Nigerian startup VarsityScape makes it easier for cohort-based course instructors to access all the tools they need to host a successful course using AI and live-learning technology.
Founded in 2019 by Daniel Idiare and Kenney Erimakonosine, VarsityScape began life as a platform for students in institutions of higher learning, before expanding into offering on-demand courses from instructors.
However, it noticed that the completion rates of these massive open online courses (MOOCs) were low, at less than 15 per cent, while in some cases 70 per cent of the students who bought the courses ended up not taking them.
“That was when we started offering cohort-based on-demand courses. This led us to notice the gap in the market,” Idiare told Disrupt Africa.
That gap was in allowing course instructors to more effectively host group-learning sessions, using live learning and AI technologies.
“By employing live learning technologies, we provide tools on our platform which enable instructors to provide chat, live classes, on-demand content, and even access to projects and jobs in their group learning communities,” said Idiare. “We are working to tie this all together with AI, which will help instructors generate content and even whole courses, provide support to students, provide analytics to the instructors, and recommendations to students and instructors.”
Prior to VarsityScape, no such dedicated platform existed. Instructors needed to piece tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, Slack, and WhatsApp together.
“What we have done is simplify the process so that all an instructor needs to do is create the course once, after which they can run multiple cohorts from there,” Idiare said.
We recently launched a stable version to all platforms this month and since then we have seen five major academies come on board. We expect to see more figures in the next quarter.”
VarsityScape is bootstrapped, having so far only raised a family and friends round worth US$30,000. It is, however, currently looking to raise a pre-seed round.
“Right now, most of our users are based in Nigeria. However, our product can be used from anywhere and can scale across markets very easily. We plan to scale globally,” said Idiare.
