Akwai's Validation

The formation of Akwai is the culmination of over 500 individual pieces of research collected from 1960 through 2015. For too long validated knowledge has just been sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Since technology is becoming more and more accessible, we have made it our business to figure out how to convert the wisdom learned from scientific studies into a tangible and actionable program. Over five decades of research has been manifested into one potent and concentrated mobile app.

Below are a few examples of how we have incorporated research into Akwai's software

A new generation of evidence: The family is critical to student achievement

Henderson, A. T., and Berla, N. - 2002 - Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL)

The evidence is consistent, positive, and convincing: families have a major influence on their children’s achievement in school and through life. This fourth edition of Evidence confirms that the research continues to grow and build an ever-strengthening case. When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more.

https://www.sedl.org/connections/resources/evidence.pdf

How the research is incorporated into Akwai's software

The following is an excerpt from the study:

The evidence is consistent, positive, and convincing: families have a major influence on their children’s achievement in school and through life. This fourth edition of Evidence confirms that the research continues to grow and build an ever-strengthening case. When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning,
children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more.

How are the many ways that families are engaged in their children’s education related to achievement? Many studies found that students with involved parents, no matter what their income or background, were more likely to

• earn higher grades and test scores, and enroll in higher-level programs.
• be promoted, pass their classes, and earn credits.
• attend school regularly.
• have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school.
• graduate and go on to postsecondary education.

Several studies found that families of all income and education levels, and from all ethnic and cultural groups, are engaged in supporting their children’s learning at home. White, middle-class families, however, tend to be more involved at school. Supporting more involvement at school from all parents may be an important strategy for addressing the achievement gap.

Do programs and special efforts to engage families make a difference? Yes, several studies found that they do. For example, teacher outreach to parents was related to strong and consistent gains in student performance in both reading and math. The effective outreach practices included meeting face to face, sending materials home, and keeping in touch about progress. Workshops for parents on helping their children at home were linked to higher reading and math scores. Schools with highly rated partnership programs made greater gains on state tests than schools with lowerrated programs.

How do higher performing schools engage families and community? Schools that succeed in engaging families from very diverse backgrounds share three key practices. They

• focus on building trusting collaborative relationships among teachers, families, and community members.
• recognize, respect, and address families’ needs, as well as class and cultural difference.
• embrace a philosophy of partnership where power and responsibility are shared.

The excerpt explains some of the benefits correlated with meaningful family and community engagement. The text that is bolded represents specific things that Akwai has incorporated. The app encourages students to invite all their relatives and adult family friends to join Akwai and become part of their Supporter Network. In fact, students' registration isn’t fully complete until they bring on a certain number of adults. On a quarterly basis, their Portfolio and Sub-Scores will be emailed to their Supporter Network.

Akawi empowers family members to become extremely effective in coaching the students to success. Rather than just giving students random strategies to work on – relatives can look at the students’ activity history, suggest an actionable plan and track the students’ progress as they execute the suggested strategy. 

Conversational Example 1: 

Mom: “Why are you failing math Timmy?”

Timmy: “I don’t know mom.”

Mom: “Well, you need to try harder son.” 

While this kind of advice is helpful, it is not very actionable. Parents who watch Akwai's simple training videos will be equipped to give advice and immediately start tracking its impact. Below is an example of how the conversation can take a different direction. 

Conversational Example 2:

Mom: “Why are you failing math Timmy?”

Timmy: “I don’t know mom.”

Mom: “Well let's take a look at your Portfolio. According to this, it looks like you aren't putting enough effort into your math studies. Use Akwai to start tracking the amount of effort you put into your homework."

Timmy: "Okay, I will add that Rating to my app"

Addressing the Achievement Gap

It is important to highlight how the excerpt above talks about the Achievement Gap. Studies show that student's [no matter their race, background, income or socioeconomic status] have more success when parents and family members are actively involved. Akwai's strategy parallels well with this quote, directly from the researchers, "Supporting more involvement at school from all parents may be an important strategy for addressing the achievement gap."

NCES's (National Center for Education Statistics) Findings

According to a different study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education (NCES), “one out of every four public school teachers cited lack parent involvement as a serious problem in their schools." This leads to lower high school graduation rates, less post-secondary education and an unqualified workforce. Through the mobile app Akwai ensures that parents and relatives are actively involved in their students’ development. As life skills are cultivated, the program guides students down a personalized action plan for improving grades and increasing motivation for educational attainment.

The Relationship between Student Engagement and Academic Performance: Is It a Myth or Reality?

Lee, Jung-Sook - May 2014 - The Journal of Educational Research (Volume 107, Issue 3)

The author examined the relationship between student engagement and academic performance, using U.S. data of the Program for International Student Assessment 2000. The sample comprised 3,268 fifteen-year-old students from 121 U.S. schools. Multilevel analysis showed that behavioral engagement (defined as effort and perseverance in learning) and emotional engagement (defined as sense of belonging) significantly predicted reading performance. The effect of emotional engagement on reading performance was partially mediated through behavioral engagement. Findings from the present study suggest that educators, policy makers, and the research community need to pay more attention to student engagement and ways to enhance it.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220671.2013.807491 

How the research is incorporated into Akwai's software

The following is an excerpt from the 'Student Engagement' section of the paper;

It is estimated that 25% to 60% of U.S. students are disengaged from school (Klem & Connell, 2004; Willms, 2003). This phenomenon is not unique to the United States and appears to be common and widespread. In a study using data from the Program for International Student Assessment 2000 (OECD, 2000), Willms (2003) found that 25% of students in the 43 countries reported a low sense of belonging, and 20% of students reported low participation. Lack of student engagement at school has been a serious concern for educators and policy makers because disengaged students are more likely to struggle academically, to drop out of school, and to have problem behaviors (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Taking a developmental perspective, academic failure and dropping out are not isolated events but the result of a long-term process of disengagement from school (Alexander, Entwisle, & Horsey, 1997; Randolph, Fraser, & Orthner, 2004). Thus, enhancing student engagement may help prevent these poor student outcomes.

Student engagement is a multifaceted concept. Researchers have identified several components of student engagement (e.g., behavioral, emotional/psychological, cognitive, academic; Appleton, Christenson, & Furlong, 2008; Fredricks et al., 2004). Although there is no consensus on which of these components is important, most studies have included behavioral and emotional components. The term behavioral engagement usually encompasses a broad range of behaviors at school, from merely showing up to actively participating in academic or nonacademic activities. Fredricks et al. (2004), for example, identified three forms of behavioral engagement: positive conduct, involvement in learning, and participation in school-related activities. Positive conduct includes attending class, avoiding disruptive behaviors, responding to directions, and following classroom rules. Involvement in learning includes concentrating, making an effort, being persistent, contributing to class discussion, asking questions, finishing homework, and spending extra time on class-related learning. Participation in school-related activities includes taking part in extracurricular activities such as sports teams or student organizations.

Emotional engagement, also called affective or psychological engagement, includes affective reactions and having a sense of belonging at school (Finn, 1993; Willms, 2003). Affective reactions toward tasks, school, and people at school (e.g., teachers or peers) may include liking, disliking, being interested, being bored, being happy, being sad, or being anxious. Positive emotional reactions to tasks or people can lead to students having a sense of belonging at school. Having a sense of belonging refers to feeling accepted, included, respected, and/or valued by people at school (Goodenow & Grady, 1993; Willms, 2003). Other relevant terms used are identification with school (Finn, 1993), school connectedness (Shochet, Dadds, Ham, & Montague, 2006), and attachment to school (Johnson, Crosnoe, & Elder, 2001).

A Template is a pre-made set/collection of To-Dos, Tasks, UnProductives, Ratings and Questions. Templates are curated to help students accomplish a specific goal or objective (e.g. improve academics, gain college admission, get scholarship money, etc.). Throughout students' usage of Akwai, they will be given different Templates based on their current aspirations. 

In the excerpt above the bolded words have been converted into To-Dos, Tasks, UnProductives, Ratings and Questions that can all be tracked within Akwai's mobile app. This collection (called the Student Engagement Template) makes the findings in this research actionable and measurable as the students work toward improving their personal engagement. 

STUDY FOCUSES ON STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING GOALS, RESOLUTIONS

Dr. Gail Matthews - 2015 - Dominican University of California - Ninth Annual International Conference of the Psychology Research Unit of Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER) 

Matthews, a professor in Dominican's Department of Psychology in the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, recruited 267 participants from a wide variety of businesses, organizations, and networking groups throughout the United States and overseas for a study on how goal achievement in the workplace is influenced by writing goals, committing to goal-directed actions, and accountability for those actions. Participants ranged in ages from 23 to 72 and represented a wide spectrum of backgrounds. Matthews found that more than 70 percent of the participants who sent weekly updates to a friend reported successful goal achievement (completely accomplished their goal or were more than half way there), compared to 35 percent of those who kept their goals to themselves, without writing them down.

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/ahss/undergraduate-programs/psych/faculty/assets-gail-matthews/researchsummary2.pdf

How the research is incorporated into Akwai's software

In this study Dr. Gail Matthews explains three levels of goal setting; [1] formulating a goal but failing to write it down, [2] formulating a goal and writing it down and [3] writing a goal down and sending weekly progress reports. The research found that those in the 3rd category had the most success. This wisdom is baked into the fabric of Akwai because every week students are prompted to update the progress on their To-Dos, Tasks, UnProductives, Ratings and Questions. This act covers both bases (writing goals down and sending weekly progress). We even take this a step further by having our artificial intelligence algorithm (AIVC 3.0) produce detailed progress reports in the form of our Portfolios. 

Student Effort, Consistency, and Online Performance

Patron, Hilde and Lopez, Salvador - July 2011 - University of West Georgia in Carrollton

This paper examines how student effort, consistency, motivation, and marginal learning, influence student grades in an online course. We use data from eleven Microeconomics courses taught online for a total of 212 students. Our findings show that consistency, or less time variation, is a statistically significant explanatory variable, whereas effort, or total minutes spent online, is not. Other independent variables include GPA and the difference between a pre-test and a post-test. The GPA is used as a measure of motivation, and the difference between a post-test and pre-test as marginal learning. As expected, the level of motivation is found statistically significant at a 99% confidence level, and marginal learning is also significant at a 95% level. 

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ941408.pdf

How the research is incorporated into Akwai's software

One of the eight Sub-Scores AIVC 3.0 outputs is called the Consistency Sub-Score (CS-SS). This score is based around the user’s consistency, and how punctual they were when submitting status updates and progress reports. As explained in the 2011 paper;

The students should learn that it is not the amount of time logged in that is important to get good grades, but how frequent and stable the amount of minutes is. Student advisors should emphasize that “studying hard” (total minutes) is not as important as “studying smart” (consistency).

Akwai will give users a high Consistency Sub-Score (CS-SS) for updating their To-Dos, Tasks, UnProductives, Ratings and Questions at the same time each day. Additionally, the mobile app's reminder features will help students develop the habit of consistency by sending push notifications (phone alarms) at the same time each day/week. 

The Influence of School and Individual-Level Factors on Academic Achievement

Stewart, E. B. - January 2008 - The Journal Education and Urban Society

This research examines the extent to which individual-level and school structural variables are predictors of academic achievement among a sample of 10th-grade students abstracted from the National Educational Longitudinal Study database. A secondary analysis of the data produced the following findings. The study results show that individual-level predictors, such as student effort, parent—child discussion, and associations with positive peers, play a substantial role in increasing students' achievement. Furthermore, the results also suggest that school climate—in particular, the sense of school cohesion felt by students, teachers, and administrators—is important to successful student outcomes. In total, school structural characteristics were found to have relatively small effects on student achievement when compared with individual-level characteristics. Given these results, interventions aimed at improving academic achievement need take into consideration the impact of individual-level and school structural factors on students and their ability to succeed.

http://eus.sagepub.com/content/40/2/179.full.pdf+html

How the research is incorporated into Akwai's software

The study results show that individual-level predictors, such as student effort, parent—child discussion, and associations with positive peers, play a substantial role in increasing students' achievement. 

This study covers a broad range of topics, but the excerpt above highlights three predictors of success. The first predictor is 'student effort'. Akwai increases student's effort by getting them to track it and periodically increase the expectations of their self-evaluations. The second predictor listed is 'parent-child discussions'. Our mobile app initiates and schedules periodic check-ins with families through our Send and Receive Joy functionality. The third predictor in the above list is 'associations with positive peers'. Not only do students Send and Receive Joy with their parents, they also do this with their classmates. This gets all students to interact with each other. Kids who typically don't talk to the overachievers (the positive peers) will benefit from these interactions that woudn't have happened otherwise. 

Over 500 Lessons Learned

If you want to learn more about the research we've done, just get a hold of us.