UI students win Mentor4Edu global e-learning challenge

Two students of the University of Ibadan have defeated undergraduates from across the world to win the Mentors4Edu global e-learning challenge. 

The winning “Team XChange” was made up of Toheeb Ojuolape and Temilade Adelakun (pictured), 400 level students of petroleum engineering and mechanical engineering respectively clinched the overall prize.

The global e-learning challenge aimed to seek the most disruptive ideas for online learning in the modern world.

It seeks to bridge the gap in a world where credibility, certification, and universal accreditation is difficult to find, despite an existing large skill gap — especially in many third world countries.

The challenge, which called for unique and innovative entries, had over 1,000 entries from entrepreneurs, researchers, scientists, and student teams from across the World.  

Team XChange’s winning idea was titled “XChange” which is a mutual learning e-learning platform that allows for a transfer of skills between two or more participants or learning partners.

The platform would simply connect people for the purpose of skill sharing based on parameters such as skill proficiency, learning preference, location and experience.

For instance, a computer programmer could teach a Chinese man programming in exchange for learning how to speak Mandarin (Chinese). 

Based on Xchange’s proposal strategy, the team predicts a 40 percent increase in credibility and transparency of e-learning, 75 percent decrease in the cost of education and e-learning and 80 percent increase in rate of skill acquisition and knowledge sharing.

Winning the global e-learning challenge comes along with benefits including $300 equity-free funding, mentorship, support and partnership with top e-learning platforms like Udacity and Udemy for the successful launch of the winning entry.

These UI Students are currently working on building the XChange and its projected launch date is April 20th, 2019. 

The team is also in partnership talks with SkillNG, a foremost skill tutoring and youth talent development accelerator based in Ibadan to optimize their market penetration.

Ojuolape, the Xchange team leader, who is also a co-founder at Tell!, one of the start-ups listed by Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme for 2019, said the victory came with an “awesome” feeling.

“While we were competing, we took time out to go through profiles of some of the participants,” he said

“We saw that some of them were undergraduates from top universities like Harvard and Stanford. Nonetheless, we believed in our idea enough to push through and make our submission. And glory be to God, we won”.