Launching Thursday April 4 in Nairobi Kenya, Shakili.com is a peer-to-peer learning platform that aims to connect educators to students and experts to professionals around their talents, careers, and interests by enabling users to set up e-schools and create courses to share knowledge and content.
Shakili comes from two words (Share Akili) which simply means “share knowledge”.
Shakili.com- Learn: Share: Discover More
Shakili aims to ease content sharing and networking among varsity students & faculty. Learning happens faster when we digitize & share content. Through Shakili educators can create, upload and share digital content in various formats with students to make learning more fun and mobile. Shakili.com helps educators publish educational content in one platform in creative multimedia formats for a variety screens for global consumption.
Problem Shakili is Solving
According to the founders, none of the local universities meet the recommended teacher-student ration. Shakili helps lecturers maintain a closer virtual relationship with students and manage huge classes spread geographically easily by sharing online.
They added that there is need for education to be available to people just beyond the walls of an institution to provide learning opportunities that allow people to acquire new skills to help transform their interests into passion and knowledge.
“Our curriculum needs to be progressive to current needs of industry and marketplace. Shakili.com provides a chance for industry to also offer courses. Professionals are looking for ongoing learning and career development without necessarily incurring the costs of a traditional education. Shakili allows users to take up self-scheduled courses that allow flexible learning at their own pace.”, the team said.
TechMoran caught up with the team and they gave a preview into what they are up to.
Who can use shakili.com?
- Our primary target users are universities & colleges where lecturers or students create e-schools and courses to upload & share study content and aggregate already existing educational content from the web to the courses created.
- Research Institutions, Corporate entities and NGO’s that want to share educative content in a social, mobile and organized way for corporate learning
- Speakers, coaches, tutors and consultants can create online schools, aggregate content from the web and organize it into courses.
- Bloggers and content creators can create online schools and offer courses around their passions, hobbies and interests.
Why are we cool? What’s our value proposition?
- Learning, one extreme is the magic of presence – with peers and teachers. Another is the almost infinite access in the virtual world. Shakili.com pays more attention to both, and accelerates learning by taking the best of both worlds.
- Shakili.com offers a two pronged approach to democratization of education by offering access to high quality content for students and giving experts a platform to share knowledge with interested learners.
- We are offering people the opportunity to expand knowledge & pursue their interests without dedicating fixed periods of time to fit in a university schedule.
- Teachers & experts for example can use the Shakili.com to build an audience outside their class, allowing them to have 10,000 students instead of 50.
Potential to Change Lives
- Shakili.com offers an innovative new approach that holds much promise for engaging students by helping colleges and universities broaden their reach.
- Shakili.com can help raise degree completion, deepen college curricula and increase learning productivity. Making the process of learning fun & mobile!
- Shakili offers a platform that will allow universities to provide access to higher education for typically under-represented and disadvantaged students at home.
- Shakili.com enables higher education institutions embrace yet another way of passing knowledge, content and reaching out to students inexpensively.
- Adults, non-traditional learners or people that just need a little extra skill to advance in their careers will find Shakili.com very useful!
Who are the founders?
Muthuri Kinyamu, Co-Founder and CEO. Bachelor of commerce-marketing major at UoN and ACCA at Strathmore University and Lead strategist at Social Edge Africa; a social media agency. Also conceptualized SocialPRO social media clubs for universities which were launched in October 2012
Zack Kiuna, Co-Founder and CTO, works as a PHP developer at Squad Digital. Previously lead developer at Brand 2D and has an eMobilis Academy Certificate in mobile programming and a BSc, Computer Science from Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. He has PHP/MySql, jQuery, JSE, J2ME, JavaScript, Android, Phonegap.
Nick Stewart, lead designer and 4th Year Bachelor of Commerce- Marketing Major at UoN.
Our lead advisor and mentor: Dr. Bitange Ndemo- Permanent Secretary; Ministry of Information & Communications.
Follow them on Twitter at @JoinShakili
