This project is one of the 2015 WISE Awards winners.
Nafham is a free online K-12 educational video platform that provides students with five to 15 minute crowd-sourced educational videos, covering their official public curriculum organized by grade, term, subject, and academic schedule. The platform currently has more than 23,000 videos covering Egyptian, Saudi, Kuwaiti, Algerian, and Syrian curricula and is available online through the website, mobile apps (Android/iOS) and the smart TV app. To date more than 5,000 videos have been crowd-sourced.
Many Arab countries are facing similar educational challenges related to access, quality and infrastructure in the public sector. Public schools do not have the capacity to receive all students in good conditions and some students need to follow a different methodology to understand a lesson. Millions of dollars are thus spent on private tutors every year, which puts a lot of pressure on many families’ budgets.
In the MENA region, providing quality digital materials that cover every lesson delivered in K-12 schools requires a huge effort that cannot be handled by a small or medium size organization. Thus, Nafham uses the crowdsourcing as a tool to collect, edit, and deliver these materials in video format accessible to all.
Nafham facilitates free, convenient and accessible educational content online based on a crowdsourcing model. One of the benefits of this method is to engage students in the process of creating the lessons while making an effort to explain topics to their peers in order to help them understand their lesson better.
Additionally, Nafham encourages crowd-teaching via a gamification system and also by holding competitions. Content is accessible anytime from the website and anywhere from the mobile apps with more than 23,000 videos which cover the curricula of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Algeria, and Kuwait. To ensure the quality of the materials catered online, professional teachers review the online content regularly.
In terms of future developments, Nafham plans to provide different types and sizes of sponsorship and advertising packages to match the different needs of potential sponsors, including local schools, technology companies, etc. In addition, Nafham is currently is on the way to become a non-profit model by creating two foundations in Egypt and USA.
