launched
From 2012-2013 we finished teaching a 1-year weekly remote pilot course
in Wordpress, implemented remotely from the US. This course resulted in both
attending students receiving jobs doing WordPress development and social
media management. They used their earnings to help pay for their continuing
university fees. And that is how the name "Learn to Earn" was born. Between
2012 and present, we have worked to expand Learn to Earn in partnership with
Africa Nazarene University (http://www.anu.ac.ke), iHub Technology Center
(ihub.co.ke), Jonemo Secondary School (jonemo.org) and Education For All
Children (www.educationforallchildren.org).
We began to wonder if this pilot program could be replicated. More
specifically, we wondered if this project could “level the playing field” for rural
East African students living in poverty by helping them build symbiotic
relationships with partners/mentors in the Western world and develop self-
sustaining businesses that could directly provide a viable means of financial
support for themselves and others.
Methodology
All research came from direct observation, surveys, pre-assessments and
post-assessments.
In order to help teach the students over the 12-week course and to help
with the project workload, I recruited 4 teacher volunteers, in addition to myself.

Volunteer teachers included Mike Croghan and Jesiah McCann, Principal
Developers, Gannett Co. Inc; Joseph Karasha, Software Engineer, Fidelity
Investments and Jacob Pham, Senior Business Analyst, Liberty Mutual
Insurance (and Boston College MBA candidate). The class schedule and
material covered follows.
Saturday, January 24 (Invitation & Introduction Meeting)
Duration: 2 hours
Mentor: Israel Kloss
# of students present: 6
Material covered: A simple informational gathering to introduce the syllabus and recruit
students.
Class 1: Saturday, January 31
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 6
Material covered:
● Pre-assessment (Appendix A) was administered.
● Wordpress-based web design and development.
● An introduction to HTML class 1 using Chrome web developer toolbar.
● Homework assigned: To add their names to the HTML document sent to all and
return it to me via email before next class.

Class 2: Saturday, February 7
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 3
Material covered: An introduction to HTML class 2. The students didn’t understand the
assignment so homework was explained and re-assigned: add names to the HTML
document sent to them and return it via email before next class. At this point we began
using Panopto to record all classes for students to review at the most convenient time
for them.
Class Recording (See Appendix D)
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 3
Material covered: An introduction to HTML class 3 and began working with CSS.
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 2

Material covered: An introduction to HTML class 3 and continued working with CSS.
At this point, I identified the one of the strongest students and was able to start using
the "flipped classroom” teaching model.
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 4
Material covered: An introduction to HTML class 4 and continued working with CSS.
Class 6: Saturday, March 7
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 4
Material covered: An introduction to HTML/CSS class 4.
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 3 (from this point forward the same 3 students continued attending
and completed classes through the end of the semester).

Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 3
Duration: 2 hours
Students present: 3
Material covered: An introduction to career opportunities for web designers with Learn
to Earn volunteer, Joseph Karasha. Mr. Karasha is Kenyan by birth and a graduate of
University of Massachusetts Lowell and a software engineer at Fidelity Investments in
New Hampshire. He read the article about Learn to Earn in Bostinno and asked how he
could help. He was an encouragement to the students as both a Kenyan and a highly-
recruited programming professional. He introduced the students to numerous career
options open to Computer Science graduates.
Class 10: Saturday, April 4
Duration: 1 hour
Mentor: Joseph Karasha
Students present: 1

Material covered: Covered CSS styling and three different ways to apply CSS to
HTML content:
● Applying directly to HTML element
● The Style Tag
● Including a CSS file
Duration: 1 hour
Mentor: Mike Croghan
Students present: 1
Material covered: Mike Croghan (Learn to Earn Volunteer) introduced web
architecture: browsers, servers, documents, and protocols. See the class outline at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kIKRQbc4B0-
bCQOmI2EBUvtxtUnb9osv7nEQUK2oL7M/edit?usp=sharing
Duration: 1 hour
Mentor: Jesiah McCann
Students present: 1
Material covered: Jesiah McCann (Learn to Earn Volunteer) introduced intermediate
page layout using CSS.

Duration: 1 hour
Mentor: Joseph Karasha
Students present: 1
Material covered: Mr. Karasha (Learn to Earn Volunteer). Continued covering the 3
ways of inserting cascading stylesheets into HTML.
Class 14: Saturday, May 23
Duration: 1 hour
Students present: 3
Material covered: Final Post-assessment.
Pre- and Post-Assessment Results
The following graph displays the pre-assessment and post-assessments results for the
3 students who completed the entire semester.

Based on the pre-assessment (see Appendix A) administered prior to the
implementation of this program, 2 of the 3 students were below mastery level of the
curriculum. This is not surprising, of course. After 12 class sessions, we administered a
post-assessment similar in content to the pre-assessment. Over the course of the LTE
program, students increased their score by an average of 23%. This figure was
obtained from the mean of the difference in pre- and post-assessment scores of the
students. The final question on the post-assessment was a “stretch” question that
related to the content in the final class without much explanation or reinforcement.
Pre test Post Test
Student 1 60.00% 92.00%
Student 2 75.00% 86.00%
Student 3 60.00% 86.00%

One of the 3 students completed it correctly, one got half credit and one was
unsuccessful. The final scores indicate that students did, indeed, acquire greater
mastery of web development from the 12 weeks of classes.
Additionally, because the student with the lowest pre-assessment score became
the student with the highest post-assessment score, it is clear that the curriculum was
appropriate for even the most inexperienced students to learn and improve. Every
student scored higher on the post-assessment than the pre-test, showing that the
curriculum was challenging enough for even the most experienced student with the
highest pre-assessment score. In summary, the results showed that the course content
was appropriate for all student experience ranges.
Student and Teacher Surveys
In addition to pre-assessments and post-assessments, student and teacher
surveys were conducted after the final class to assess the quality and value of the
course (Appendix C). This anecdotal evidence reveals that both students and teachers
generally gave Learn to Earn high marks while each had suggestions for improvements
as well. Generally, problems reported centered around Africa infrastructure (as reported
by both students and teachers).
Technologies Rankings for Kenya
Teaching remotely in Kenya has helped us establish the following ratings for
“best in class” technologies ranked between 1 and 5 and (5 being the highest ranking):

Product/Software Teacher Usefulness Class Usage by Student
Canvas 5 2
Panopto 5 2
Youtube 5 N/A
What’s App 5 5
Team Viewer 1 1
Google Hangout 5 5
Stack Overflow 5 N/A
Wordpress.com 5 5
Wordpress.org 5 5
Join.me 1 1
Hangouts “On Air” (via youtube) 1 1
Airtel Cellular N/A 0
Orange Cellular N/A 4
Safaricom Cellular N/A 4
Chrome Browser 5 5
Sublime Text 5 5
Note that many of the above products received 5s from teacher’s perspectives (in
the USA) because they were particularly powerful for things like capturing video of
remote training sessions and are therefore highly helpful to both students and teachers.
However, some of the same products highly-rated by teachers did not work well for
students in the largely low-bandwidth internet areas common across East Africa. This is

largely due to the failure of data-streaming in low-bandwidth internet context of East
Africa.
Insights Gleaned
The semester started with 7 students that agreed to participate. Only 4
actually showed up for the pre-test. It’s interesting to note that 3 of the 4 students
who agreed to take the pretest made it to the end of the course. Going forward,
willingness take the pre-test may be an indicator of student commitment and
completion levels.
I used regular repetition to help student retention and by the third week of
teaching, I noticed that the students were familiar enough with our software and the
content that I was able to “flip the classroom.” In a remote web development training
context, this essentially means charging the students to do the coding themselves by
having them share their screens one at a time to complete my homework (and other)
assignments live for each other. The virtual equivalent of “calling students to the
chalkboard.”
Using the “flipped classroom” model of teaching proved to be a very good choice
with these students. I noticed the following benefits:
1. The most advanced student needed a greater challenge than just listening
and he was very skilled at taking and completing real-time instruction via
remote training (his typing skills were the strongest of the students).
2. The spontaneity of our unrehearsed teacher-student interactions kept the
class more alert and engaged (as did the “threat” I might call on any of the

students to do a problem that might otherwise be thought of as “the other
student’s problem”).
3. Watching and providing gentle guidance to students slowed down my
teaching speed which was previously too fast for the students judging from
the speed at which the students could complete my instruction in the
flipped classroom context. And since the students on-screen completion of
problems was recorded, it was helpful for the fastest student and the
average-speed student but especially for the slowest student (who could
review the entire class online in its entirety).
We learned that students in Kenya use their phones for texting and chat almost
exclusively and don’t read email very often, if at all. After getting a tip to use WhatsApp
to communicate with students, we found it to be one of the single greatest tools for for
communicating with and for helping to troubleshoot numerous infrastructure problems
that occur for students from electricity outage to internet outages or computer reboot
requirements.
Finally, we’ve measured and observed the high failure to complete our free 1-
year as well as our free 1-semester training program. In order to prevent that, we are
considering charging a small fee for all students in the future to overcome the
subconscious (and conscious) cheapening of value of the program that a “free”
education introduces. We are also interested to see if charging for the Learn to Earn
program may result in improve student attendance and completion rate because there’s
some “money on the line.”

Challenges
There are significant obstacles that must be overcome in order to achieve
success in remote training in Kenya and worldwide. Among them are student’s
clearly-stated desire for a face-to-face mentor/teacher. The problems that
students in Kenya have with MOOCs are the same problems students worldwide
are experiencing: high failure to complete. The average MOOC completion rate
worldwide is currently at 15% and rarely rises higher than 40% (Jordan).
Many studies have been done on the cause of this problem with some
showing that the lack of teacher availability and accountability in remote classes
is too high a price to pay for many learners (Fleming, digital image).
Conclusions
❏ Poor Internet Infrastructure continues to be the single biggest challenge
facing remote education in East Africa. The Brck (a self-powered, mobile
WiFi device -- brck.com) has the possibility of changing internet availability
problems for thousands of people across Kenya (and beyond) if it can be
produced more cheaply than its current $249 price point. But the price has
already been coming down (from $300), which is continuing to help.
❏ To effectively teach a consistently attending group of remote students in
Kenya, we learned that it’s preferable if they are located at a university
with wifi or if they happen to live near a “cyber café” which they can use
for a low cost or for free.
❏ Students need teacher interaction at some level. Perhaps
technologies are coming that emulate and even “understand”

blockades to student learning and will replace the human
mentor/teacher for certain course topics, but for now, our Kenyan
students, like millions of students around the globe, have
expressed a desire for a teacher to be physically available for
assistance.
❏ From observing Kenyan students on and off for 3 years, the simplest
solutions have been the best. The future of remote education in Kenya
(and East Africa in general) is likely to be simple mobile solutions born of
innovative and incentive-based and sociologically and behaviorally
informed products built for and marketed directly to “the next billion” like
the ones currently under development by jana.com, medicmobile.org and
malarianomore.org.
❏ Mara Mentor, Bridge International Academies and Andela.co are each
organizations that have the funding and capabilities to expand into the
innovative types of mobile solutions that will change the future of
education for “the next billion” across the developing world. With over 3
billion mobile devices active around the world (GSMA Intelligence), the
technologies that will change education in the developing world are likely
to be the ones at the intersection of educational know-how and innovative,
incentive-based and sociologically and behaviorally savvy solutions
delivered through the mobile devices that are so ubiquitous throughout the
developing world.

Appendix A
Learn To Earn Pre-test
Visit the following site HYPERLINK "https://www.vcalc.com/wiki/home"
https://www.vcalc.com/wiki/home and do the following tasks.
The tasks will be based on the following questions.
1. What are the theme colors of this site from the first page (landing page)?
2. Briefly describe the kind of information or content that this site presents?
3. How many font sizes are represented on the landing page?
4. Create an account on the site by clicking on the “sign up” button.
5. What features does the site have to enable you to navigate the website?
6. Does this site have user feedback ? (List all you can see)
7. Submit an “enhancement” feedback
8. When was the site updated or copyrighted?
9. Briefly discuss the difference in the page layout of the landing page and the rest
of the pages.
10. In your view, how can this site be used to generate income to the owners?

Appendix B
Learn to Earn Post-Assessment
Visit the following site http://community.ihub.co.ke and do the following tasks. The tasks
will be based on the following questions.
1) What are 2 main colors of this site (theme colors) on this page?
2) What are 2 different font sizes used on this page?
3) Create an account on the site here: http://community.ihub.co.ke/register.
a. Register for 2 different accounts using with 2 different emails.
b. Register with your personal email.
c. Register with the below email that is your first name: student2@findable.me or
student1@findable.me or student3@findable.me)
4) Does this site have user feedback ? (List all you can see)
5) What is the copyright on this page?
6) Go to the “Featured Video” and watch it. List 2 things you learned in the video that
didn’t know about iHub.
7) In Chrome Developer Tools, go to the Resources tab and open the
community.ihub.co.ke folder and then open the Script folder. List the names of the files
you see there.

Appendix C
Student and Teacher Survey Results
Student Survey Results
RESPONDENT 1
Q1: How would you rate this class?
OK. I learned some new things.
Q2: How many times did you attend
class?
5-8
Q3: On days that you did not attend class,
what was the reason?
No internet
Other (please specify) preparation for
my college exams
Q4: If you were to take the next course,
what would help you be successful?
A face-to-face mentor, like Cavin
A different time of day
RESPONDENT 2
Great! I learned a lot of new
things.
Q2: How many times did you attend class?
8+
Q3: On days that you did not attend class, what was No internet

the reason?
Q4: If you were to take the next course, what would
help you be successful?
A face-to-face mentor, like
Cavin
A place to meet with
internet/electricity
Other (please specify) the
lessons should be more.
RESPONDENT 3
skipped
Q2: How many times did you attend
class?
skipped
Q3: On days that you did not attend class, what
was the reason?
Other (please specify) conflicting
last minute commitments
Q4: If you were to take the next course, what
would help you be successful?
A place to meet with
internet/electricity
Teacher Survey Results
We collected responses from 4 of our teachers and the results appear below.
RESPONDENT 1
Q1: How many times did you teach between
January and May, 2015? 3-5
Q2: On a scale of 1-5, rate the following components of the program.
Sharing teaching responsibilities 5 (excellent/highly effective)
Google Hangout 4

Time/date of classes 5 (excellent/highly effective)
Amount of lead time for assistance 5 (excellent/highly effective)
Students' effort 5 (excellent/highly effective)
Curriculum 5 (excellent/highly effective)
Internet/Google Hangout access on Africa
end 3
Q3: Would you be willing to teach again? Yes
Q4: What are some areas in which this
program could be improved?
Getting a stable internet connectivity
using a BRC in a central point where all
the students can b able to access.
Q5: What are some areas in which this
program was successful (for you,
personally, and/or students)
Personally, I graduated from this
program and now able to build
professional websites and mentor other
students. Secondly, the lte students are
now able to build their own websites
without supervision and they
understand the programming
languages. that's a great achievement
for us
RESPONDENT 2
Q1: How many times did you teach between January and May,
2015? 1-3
Sharing teaching responsibilities 4
Google Hangout 4
Time/date of classes 4
Amount of lead time for assistance 4

Students' effort 3
Curriculum 4
Internet/Google Hangout access on Africa end 1
Q3: Would you be willing to teach again? Yes
Q4: What are some areas in which this program
could be improved?
Better access &
connectivity..
was successful (for you, personally, and/or
students)
Being able to contribute and help
someone else learn & apply
technology was rewarding.
RESPONDENT 3
Q1: How many times did you teach between January and May,
2015? 1-3
Google Hangout 4
Students' effort 5
Curriculum 5
Q3: Would you be willing to teach again? Maybe
I think a rock-solid stress of
the importance of all
students and teachers
being included in a 100%
phone-based alternative to

could be improved?
desktop-based Google
Hangouts would be a great
improvement. The students
had adopted one
(WhatsApp) for chat only,
but they did not include
substitute teachers in the
chat group until after the
classes. I also wonder if a
solution (like phone-based
Google Hangouts) that
allowed for not just chat but
voice conferencing would
enable more class
participation when land-
based internet access was
down.
students)
Because of the
access/communication issues
mentioned above, each of my
classes had only one participating
student. However, that student was
extremely engaged, asked great
questions, and gave me as a
teacher the impression that he was
understanding and learning and
that the class had been completely
worthwhile. So overall it felt like a
great success to me.
RESPONDENT 4
Q1: How many times did you teach between January and
May, 2015? 1-3
Google Hangout 5

Students' effort 4
Curriculum 5
Q3: Would you be willing to teach again? Maybe
could be improved?
It's too early to tell.
students)
just the whole ensemble.
Having this as a foundation
with students abroad and
teachers here needs to
happen more

Works Cited
"Corporate Results", Web. N.p. http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/Friday-24-July-2015.pdf 12 Aug. 2015.
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RSS2. N.p.
http://www.eduventures.com/2015/06/why-online-students-succeed/ 25 Aug. 2015.
Flemming, Brian. Why Online Students Succeed. Digital image. Eduventures RSS2.
N.p. http://www.eduventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Why-Student-
Succeed_Chart.png, 15 June 2015. Web. 25 Aug. 2015.
Glennerster, Kremer, Mbiti and Takavarasha. "Access and Quality in the Kenyan
Education System: A Review of the Progress, Challenges and Potential Solutions", 1
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kenyan-education-system 12 Aug. 2015.
"GSMA Intelligence." GSMA Intelligence. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Aug. 2015.
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"High Scores to Drive up University Entry Points." http://www.advance-africa.com/high-
scores-to-drive-up-university-entry-points.html N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Aug. 2015.
Jordan, Katy "MOOC Completion Rates: The Data", 12 June 2015. Web. N.p.

http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html 25 Aug. 2015.
Kloss, Reuben I. "Does Remote Computer Training Help Expand STEM Enrollment in
East Africa? If So, How?", 1 March 2014. Web. N.p. http://bostinno.streetwise.co/all-
series/boston-college-mba-brings-massive-open-online-learning-to-east-africa/ 12 Aug.
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"Mobile payments go viral." World Bank http://go.worldbank.org/XSGEPAIMO0 Web. 12
Aug. 2015
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